What to Look For in a Good Marketing Technologist

Blame it on the shift to digital marketing or on the desire to better understand customers and deliver better experiences, but marketing is becoming more and more a left-brain AND right –brain endeavor. While we’ll always need the Dons, Peggys, and Joans from Mad Men, marketing is increasingly becoming a technology game. According to one survey by Gartner, CMO’s now spend nearly as much on marketing as CIOs, and will probably spend more than CIOs in the future.

Because of this, the demand for marketing technologists is becoming greater in every type of organization –It’s the rare organization nowadays that doesn’t have at least a CRM, website, social media platform, and a marketing automation system of some sort. What makes a good marketing technologist? Luckily, I am lucky to work with some of the best marketing technologists around, here’s a list of some of the common traits that I see.

The Obvious Hard Skills

Right out of the gate, there are obvious hard skills that you should look for. These are:

• Experience managing marketing technology – you wouldn’t hand the keys to a car to someone who’s never driven, right?
• Ability to manage multiple projects and deadlines – It’s a busy world; being able to juggle priorities and schedules is mandatory.
• Some background in integrating marketing applications with other systems – most systems need to be integrated with something so this experience is a must.

Some people would put a computer science degree on this list. I disagree. There are marketing technology roles that are deeply technical. These occur in organizations with home-grown or custom marketing applications where the marketing technologist is often the product owner. However, many other positions are more about understanding the technology and being able to straddle the divide between Marketing and IT. For these roles, a CS requirement may cause you to overlook good candidates.

The Not-So-Obvious Soft Skills

Like many things in life, it’s the not-so-obvious things that separates the great from the good. If you want to hire a marketing technologist, here’s what to look for

• Someone who enjoys wearing many hats – To work effectively, a marketing technologies needs to be comfortable speaking to a wide range of people on a huge range of topics: Marketing, IT, web development, CRM, Data Management, Analytics are a just a few of the areas. A great marketing technologist will corral the right people, process, and technology to deliver the right customer experience and results. They don’t need to be the expert in the room, but they do need to be able to have an intelligent conversation on many different topics.

• • Always be asking questions – Because marketing technologist work with so many different parties and deal with competing projects, it’s easy to get lost in the wash and forget to ask why something needs to be done. The best technologists take the time to truly understand the reasons driving a project or why something is built a certain way. This enables them to not only ensure that the solution delivers the right results, but often recommend more effective or efficient ways of doing so.

• Curiosity – Marketing and technology are two of the fastest changing landscapes in business. Keeping up-to-date not only on marketing best practices, but new technology developments is a Sisyphean task – Scott Brinker, who writes a marketing technology blog, provides a yearly update on the marketing technology scene.  As you can see, there’s a big difference between 2014 and 2017. The number of disciplines continue to grow each year. A strong sense of curiosity (and an eye test) will help your organization keep up.

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So that’s my take on what makes a good marketing technologist.  I’d love to hear your suggestions and feedback, so feel free to post in the comments section. If you find you have an issue, need help with strategy or are looking for support with your marketing automation, contact us! We love helping companies take their marketing efforts to the next level.