Digital marketing methods are increasingly seen by marketers as being overvalued by businesses, with social media topping the list of overvalued skills for the second year in a row.
According to Marketing Week's 2024 Careers and Salaries Survey, marketers once again named social media as the most overvalued skill by companies.
For the second year in a row, more than a fifth (22.5%) of the 3,000 marketers surveyed said social media is the most overrated skill that companies look for in marketers. This is a slight decrease from the 22.9% who answered the same question in 2023.
This is true regardless of the type of business a marketer is in. B2C marketers (24.3%) are more likely than B2B marketers (23.7%) to believe that social media is overvalued by businesses. His 20% of people working in companies with a mix of B2B and B2C marketing say social media is overrated.
According to marketers, digital marketing (15.7%) has overtaken performance marketing (12.9%) to become the second most overrated skill. In 2023, this order will be reversed, with 16.1% of marketers saying performance marketing is overrated and 15% saying the same for digital marketing.
The rest of the 2024 overvalued skills list is rounded out by SEO (12.2%), advertising and marketing technology (9.6%), and content marketing (9.0%).
Underrated: The importance of marketing strategy is being overlooked by companies, marketers say
This year, performance marketing has become more important, given that many marketers are being forced to elevate the importance of performance marketing in tough economic times, as shown in Marketing Week's 2023 Effectiveness Language Data. The slight improvement in awareness speaks for itself.
Looking specifically at responses from B2B marketers, digital marketing is also the second most overrated skill at 15%, while SEO (13.5%) is the third most overrated skill for B2B marketers, with performance Marketing has fallen to fourth place.
For B2C marketers and marketers working in mixed B2B and B2C companies, the rankings are the same as in the overall sample, with digital marketing in second place (17.1% and 15.3%, respectively) and performance marketing in third place (14.9% and 12.9%). %) is. .
ITV CMO Jane Stiller believes that in recent years so much digital marketing has “dispersed” the “core competency” of marketing.
“The principles of marketing should be the same: we exist to drive growth, understand our customers, build propositions that resonate with them, communicate and position them. Classic and traditional. marketing,” she says. “I think those core skills are being distracted by digital tactics.”
Over the coming weeks, Marketing Week will be publishing a series of exclusive news and features based on our 2024 Careers and Pay Survey findings, including the impact of burnout and evolving working patterns. Click here to see all the content we've published so far.
