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The days of marketing professionals learning the Four Ps in college and enjoying a long career in marketing are over. Higher education is struggling to keep pace with the rate of change in the marketing industry and businesses of all sizes and across all industries are feeling the impact

By investing in ongoing digital marketing training and the right online marketing courses, talent development professionals and marketing managers can overcome this challenge.

Rather than fighting the competition to find marketing unicorns in the job market, you can help existing employees overcome these skills gaps.

Creating Multi-Discipline Marketers with Online Marketing Courses

Importance of Marketing Training

Marketing Training Courses

5 Learning Paths to Get More Out of Online Marketing Courses

Creating Multi-Discipline Marketers with Online Marketing Courses

Traditional marketing education pushed new professionals toward generalization. There was a specific set of skills and practices that applied across companies. But with the explosion of digital marketing, specialization became the norm.

Now, marketers are responsible for everything from branding, public relations, and customer experience to SEO, social media, content marketing, PPC advertising, and more. Rather than searching for unicorns who are experts in everything (more than likely, you’ll end up with ineffective jacks of all trades), the industry is turning toward multi-discipline hires.

The key to creating multi-discipline marketers is getting the team to have a wide array of skills and knowledge with deep understanding and experience in just one or two disciplines. For example, you may have an SEO and content creation expert who only has general awareness for things like video and UX.

Providing access to high-quality online marketing courses will help push your marketing department from siloed specialists to collaborative, multi-discipline pros. Why is it so important for learning and development pros to create multi-discipline marketers? Here are a few reasons:

Internal Motivation

Critical Thinking

Team Agility

Internal Motivation: Giving your marketers something to work toward—mastery through digital marketing training—satisfies an innate need for meaningful work.
Critical Thinking: Having siloed marketers leads to narrow and ineffective problem solving. Creating a breadth of knowledge and having teammates with varying degrees of expertise improves critical thinking and helps the marketing department find better answers to business questions.
Team Agility: Finding a single multi-discipline marketing hire doesn’t necessarily solve the skills gap problem. If you're relying too much on one marketer to think across the various marketing functions, business is at the mercy of a single individual. Supporting multi-discipline development with online marketing courses keeps the operation running even if someone is on vacation or leaves the team.

Marketing thought leaders stress the importance of continuous learning and an ability to adapt to industry changes. But talent development leaders and marketing managers can’t sit back and hope that self-guided learning overcomes the skills gap on its own.

Importance of Marketing Training

If marketers know that shifting to an multi-discipline skillset is so important, why is there still a skills gap in the industry? The hiring process is one reason. But the 90% dropout rate for massive open online courses is another.

Individuals are quick to identify that marketing training courses could help them understand new concepts like content marketing and conversion rate optimization. Actually completing the course and applying the lessons is another story.

This is why business leaders have to focus on building out a formal program for continuous learning, with a focus on online marketing courses that can be applied immediately. When employees are able to quickly apply what they've learned from online courses they will buy into the process more consistently.

And when the entire team is following the program and taking relevant classes, individuals will develop a level of understanding for roles outside their specialties. That level of respect will naturally dissolve the silos that keep many marketing teams from quickly adapting to the rapid changes in their market.

Marketing Training Courses

To build a marketing program that supports multi-discipline individuals ready to capture customer attention, there are a few main skills talent development professionals and marketing leaders should focus on:

Content Marketing: In marketing, content is still king. And when your marketing team knows how to create high-quality content, they’ll be able to better-engage with customers. More attention to content means more attention for your business. No matter what changes in the industry, some form of content will always be important.
Data Analytics: Marketing is increasingly a data-driven game. However, many traditional marketers come from a creative background. Arming creatives with some level of analytical capabilities will help propel the team forward.
Strategy: There’s so much turnover in the marketing industry. Talent development professionals and marketing leaders can counter turnover rates by giving every marketer a foundation of knowledge in strategy. The key is to foster an ability to adapt quickly rather than focusing only on particular tactics.
Social Media: Consumer conversations have moved to social media and it’s important for brands to take part. But there’s a right and wrong way to go about it. With the right online marketing courses, talent development professionals and marketing leads can help the entire team engage with the brand’s audience on social.
Brand: Branding means thinking about what distinguishes your company from the rest and incorporating it into every single touchpoint of the business — design, messaging, marketing and PR, and company vision. Learn about branding, how it works, and how you can build and maintain a more competitive brand.
Paid Media: To quote notable communications professor, Marshall McLuhan, “The medium is the message.” This theory rings especially true in today’s complex media landscape. To increase the reach of your message, you've got to use paid advertising. There’s a multitude of paid channels available to reach your target audience with the right message, at the right time, in the right place.
Online Marketing: Online marketing managers play a crucial role in developing and implementing an organization's digital marketing strategy. With their vital skills and tactical know-how, online marketing managers develop and implement strategies that can help take organizations to the next level.

These are just a few of the many skills that talent development professionals and marketing leaders should use to build out a digital marketing training program.

Don’t just deliver marketing training courses as one-off opportunities. Build learning paths for marketers to continuously draw value from.

5 Learning Paths to Get More Out of Online Marketing Courses

Become a Marketing Manager:

One of the toughest parts of a marketing career is making the jump from individual contributor to manager. It’s all about doing two jobs at once—ensuring the success of the team while creating a winning strategy for the organization. Hiring for this position can be difficult. But with this learning path, you can prepare existing employees for the transition.

Become a Digital Marketer:

Not every aspect of marketing is digital. But no matter how you look at it, digital channels are critical to earning (and keeping) consumer attention. Just about every marketer can benefit from a learning path that creates a foundation of digital skills.

Become a Content Strategist:

In the “content is king” age of marketing, content strategist is becoming an increasingly popular role. With this path, individuals will take online marketing courses that focus on getting the right messages to the right people at the right times.

Become a Digital Advertising Specialist:

Digital marketing has become an essential part of every company's business plan. Your team can become experts in this critical space with this learning pathway.

Become an SEO Expert:

Attracting new customers through search traffic is a critical goal for any business. Meeting the goal requires a combination of technical, on-page, and off-page SEO tactics that traditional marketers never had to worry about. This learning path teaches marketers how to analyze and optimize websites to gain SEO success.

Our complete library of online marketing courses gives employees the resources necessary to adapt to the ever-changing demands of the marketing profession. For talent development professionals and marketing leaders, providing access to a wide range of marketing training topics can make all the difference between a high-turnover, inefficient team and a well-oiled, highly-adaptive machine.

Browse the full library of courses and learning paths to get a better idea of where your employees can start the continuous learning journey.