Data-driven marketing continues to grow yet where can you find the talent?

So, where do we see the greatest demand for data-driven talent and how can you and your business be the most successful when it comes to securing the people who can help your team and business expand?

The profile has evolved

There has been an exponential rise in the demand for data savvy analysts. As the world’s online footprint grows we are all creating great swathes of data that marketers want to use to better understand their audience and to market their business to them. Couple the amount of data available to us with the rapid rise of data driven marketing platforms and it is easy to understand why great data is the critical ingredient in successful online marketing campaigns. Therefore, the demand for specialists in these areas grows and grows… Data Analysts, Scientists, Gurus, Wizards, Unicorns… the “hard to find” talent that can bring heavy data sets to life.

As data plays a bigger role in a brands story the profile of data analysts has evolved too.

It's no longer enough to be fantastic with “the numbers”. Once the numbers have been run, the data has been crunched and sense has been made of petabytes of information, analysts have to be able to bring the numbers to life and tell a story and paint pictures with their findings internally and to your customers. The modern “math man” must be a great and competent orator and story teller, and this can be tough combination of skills to marry.

Everyone’s talking about data

Whether you are an agency, agency trading desk, brand, tech vendor or publisher your data, and the people who work with your data, will be a big part of your digital function. At Sphere we have seen data led roles increase more than any other job discipline over the last few years.

One of the great opportunities the increase in data led roles across the digital sphere has provided is an increased “talent pool” for companies to hire from.

We have seen business experience a great deal of success when they have expanded their horizons when searching for data driven talent. With agencies hiring candidates from tech vendors and brands and brands hiring candidates from agencies and tech vendors. In emerging markets like data, a successful hiring strategy must focus on the profile and “DNA” of an individual as well as their skills. Skills can be trained and when you hire the “right person” you tend to see the biggest return on your investment.

Data and creativity

Our next event is on data and creativity. Data-driven digital advertising is the new "normal", changing the face of advertising as we used to know it. With more people using the web in more ways and for longer, the emergence of programmatic buying and other advertising and marketing technology platforms means there is an ever-increasing amount of data to make sense of, and for advertisers to use.

Yet advertising is also all about creativity. And one of the biggest challenges with data driven advertising is that the creative has suffered. The need for brilliant, innovative creative to keep customers engaged is more important than ever. So how can data and creativity work together to produce advertising campaigns that reach the right audience and engage that audience when it reaches them? Get in touch if you are interested in attending at the end of October 2016.

Ed Steer, CEO, Sphere Digital Recruitment