Keep the marketing skills current

This past Sunday Business section of the San Jose Mercury News had two great write ups by Patrick May that offered great advice and comparisons and contrasts of the current down turn to the far less in scope dot-com bust. Both articles struck a cord with me because I am a veteran of the dot-com bust and I'm now working my way through the current economic and industry shift...and will survive yet again. I encourage all who are denizens of this crazy valley to click the links and read Patrick's prose. Nice work.

I was struck by the "advice" offered by Martin Hendess in the "Tips/Advice from layoff veterans" article:

"Martin Hendess, 39: "I'm personally at a bit of a disadvantage because I have a broader marketing background, yet companies today are looking for very specific skills. And if you don't have 10 out of the 10 items on their checklist, they can easily move on to the next candidate because there's such a huge pool."

As a fellow marketing professional, I echo this perspective and would like to add a few possible solutions. Like Martin, I have a general marketing background that was sought after during the early days of the Internet revolution. My MBA concentration was in Marketing Management to boot. There has been a strong shift in desirability for marketing professionals to be more specialized and almost more tactical in skills. However, I think there is still demand for professionals who have the depth and experience to understand marketing at the strategic level and have a point of view for how these new specialized skills support a marketing strategy. What the market is telling us generalist is to become familiar with and learn the new technologies and processes to interact with consumers...which is becoming more 1:1.

The best education on these new marketing tools comes from reading the latest marketing blogs, talking to those in the field and actually jumping in to do it. Remember, these specialized skills were not main stream 5+ years ago and the text books being used in MBA elective courses are now out of date. Independent real time learning is the key.

Learn the new marketing skills and find a project to apply and perfect the knowledge. I am applying my acquired knowledge of building customer communities and how to harness the power of blogging to help a friend build a consumer facing business. Developing a plan and learning by trial and error has taught me a great deal about marketing to the social web.

The big win after this exercise is that I can add this skill set to my resume and will have tangible results to demonstrate effectiveness. I can not only bring social media marketing skills to the party, but can also provide a perspective on how these new skills fit within the larger plan...a perspective gained only through 12 + years of marketing experience.