5 Job Titles for the Marketer of the Future

By Software Advice Market Analyst Ashley Furness


Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide CEO Kevin Roberts recently declared marketing dead, telling a group of business leaders “the further up in a company you go the stupider you become. And the further away from new things.”


While I agree with his latter sentiment, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects marketing payrolls to swell by at least 13 percent between 2010 and 2020. So where's the disconnect? What Roberts likely meant was the old days of marketing are over.


If you want to see the future of marketing, just talk to a recruiter. The dramatic shift in highly-desired skills - from direct marketing to SEO and social media, for example - says a lot about where the industry is going.


Recently, I interviewed more than 30 marketing and recruiting specialists to find out how what new job titles they expect to appear in the next decade. Here is what they had to say:


1. Crowdsourcing Specialist: This role has two parts: listening and promoting. First, this specialist would monitor conversations happening on the Web about the brand and develop messaging that responds to customers’ voiced expectations. At the same time, they would strategize calls to action for branding purposes via social media –such as inviting customers to compete to create the best video about the brand, and perhaps tying the theme to something trending on Twitter.


2. Content Marketing Czar: This position would plan decide what content vehicles - such as websites, blogs, videos, infographics, webinars, social media and others - should be leveraged and how. At the same time, the content marketing leader would look for externally-created content about the company on the Web and find ways to leverage it for SEO and other marketing purposes.


3. Marketing Integration Planner: This position would identify ways to deliver a single marketing message, campaign or branding effort across multiple digital channels. For example, using a pay-per-click advertising campaign to promote a viral video, or using SEO keyword analysis to help craft a press release.The goal would be to find out where their customers are already interacting with the brand, and emulate their nonlinear, multi-screen purchase behavior.


4. Vice President of Marketing Data Analytics: This role would decide when, why and how marketing data should be tracked. This includes data collected through marketing automation, website analytics, social media, email campaigns, mobile, SEO, content marketing, PPC and other channels. This information would be shared with brand and campaign strategists who design promotions.


5. ROI and Marketing Budget Officer: Marketing budgets are shifting from quarterly allotments for print, direct mail and media advertising to constantly-shifting spending from one channel to another. Return on Investment (ROI) data is often instantly available–from PPC, for example–so marketing can be more nimble with resource allocation.


It’s doubtful every marketing department will need all of these positions. The point here is to show the future of marketing through the most highly-desired skills and emerging job titles.


“All the top-down, brand-driven marketing disciplines aren't dead, they just must be balanced now with the consumer-centric disciplines that require brands to ‘let go of the steering wheel and let the consumers drive,’" Protagonist Principal Tom Cotton.


Research for this article was provided by softwareadvice.com/crm.