Membership Holiday Update 2023

It’s the end of the quarter, and actually the end of the year! And what a year it’s been for the world of marketing and all things digital! We’ve been delighted to bring you a variety of news, insights, and fun throughout the year. Yes, fun: our most popular article of the year was about what we can all learn from Taylor Swift’s marketing genius! 

The holiday period usually means a list of what’s happened this year, but seeing as that’s basically one thing - AI - we’re already focusing ahead to the trends for 2024! We were joined by five fantastic experts in the webinar room last week to discuss what they see coming down the line in the coming year. Watch the trends webinar again here, or if you hang on until this Friday you can hear our extended version on the podcast. 

We’re excited to continue bringing you as much learning and expert insights as possible - and with our membership community at now over 300,000-strong we’ll continue to value your feedback on how we’re doing. One small example is how we were able to respond to our members in Australia and the APAC region who have been asking for more live content in their time zone: so we invited Kate Toon, one of Oz’s best-known SEO experts, onto the webinar first thing in the morning to bring her thoughts on social media marketing.

Your Career. Your Future.

As we head into a new year it’s a natural time to reflect on the state of your career development, and whether to continue or move up in your current role, or explore new opportunities.

I can draw your attention to this super-useful guide to approaching how to evaluate your career with a tool you can download and use to plot your individual situation. We’ve also been highlighting some individual stories of interesting careers from some of the experts we’ve had on the podcast - have a look in our video library.

Given the amount of discussion during this year on the part played by AI not just in potentially threatening careers but in enhancing them, we will continue to bring you expert views and advice on this. When we surveyed our membership a few months ago (more on that below), we learned that 44% of the sample were using AI then, and the number is only going to increase. 

If there are any particular areas within careers and growth that you’d like to see us cover please just send us an email! 

Original Insights and Reports

We completed a number of surveys during 2023 which brought out some extremely valuable insights. One thing that’s clear - employers and employees alike recognize more than ever the importance of upskilling, certification, and that AI is here to stay! 

In our report - The State of Digital Skills and Corporate Training in 2023 - we saw that 74%of the marketing and HR leaders surveyed plan to address the skills gap in their organization and that AI strategy development is the most prominent skill missing today (49%). 

In a separate report - The Benefits of a Digital Marketing Certification to Marketers, Employers, and Educators - we surveyed universities and colleges as well as employers to ask how they see the value of a digital marketing certification. It was gratifying to discover that 91% of employers value professional certification when hiring or promoting: this falls nicely in line with our finding, in the same survey, that 62% of our DMI graduates who got a salary increase said that the certification helped them achieve that (with an average salary increase of 27%!)

And, of course, we also turned to you, our members, to ask what you see as the current challenges and most important skills in your industry. I’ll share some highlights here. 

• 33% of marketers surveyed felt their biggest challenge is time and workload pressures, followed by lack of training (12%).
• AI is recognised as a top skill to learn in 2024 (at 10%) but it’s closely followed by strategy, data analytics, and SEO.
• As many of you are already using AI in your roles, we were interested to hear most of those surveyed were finding it’s making them more productive. 

You can read the full results of our 2023 member survey here.

Your membership and content team here at the DMI take on board all of these insights - along with all the feedback we get from our webinar surveys and other avenues - and will use them to help plan our areas of focus in 2024. 

Newsflash: The first thing we at the DMI can do to help is create a course to get you started with AI in your marketing efforts - and that’s just what we’ve done. It will be available in January, as a short course. We'll be letting you know closer to the date! 

“AI is a tool, it's a technology. It's as useful as the person putting it to work. ” Clark Boyd on the DMI podcast

Understanding AI

The biggest single event of the year - in all areas but especially in digital marketing - has been the widespread adoption of AI tools, in particular ChatGPT and the creeping effects of Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE). 

Our library - updated twice or more times a week - is the ideal place for us to bring you the latest in what’s happening in this hypercharged landscape. Here are a few highlights you should check out now. 

• Article - A Complete/Starting Guide to AI
• Video - The State of ChatGPT one year on with Clark Boyd and Will Francis discussing 
• Article - Examples of AI in Marketing 
• Webinar - Joe Williams did a very focused webinar on ChatGPT Prompting for Digital Marketers
• Toolkit - our Guide to ChatGPT for your Marketing Plan has been our most popular toolkit all year! 

There’s still a lot to learn and watch what happens with SGE as it is expected to expand to more countries sometime in 2024. In the meantime, you could do well to watch an insight-packed webinar on Preparing for this New World of Search given by Lindsey Schrant of Neil Patel Digital.

As 2024 rolls on we will also be carefully watching ongoing developments in GA4 and bring you useful advice on making the most of a tool many people have not enjoyed adapting to. You might like to bookmark this article where we will update other useful sources for you to stay up-to-date!

Digital Marketing Webinars

I’ve said this before, but it’s really true - our webinars are more popular than ever! This was the first year we’ve run a webinar series, to allow the presenter and audience to get in deep on a topic and explore practical elements, and we completed two: one on GA4 and one on developing a marketing plan. Our webinar schedule for 2024 is being lined up and we will be doing both single and webinar series throughout the year and are looking at topics including AI, video for social media, careers, GA4 and lots more. 

It’s never too late to catch up on some of our recent webinars: 

• Mischa, DMI’s head of marketing, showed us her 10-step approach to a content marketing plan.
• An inspiring approach by Maeve Kneafsey to ensuring your marketing efforts are seen and understood by management.

Podcasts

Well - we did it! We won our first award for the DMI podcast in September at the Memcom awards in London. Memcom is a UK-wide organization that acknowledges the best content and efforts by professional organizations to help their members. In the podcast category we were up against stiff competition from the likes of the National Trust and the Federation of Small Businesses.

If you haven’t already subscribed to our podcast, do so right away (for free) on any podcast platform. Here are some of my favorites from last little while:

• Andrew Simon of SAP discussing how he combines working in marketing with being a mindfulness coach at work. 
• The CEO of the EPIC Museum, Ireland’s top visitor attraction, sharing some of her marketing secrets.
• A wonderfully positive conversation about AI with Northwestern University’s Jim Lecinski.

Get in touch if you're interested in being a guest, suggesting one, or any feedback.

“You sign up to be a great marketer, you sign up to be a lifelong learner” Jim Lecinski

CPD - Keep on Learning

We ran a survey of our members this summer and learned quite a bit about your feelings about CPD points. 

Just 39% of you submit points at the moment and many are not clear what qualifies for CPD and how to submit. We will take this feedback on board and work to communicate more clearly on this key element of your development with the DMI. 

For those of you who are Power members and are CPD-eligible, don’t forget to keep up to date with great resources that will boost your CPD credits. 

The following content is eligible for CPD credits: 

• eBooks - Explore all in-depth ebooks
• Toolkits - See which ones you’ve missed
• Webinar - Live and recorded
• Short Courses - 9 courses covering a variety of topics 

If you want to learn more, read about CPD points in our knowledge base. You can also earn CPD points for learning in other situations.

That's enough to keep you going over the holidays! All the best for the coming year and, again, get in touch with any feedback or questions!