Smart Insights recently published a study that covered a variety of things related to digital marketing. One of the most interesting aspects of the study when they asked which skill they would most like to improve over the course of the next year. The #1 answer was affiliate marketing, which got 40% of the total respondents saying they were looking to improve on that skill.
The full breakdown of results is visible in this chart:
As you can see there were a number of popular skills that marketers were hoping to improve. Mobile marketing with 39% is certainly no surprise and SEO at 36% makes sense too. Digital strategy and integrated planning is somewhat of a vague response but I can see how people would select that as well.
Given how easy it is to hire graphic designers these days I was surprised to read that this option rated as high as it did at 27%. Most people it seems are either good at this already or are happy to pay a professional to take care of it for them.
Copywriting is near the bottom at 22%, which makes sense in that most people who need it either know that they want to do it themselves and have put in the effort to learn or know that they don’t enjoy that type of work so they have hired someone else to do it for them.
AM Navigator’s CEO, Geno Prussakov said that, “Continued research and reports put out by IAB and Affiliate Window, the efforts of Performance Marketing Insights, Affiliate Management Days, and others – it is good to see it all, finally, yield fruit.” He went on to say, “Affiliate marketer’s seat at the table and affiliate market’s place in advertisers’ digital marketing strategies has been overlooked for way to long. It is refreshing to see that marketers, finally, realize the importance of the ‘skill’ of doing affiliate marketing.”
The study also found that digital marketers believe that their skills were strong in strategy & integrated planning (52%) as well as customer service (48%), only 13% said that they were already strong with affiliate marketing. This makes it clear that not only are marketers missing this key skill, they recognize just how important it is and want to take steps to improve it.
While the study does not go into any detail on how these digital marketers are planning on learning about affiliate marketing, it is certainly a good sign for the digital marketing world in general. Affiliate marketing has been getting more and more popular for many businesses, and with the continued success there will be a larger demand for this type of skill going forward.
