There’s no way to sugarcoat some of the top workplace trends of 2023: lower budgets and smaller staff numbers. Tech companies laid off over 100,000 workers over the course of 2023 — and the workers who remained spent much of the year scrambling to cover the gaps left when their colleagues were let go. We were truly in our ‘do more with less’ era: the work had to get accomplished, but the resources were slim.
While 2024 hasn’t completely stabilized (Microsoft and Amazon both announced large layoffs in January), many workers have recovered from the shock of the collective losses of 2023 and have begun to look toward the future. For marketers especially, there is a collective need to move beyond the ‘Do more with less’ era and into a more sustainable landscape. That’s why 2024 will likely be a year dedicated to upskilling for many marketers — or at least it should be!
Why you should continue to pursue new skills
There are a few very compelling reasons to learn new skills, especially in a tumultuous job market. Whether you feel your current position may be in jeopardy or not, having new skills can help you protect yourself in the future as well as expand your current horizons and improve job satisfaction.
One reason to upskill is that it will make you more valuable as a current employee, potentially helping you avoid layoffs in the future. Employers might look more favorably on someone who is able to offer a broader range of skills than someone who has a more limited skill set. Upskilling could also allow you to move laterally within your company to other roles at a time when the scope for promotions might be on hold.
Another reason to pursue upskilling is to ensure that if you are affected by a layoff in the future, you should be able to maximize your job search opportunities with more skills under your belt. CNBC reported that when employees were laid off in 2023, a number of those workers ended up being hired at smaller companies or in adjacent industries: “Some laid-off employees immediately found new jobs at smaller software firms and internet companies or continued their careers outside of tech, pivoting to consulting, health care, finance and other industries eager to recruit top talent who might have otherwise stayed at larger tech companies.” Over a third of laid-off tech workers found positions in software development, internet, and IT firms.
Joining a smaller firm often means that you will have broader responsibilities than at a large company. In the hiring process for one of these roles, having a wider range of skills to offer can give you a competitive edge.
Finally, upskilling will likely increase your job satisfaction. A study undertaken by Gallup and Amazon found that “nearly three-in-four workers (71%) who have participated in upskilling agree or strongly agree that it has enhanced their satisfaction with work.” If you can increase your current and future employability as well as your job satisfaction at the same time, that’s a win-win situation.
Areas marketers should upskill in 2024
Upskilling or even reskilling opportunities are often dependent on your current role and experience, as well as your employer’s flexibility and openness to the process, which may involve using working hours. With those caveats in mind, certain categories of marketing skills will continue to be valuable in the coming years and will most likely benefit marketers who seek out those skills.
Here are a few key marketing skills marketers should add to their resumes in 2024:
- Data analysis and reporting: Reporting and data analysis go hand in hand. Data analysis allows you to better understand the numbers behind what’s working and what’s not, and reporting can help you show your managers and executives how the work your team is undertaking is affecting the company’s bottom line. This course will give you the lowdown on how to analyze key metrics for your marketing campaigns.
- Social media: Social media is here to stay and many marketing departments that have undergone layoffs have had to say goodbye to their social media staff. Learning new strategies in the social media marketing department can allow your organization to continue to have a presence during a period of slower growth. HubSpot offers a free social media marketing course that would fit the bill in this area.
- Project management: Most marketers function as project managers as part of their roles, but most don’t have formal project management training. The Project Management Institute offers a selection of free e-learning opportunities that will help you gain a better understanding of how the principles of project management can inform your marketing campaigns, event planning, and more.
- A/B testing: Figuring out exactly what marketing activities, campaigns, or language works best is critical to effectively using budgets and resources. A/B testing allows you to do just that, drilling down into the effectiveness of particular elements with your audience so you can do more of what’s effective. A course in the basics of A/B testing like this one would give you a sense of how to start designing the most effective A/B testing experiments.
- Generative AI: Understanding how to use generative AI for your marketing role, no matter what that role is, will continue to be imperative over the coming year. Whether you’re using ChatGPT to draft email cadences to nurture leads or brainstorming keywords, the new AI technology can and should help make your marketing job easier and less time-consuming. This ChatGPT for Beginners course would be a smart place to start.
- Copywriting: As a copywriter, I might live to regret suggesting all marketers upskill their copywriting but, truth be told, it’s a darn useful skill to have. If you can draft more effective emails to potential leads without the help of your organization’s copywriters (if they have them at all), you’ll be one step ahead of your colleagues. Similarly, if you are applying for a position at a company that doesn’t have copywriters, having strong writing skills can only benefit you in the hiring process. This course in High Impact Business Writing would help you polish your writing skills.
Why mastering Wrike can help bolster your 2024 goals
In the spirit of continuous learning, Wrike offers a range of courses that will help you improve your Wrike skills, ensuring you’re able to use each and every feature that can impact your team’s success. (Our marketing team recently brushed up on our skills and we can attest it’s a game changer!)
While Wrike doesn’t offer general marketing courses, so many of our platform’s features directly enable marketers to use the skills we outlined above. Interested in increasing your analytics and reporting skills in 2024? Wrike’s advanced analytics feature allows you to analyze data and create reports with a few clicks. Trying to improve your copywriting skills this year? Use our integration with Grammarly, which offers full functionality in all tasks and ensures your Wrike work is typo-free. Once you’ve created the foundation for a new campaign using ChatGPT, bring it into Wrike to manage it from start to finish.
If you’re itching to get started using Wrike to support new skills, a Wrike free two-week trial is the perfect introduction.
