Marketing Skills Assessments

November 21, 2024

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How can I assure myself and my marketing team are up-to-speed in our marketing skills?

With so much lightning-speed change happening in the general marketing world, it can be difficult for teams to remain competitive. When it comes to keeping team skills up to date, conducting audits and assessments can help bridge gaps, develop growth internally, as well as hire and retain talent.

Some key strategies for enhancing skills include:

Allocating budget for growth and development
Empowering teams to continually learn
Assess competencies and skills
Collaborate with other departments
Offer training days

For instance, ANA Global CMO Growth Council's 2023 Marketing Capabilities Framework provides tangible and actionable insights into how marketing teams can enhance their skills, develop processes and practices, as well as foster a positive workforce. The report notes that "creating cross-departmental training programs allows employees to expand their skills to different departments and rotate through different job positions and responsibilities. Benefits include employees gaining more insight into the broader business, on-demand flexibility, and more cross-trained employees."

In addition, Zontee Hou, founder of Media Volery and managing director of Convince & Convert, stressed the importance of cultivating a curiosity mindset, writing in an ANA piece that "the act of asking questions and seeking to answer those questions can give you a great deal of insights, even if the answers are not straightforward or don't exist."

Hou shared other salient recommendations, including:

Use data to kick off your marketing meetings. When my team at Convince & Convert works with clients on their processes for content planning, we often recommend that the insights about the previous campaigns or last planning period are reported out first. This sets the tone for the meeting and gives the team perspective as new content is planned.
Embrace failure. Not every experiment will lead to gains, but even failed experiments provide information and learnings. Be sure to make failure a normal part of the experimentation process, so that your team is willing to take risks, rather than to simply play it safe.

Below are helpful best practices, examples, and trends. Don't forget to check out ANA's Marketing Training and Development Center.

Best Practices, Examples, and Trends

The Marketing Capabilities Framework. ANA, June 2023.
As organizations look to build critical marketing excellence that drives sustainable and profitable growth, the ANA and the ANA Global CMO Growth Council have developed a first-of-its-kind talent resource. The Marketing Capabilities Framework provides marketing leaders with an industry-wide playbook to elevate modern marketing talent, ultimately driving growth for their organizations and our industry.

A new dynamic has emerged between talent and employers that has resulted in a shift away from "talent management" toward "talent empowerment." And, today, marketing capabilities — as a focus of business investment — are seeing exponential growth. Whether in the face of increased competition and the need to build competitive advantage, or in response to talent migrations associated with the Great Resignation and gen Z, marketing organizations around the world are placing increased emphasis on talent investments to drive growth.
Rapid Change Is Driving a Need for Marketing Training. ANA, November 2024.
With a marketing team of nearly 200 people throughout the world, the tax and auditing firm Grant Thornton invests in training to make sure staff are up to speed on new technologies. Grant Thornton deploys a variety of programming for marketing training, ranging from sending employees on external training (including those offered by the ANA) to pairing new hires with peer coaches to help them ramp up.
Cisco Created an Immersive Training Event to Upskill Sellers. ANA, July 2024.
IMPACT 2024 — Cisco's premier sales kickoff in Las Vegas — united 20,000 global sellers for immersive training, strategic insights, and celebratory recognition. Aiming for personalized experiences, the event enhanced connections, sharpened competitiveness, and inspired success, catering to Cisco's diverse and dynamic salesforce.
Creating a Learning Environment within Your Team. ANA, May 2024.
It's important to build a team that's empowered to learn. Rather than focusing solely on what your team members bring to the table in terms of skills and experience, put emphasis on the entire team, building new skills on an ongoing basis. Not only does this empower people to master new skills, but it also creates a norm in which everyone is striving to always learn. After all, data isn't about just recording and measuring what's been achieved, it's about identifying new things to learn and understand.
Shaping the Next Generation of Marketers, with Niki Mandell of A+E. ANA, January 2024.
This podcast's guest features Niki Mandell, Vice President, Ad Sales Partnerships at A+E. In addition to being an integrated marketing magician, Niki is a participant in A+E's mentorship program, both as a mentor and mentee. She shared her thoughts from both perspectives, and weighed in on some of the most vital skills the marketers of tomorrow should be learning today.

Tools

Marketing Skills Matrix. ANA/Demand Metric.
This Marketing Skills Matrix template is designed to help you increase the skill sets of your marketing team. With this tool, you can create a visual overview of the tactical and strategic skills of your employees.

Modern Marketing Capabilities Assessment. ANA/Demand Metric.
This self-assessment tool will help your marketing team understand how capable they are – and where they can improve.

Benchmarking Your Core Competencies. ANA/Demand Metric.
This guide shows an approach to help you benchmark your core competencies.

Develop Your Team's Strategic Skill Set. ANA/Demand Metric.
A guide to help you educate and develop your staff's skills.

Product Management Skills Assessment. ANA/Demand Metric.
This self-assessment tool will help you understand your employees' product management skill set.

Sales Training Playbook. ANA/Demand Metric.
Use this step-by-step playbook and set of 27 premium tools and templates to develop a consultative approach to selling.

Sales Enablement Skills Assessment. ANA/Demand Metric.
This self-assessment tool will help you understand your employees' sales enablement skill set.

Marketing Technologist Skills Assessment. ANA/Demand Metric.
This self-assessment tool will help you understand your employees' marketing technology skill set.

Marketing Performance Review. ANA/Demand Metric.
A comprehensive Microsoft Word Performance Review Template that standardizes your employee appraisal process. See especially pages 15 to 16, which provide a broad range of criteria that a marketing employee might be evaluated on – including campaign management, analytics, sales knowledge, etc.

Professional Development Plan. ANA/Demand Metric.
This Professional Development Plan template can be used for assessing past performance and establishing objectives for improving performance. It contains sections for an overview of the previous quarter, reviews accomplishments and obstacles, identifies strengths and opportunities, sets goals, targets, and action items, and results in a professional development plan. It's designed to track staff performance and set them on a plan to grow throughout an organization.

The Marketing Knowledge Center actively connects ANA members to the resources they need to be successful. You can visit the ANA website to engage with the MKC in three ways.

Explore content to access best practices, case studies, and marketing tools. Our proprietary content includes Event Recaps, which share actionable insights from conference and committee presentations.
Connect with our ASK Research Service in real time for customized answers to your specific marketing challenges.
Stay on top of trends with Pulse issues, which explore how new technologies and innovations will affect marketers and consumers alike.