According to the Association for Talent Development, “companies that invest in employee training see 24% higher profit margins.”

Now you might say there’s a clear conflict of interest there, after all, what else is that Association going to say, right?

But if you want some additional evidence of the value of investing in your people there are a vast array of stats to support learning and development. Here are a couple of interesting soundbites:

Learning is a Talent Magnet: “94% of employees say they’d stay longer at a company that invests in their career development.” LinkedIn Learning Workplace Report

“The No.1 reason people quit is a lack of opportunities to learn and grow”according to Gallup’s – State of the Global Workplace Report.

Learning Drives Performance Gains: “High-performing organisations spend 2.5x more on learning and development.” Deloitte Insights.

Perhaps, my favourite…

Learning Drives Innovation

“Companies that foster a learning culture are 92% more likely to innovate.” Deloitte Human Capital Trends

And in a world increasingly dominated by AI driven sameness – or AI slop as I heard recently – it’s innovation and creativity that are going to be ever more powerful drivers of marketing performance.

When people feel competent, they take initiative and innovate more freely.

Convinced?

Assuming you are bought into the idea of developing your team members skill sets, here are the first few steps in your journey:

1. Define the Required Skills:

What are the critical skills the business needs to deliver its marketing plan?

This will include both functional skills and task-based skills e.g. knowledge of how to deliver a good presentation (functional) or expertise in running PMax campaigns on Google Ads (task based).

Marketers need a mix of both, with the classic T-shaped marketer being much in demand. A T-shaped marketer is one with a good general understanding of marketing, but a deep expertise in one area, such as performance marketing, or working with creators, or sponsorship. You get the idea.

What’s most important is that you define a marketing competency framework that reflects the skills you need to deliver your marketing plan in the short, medium and long term.

2. Complete a Skills Gap Analysis

Arming yourself with a marketing competency framework (or MCF for short) and an understanding of the skills you need is a great start. Now you need to understand if these skills are already within your marketing organisation or if there are gaps to be filled – either by new hires or training.

How? A good starting point is to ask your team to complete a self-reflection against your framework. When you review this across your team – and including your own self-reflection too – you will quickly be able to spot where the strengths and weaknesses are and where there is room for growth.

At Oystercatchers, we can’t help with the hiring – although we are very often in contact with great marketers who are looking for a new home – but we truly love helping our clients identify and close those pesky skills gaps.

This is where Step 3 comes in.

3. Map Your Learner Journeys

With a clear understanding of the gaps to fill, it’s time to plan your learner journeys, or a learning and development road map aligned to your MCF.

Start by prioritising the needs and then consider the type of training formats that will get the best response from your team. There are lots of options, ranging from free online courses to public workshops, custom training sessions, and all the way up to fully bespoke marketing academy programmes.

It’s important to define the right journeys that align with your skills gaps and the culture within your organisation i.e. how do people like to learn and what formats best enable them to apply those learning to the day job?

There is no right or wrong approach and there’s likely to be a different solution to every marketing skills challenge. But it’s critical to act, especially when you think about those performance or innovation gains you are set to make.

So, there you have it, a clear set of starting steps to get you on the journey of developing your team like their careers depend on it. It’s not rocket science, but it pays to get some help and an external viewpoint on what’s the best way to tackle those skills gaps.

The Oystercatchers team is packed with experts in training and developing marketing teams. Why not get in touch and we’ll help you to explore how to develop your team and achieve those all-important marketing performance gains.