I keep seeing articles highlighting the talent gap in marketing ops and with specific marketing automation tools. These tools are mostly walled gardens, where you really only get access to them if you’re a paying customer. Now with more companies demanding qualified talent, it’s a bit of a catch-22 for those looking to break into a marketing ops career.
Marketo made a few public shows of effort to start university outreach programs and partnerships with marketing departments. But they never seemed to go anywhere with the idea. It always felt like a PR puff piece, but not a substantial effort to teach hireable skills to the next wave of marketers.
It’s even more frustrating when you talk to universities, most who completely lack the resources and faculty expertise to keep up with pace of change in this space.
There’s tremendous opportunity to create an educational sector of marketing technology. Perhaps it’s led by the vendors themselves, or through a separate party. And I think it could succeed in both private bootcamp-style courses or as part of university marketing curriculum. Martech is on its way to becoming a mainstream profession, but with that journey comes a responsibility to educate the next generation.