Wow, what a year it’s been in marketing! 2015 was every bit as interesting (and challenging) as we thought it would be. New tools and strategies emerged, and older ones evolved. As some of the best marketing executive recruiters, a quick look at our most popular posts can help give a snapshot of 2015’s hottest marketing career and industry trends, and help prepare you for the future. Here’s the news, articles, and advice that got the most views and started the most conversations this year:
9 Eye-Catching Certifications that Boost Your Marketing Resume
As marketing continues to evolve at an increasingly rapid rate, professionals are often left at a loss as to how to keep up with the perpetual education and training demands. A stagnant skillset will have you left in the dust of the rest of the industry. But most traditional colleges and universities simply don’t offer the skills and knowledge required to be a modern marketer, especially in a cutting edge executive or digital staffing capacity.
A certification is not a replacement for true experience and is not a free ticket for a better job or higher salary. But it can definitely set you apart from others who don’t have one and show potential employers that you’re dedicated to continuously learning and improving yourself.
One potential resource to add new skills and understanding is a marketing certificate. As marketing recruiters ourselves, we see a wide variety of certifications and accreditations across all all marketing disciplines,  from marketing analytics to product management. Over time we’ve encountered a few that we’ve found to be particularly valuable and prestigious, and we were happy to list them out for marketers looking to grow their careers.
This was our single most popular post of 2015 for our marketing talent and career growth audience, which didn’t surprise us. Professional certification is one of the most common subjects marketing professionals ask us about when it comes to way to sharpen up their resume or improve their career opportunities.
Top Marketing Jobs and Talent Trends in 2015
It was a lot of fun looking back at this prediction we published early in the year and comparing it to how the marketing profession actually played out.
This post, which featured our own thoughts as well as some input from other marketing industry thought leaders, ended up being fairly accurate with some minor deviation over the last twelve months. One field in particular–marketing analytics–really exploded in demand and job opportunities.
Brands are setting the stage to make new investments and executives are already setting a more vigorous tone for 2015, with ambitious goals emerging from their planning process.
Annual industry forecasts and predictions are always popular and engaging. Did your expectations for 2015 become realized? We’ll probably publish plenty of similar content in the coming weeks about 2016; keep your eyes peeled!
4 Reasons for Marketers to Upgrade from the 4 Ps
The 4 P’s–Product, Price, Place and Promotion–have been a cornerstone of fundamental marketing theory and education for nearly 50 years. And for good reason, they offer a broad and comprehensive perspective to consider for almost any marketing strategy. These are four factors that brands have control over that can drastically affect the effectiveness of their marketing.
like many other things over the last five decades, times and thinking change. Marketers must be able to keep up with those changes or get left behind in a quickly evolving world
That’s why, when we identified a need for a fresh outlook, we didn’t suggest throwing out the four P’s altogether. Instead, we think a modest update to the “4 C’s” is enough to keep what made the original idea so powerful while making it more relevant for a new era.
The success of this post was somewhat of a surprise. We liked the idea, but weren’t sure it would catch on. But it ended up garnering a lot of interest and spurring some fascinating discussion.
15 Things Marketers Need to Stop Putting on Their Resumes
.The real estate on your resume is precious, yet marketers often fill it up with useless or even detrimental information.
Our talented marketing recruiters were all too eager to share some of the most common resume no-no’s, and we borrowed a few from other industry experts. Take a look; your resume very well could have some of these faux pas, too. As the year winds up, now’s a perfect time to purge it of all that excess content and stock it full of valuable data.
How to Take Advantage of the Differences Between Your Marketing Resume and LinkedIn Profile
When a marketer at any level can’t differentiate and efficiently leverage LinkedIn to market themselves, it tells the best marketing executive recruiters and prospective employers that this individual doesn’t understand a major digital channel and can’t take advantage of free, easy resources to market themselves. That doesn’t look good.
As marketing job opportunities blossomed this year, marketing professionals started becoming keenly aware of one of their most valuable networking and career assets; their LinkedIn profile.
People who are new to LinkedIn, or who rarely use it, often misunderstand its value and purpose, treating it simply as a digital resume. In reality a LinkedIn account is entirely distinct and should be treated as such. This revelation seems to have surprised a lot of marketing professionals, drawing them to our post and (hopefully) motivating them to act.
Do you remember a favorite post of yours from the past year? We’d love to hear feedback on what topics our readers love most as we prepare our publishing strategy for the coming year!
Nice Top Five List, Thanks for sharing and keep it social.
Thanks Doug, glad you enjoyed it! 2015 was a really exciting year. We’ll definitely keep sharing this around the social-sphere for some time. Happy New Year!