There’s a big problem in mobile marketing, but it’s not one you hear very often – you really need to get in and talk to the people doing the hiring. And that problem is what you might call a “skill shortage”. Mobile marketing is a relatively extremely young discipline, it is growing with incredible speed. That means that there are a lot of people hiring out there, but there is a definite lack of people with the relevant experience to fill those positions. But now the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has decided to tackle that problem.
What’s the news?
SmartBrief is a newsletter company. Every single day it compiles what it regards as the most important news of the day, and sends it out it in a morning newsletter. But it compiles a lot of different newsletters – you can subscribe for newsletters specifically for Entreprenuers, or Social Media, or Leadership, or CFOs… it goes on. Their motto is “We read everything. You get what matters.” But SmartBrief also runs a huge job board… and this is what the MMA is interested in.
The MMA is the foremost trade association for mobile marketing – it has more than 700 member countries all over the world, and is extremely active in creating standards for the industry and growing mobile advertising an essential part of any marketing campaign. What it has now announced is the MMA SmartBrief Job Board. The idea is to create a tool that recruiters and those looking for mobile marketing talent can use to fill positions. You don’t have to be an MMA member to get on the board – companies that wish to post a job buy a “posting package”, which gives them a limited number of postings that will appear on the MMA website job page, the SmartBrief Website job page and the daily SmartBrief email newsletter.
Greg Stuart, Global CEO, MMA says “we believe it is essential to provide this critical job listings service not only to MMA members but to the broader mobile marketing industry as well. We are confident that this will become an integral resource for talent acquisition and development across the ecosystem.”
What we think?
At the moment, the majority of people in the mobile marketing industry have moved sideways from other industries. In a magazine, you might have someone who studied print marketing in college, got an internship and has worked their way up through the ranks. The same career path, with a single, focussed expertise, is highly unlikely in mobile at the moment. But it’s getting there – if slowly. The MMA is big enough that it had to split its global operations into four autonomous Regional sections – the MMA SmartBrief is only running in its Northern American section. Later this year we should see the same service rolling out in the APAC, EMEA and LATAM regions.
