How the landscape of marketing opportunities has rebounded

The past few months have shown a strong rebound for opportunities in Australia across many different industries, but one of the most significant shifts in demand is in the marketing space.

The landscape this time last year was fairly bleak, with many marketing departments across the world facing strict cuts and redundancies to shave down operating costs.

Results from Marketing Week’s career survey showed 10% of respondents were made redundant, 12% were put on furlough (the UK’s equivalent to JobKeeper), 11% had planned promotions blocked and a fifth had their hours cut.

The Australian market took a similar blow with many candidates approaching us off the back of redundancies. Opportunities in marketing and communications plummeted by 60.9%, with roles in the advertising and arts space similarly dropping by 60.5%.

What a difference a year can make

Marketing, communications and advertising now has some of the highest demand for candidates in Australia. The number of jobs has rebounded dramatically as 37% of employers plan to increase their headcount in the next 12 months.

In April this year, SEEK recorded their highest ever number of marketing and communications jobs for the second month running, with advertising also featuring with a significant upturn in the number of advertised vacancies on the platform.

Linkedin also recorded similar statistics with a 63% growth in marketing job ads since the beginning of 2021. 72% of those in a marketing role also said that they felt the importance of marketing in their organization had increased during the past 12 months.

At Stopgap, we’ve seen a spike in demand for marketers across almost all of the industries we work across. Since March, we’ve had more opportunities than we did in the whole of 2020. We’ve also seen a rise in demand for all levels of seniorities, particularly less senior marketing candidates like marketing coordinators, and as specialist areas such as paid ads and social media experts (see below).

What’s causing this demand?

This recent growth in marketing roles isn’t a massive surprise considering the number of people that were made redundant last year alone. Against expert opinion, marketing departments are usually one of the first costs to be cut during a recession, or in our case, a pandemic. It’s also one of the first to be bolstered in times of prosperity as businesses aim to capitalise on busy periods by targeting new segments, promoting their brand and experimenting with new technology.

Successful marketing is essential for growth and recovery as businesses return to some form of normality. For those that came out the end of the pandemic in better shape than they anticipated, investing in additional marketing efforts is a logical step to achieve this.

Also, the Australian borders have now been shut for 18 months and as a result, the numbers of marketers flying in from the UK, USA, Canada and South America are now at an all time low. As the remaining working holiday visa holders approach the end of their visas with no opportunity to stay in Australia, more of the marketing workforce currently on temporary contracts will slowly drain, sparking further demand.

What areas are in demand?

We’ve seen significant demand for marketers with skills and experience across a number of disciplines but there have been a notable rise in some areas in particular.

Social media is one of them. Further lockdowns have extended the amount of time people spend on social media, and with consumers wanting more of an experience-based connection, it’s important that teams have marketers with strong social media talent. They are looking for candidates that can maximise their brands reach and make sure their messaging is reaching these consumers.

Paid search is another popular area as businesses aim to drive more traffic to their websites and capitalise on the fact people are spending the highest amount of time online in history. With skills in paid search, marketers can benefit from these searches and win business by optimising campaign performance - an attractive prospect for those businesses in saturated industries.

We’ve also seen the number of junior marketing roles increase, and this could be linked to the restructuring of marketing teams that happened for many businesses at the start of the pandemic. Those who have the digital marketing capabilities to roll their sleeves up and get the job done are in high demand for most businesses at the moment. With visa holders traditionally occupying some of these roles on a temporary basis, the business appetite for these candidates should only increase.

Finally there is also a huge demand for advertising talent in growth areas we predicted earlier on in the year, with agencies look to bring people on to manage a growing number of accounts.

If you’re thinking about moving into a new role, now is a fantastic time to weigh up your options - there has never been so many opportunities out there for great marketers. We’d love to speak with anyone considering making a switch for a number of roles we’re working on, particularly if you have any of the above skills we’ve mentioned in this blog.