The Need for Lifelong Learning, especially in mobile
Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the changes going on around you?
Do you feel like you are underprepared, untrained and under-resourced to meet the challenges of digital changes around you?
It is not just the volume and speed of those changes, but the fact that everyone around you seems to be on top of the latest marketing technology solution or approach. Just when you feel you have gotten to grips with social media, programmatic comes along. You start to understand that and the marketing press is screaming Virtual Reality is here.
But don’t worry, you are not alone. According to Adobe, 9 out of 10 US marketers feel unprepared for digital change and fewer still have any formal training.
You need to take action though because the pace of change will not slow down. You need to make a life long commitment to learning.
“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think”.
Albert Einstein
You need to commit to learning how to think differently about the change around you. This commitment to learning is not an option but an imperative.
Learn from everyone
A fortune 500 senior executive friend of mine, a digital immigrant like me, does something really smart that I love. Every week he has a more junior member of his team come and tell him about something new that he should understand. His constant mantra is ‘teach me something’. His appetite for learning is voracious and he is a great example to follow.
Where do you start?
Well, think about all the new business models you have seen, all the technologies, all the solutions that are taking the world by storm. What do they all have in common? They all have mobile at their heart.
Make a commitment to understanding how mobile is changing consumers, how it affects their decision making and creates an individual path to purchase. Consider how it creates new opportunities to connect brands and consumers together.
Mobile and mobility will be center stage of marketing for years to come. Keep up the learning.
Michael Becker is an intentionally recognized identity & personal information management solutions strategic advisor, speaker, entrepreneur, and academic. He advises companies on personal information economy business strategy, product development, business development, and sales & marketing strategies. He also represents them at leading trade groups, including the Mobile Ecosystem Forum. Michael is an advisor to Assurant, Predii, Privowny, and Phoji. He is the co-author of Mobile Marketing for Dummies and a number of other books and articles related to mobile marketing, identity, and personal information management. He is on the faculty of marketing of the Association of National Advertisers and National University. A serial entrepreneur, Michael founded Identity Praxis, co-founded mCordis and The Connected Marketer Institute, was a founding member of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), and was on the MMA board of directors for ten years and was MMA’s North American Managing Director for three years. In 2004, Michael co-founded iLoop Mobile, a leading messaging solutions provider. In 2014, Michael was awarded the 2014 Marketing EDGE Edward Mayer Education Leadership Award for his commitment to marketing education.