The Digital Skills Gap: Why Mid-Career Marketers Are Struggling in 2025

Interviewing some marketers with 4 to 10 years in seat this quarter, and foundational digital skills are often lacking. ⏬️

Usual profiles are brand marketers, content writers, social media managers. Even managing roles in head and lead positions missing practical digital know-how and lacking at least 9 of 10 “good to have” ticks I keep an eye out for:

1. Firsthand experience launching a product from the ground up

2. ICP assessment process (outside of “we think that”)

3. Traditional martech stack (HubSpot, Clay, RB2B, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, email enrichment, dozens of these)

4 Anything AI beyond “I ask ChatGPT for Facebook posts”, including AI SEO

5 Individual experience running a campaign start to end (even ChatGPT with Canva for actual insights)

6. Actual experience running a personal site with everything it entails (some applicants had a blog, but didn’t even look into GA for insights)

7. GA/GTM understand – data readouts were generally non-existent across all calls so far

8. ROI-driven full funnel campaigns

9. ABM principles

10. General B2B/global insights

⚠️ And “brand” marketers often lacked close familiarity into what brand development means, or worked in a support function in larger teams for local products with a 100-year-long history (local market movers where no brand development is conducted).

I also spoke to a marketing intern last night, a graduate with over a year in seat in a bank, lacking any real world access to actual marketing.

The gap is broad not just in school, but also in business.

📗 Even my own book “MBA Disrupted” contains at least 200 pages of foundational marketing knowledge and it’s not advertised as a marketing textbook.

My quick tips for marketers who missed the last 15 years of digital innovation:

1. Get a pet project of yours immediately – blog, site, microSaaS. You can even build a simple product with Lovable and test a PMF campaign before the end of the day

2. Build a read/watch/listen list with actual practitioners. Foundational marketing books, Seth Godin’s blog, Neil Patel and Eric Siu’s Marketing School podcast, the latest in AI with Greg Isenberg, and millions of clips in virtually any topic. Follow some indie developers who run the entire product and GTM themselves at virtually no cost

3. Look into a career path that’s aligned with real market needs. If leaflets and brochures for a local construction firm are not what you see yourself doing in a decade, there’s a long way to get to digital 101.