Top brands and government developing new digital marketing apprenticeship

The government is in talks with top brands including IBM, Google and Procter & Gamble to develop a new digital marketing apprenticeship, planned for launch by next January.

A draft training scheme is due to be submitted to the Business, Innovation and Skills department (BIS) in June. When approved, the companies will agree on the course content, providing a government-backed template for all digital marketing apprenticeships in England and Wales.

E-skills director Martin Harvey says: “We’ve sat all the employers round a table and said: ‘What skills would you like a qualified apprentice to have?’ They have carefully defined what those should be.”

“We need young people who have good core marketing skills – anything from copywriting to branding and problem solving – but at the other end of the spectrum they need to understand the relationships with SEO and pay-per-click – all of the tools that are available to the digital marketer.”