nesma sounds the alarm on region's marketing talent gap.
By Paul Sutherland, Commercial Director, nesma.
nesma, a long-standing North East marketing community champion, is sounding the alarm: the region’s marketing talent gap is undermining growth, costing jobs, and damaging the region’s voice in the national conversation.
Launched initially as a regional training provider, nesma now delivers specialist marketing and communications training to organisations across the UK and internationally, with clients including BBC, Virgin Money, and HMRC. Despite this success, its leadership warns that the North East’s capacity is damaging economic performance.
“Marketing is how economies grow. It’s how businesses reach and sell, shape identities, and secure futures,” says Paul Sutherland, Commercial Director. “We have brilliant marketers here, but not enough, at least not relative to other regions – and certainly not enough to match the scale of our economic ambition.”
Evidence supports this concern. Companies with professionally qualified marketers perform measurably better than those without, driving sales, investment, and business confidence. Yet, in the North East, the pool of skilled marketing professionals and managers is too small to meet demand.
In the six months to April 2025, there were 77 permanent marketing job listings in the North East – a jump from just 24 in the same period in 2024. However, there aren’t enough skilled professionals to fill these positions.
Meanwhile, only around 30% of graduates from North East universities remain in the region, and those with marketing degrees are particularly likely to relocate to cities such as Manchester, Leeds, and London in search of better opportunities.
Pay gaps further exacerbate retention challenges: the average marketing salary in the North East is £32,500, which is well below the salaries in Manchester (£48,750) and London (£70,000). Moreover, according to CIM figures, fewer marketers in the region are pursuing accredited qualifications compared to those in other parts of the UK.
“In a region where over 90% of businesses are SMEs, this isn’t just a talent issue – it’s existential,” says Sutherland. “If we don’t have the right marketing professionals, our businesses can’t grow. Our investment pitches fall flat. Our start-ups don’t scale. Even our world-class universities and tourist destinations struggle to attract attention.”
According to the North East Evidence Hub, marketing vacancies are among the “hardest to fill” in the region. Skill shortages account for over a third of hiring difficulties, especially in core marketing areas like digital PR, SEO, and data-driven campaign management.
While digital marketing training expands, much of it focuses on entry-level or trend-driven topics, which are insufficiently aligned with accredited career pathways.
“Vocational marketing training in the region is often misperceived or undervalued,” adds Sutherland. Programmes often focus on a current trending topic but fail to meet the need to develop more expert practitioners and managers-a real North East industry need.”
nesma is urging policymakers, including the new North East Mayoral Combined Authority, to work with the sector to ‘flip the script’.
That means:
Placing effort into post-FE/HE skills in the sector to help retain talent, investing in innovative approaches and collaborations to embed accredited marketing career pathways and specialist marketing management training into organisational skills plans and the regional economy.
Getting involved in developing flexible vocational training solutions that embed recognised qualifications (such as CIM, CIPR, PRCA, DMI, MRS) creating new flexible learning pathways.
Recognising there are no silver bullets, funding more graduate placements, marketing learning hubs, and skills networks across the region’s marketing and communications communities.
Rebuilding the regional ‘marketing skills’ brand to celebrate our marketing talent as a strategic economic asset.
We’ve been proud to collaborate with public and private partners to expand our training portfolio. But this is an urgent moment. If we don’t act now, the North East will fall further behind our regional counterparts where demand is rising,” says Sutherland. “We’re ready to help lead the charge, having developed national partnerships in the space, but the region needs to recognise and support accredited vocational marketing training as the growth engine it is.
Now is the time for businesses, educators, and policymakers to come together and invest in the North East’s marketing future – before the opportunity passes us by.
If you want to discuss this further, contact Paul Sutherland, Commercial Director, at 07738 284 310 or Paul.Sutherland@nesma.co.uk
