Digital commerce is an established—to many, an indispensable—fact of life. Digital and mobile technologies have forever altered the consumer purchasing pathway. Digital marketing is taking ever bigger chucks of marketing budgets—30 percent or more at many big consumer goods companies. Spending on digital advertising will surpass TV in the U.S. in the next year or two.

But ask companies about the state of their digital marketing skills, and they will tell you that they don’t have the talent they need. The shortage of skilled people is particularly acute in the capabilities related to executing digital campaigns—display media or testing and measurement, for example—and the channels that are seeing the fastest growth in consumer use, such as mobile and video. Ask companies about their training priorities and, most are focused on the digital past—beefing up skills in websites and search, from which consumers moved on (digital) ages ago.

Our research report, The Talent Revolution in Digital Marketing, ranked the digital skills of 57 big companies’ marketing organizations on a 100-point index (with 100 equaling best practice), and found a big dichotomy between skills related to leadership, strategy, and planning and those necessary for effective execution. Take one example: marketers give credit to senior leaders for emphasizing the importance of adapting marketing to a digital world (a score of 74 out of 100), but mobile advertising skills garner a score of only 37. In school, that’s a failing grade.

Consider a few others:

• Only 13 percent of respondents said their companies are good at using video to keep consumers engaged with a brand.
• Only 9 percent of respondents said their companies use location data in mobile campaigns.
• Advertisers have a serious shortfall of talent in the fastest growing and most important area of display advertising: programmatic advertising using real-time bidding (a score of 41 out of 100).
• In an increasingly data-driven function, very few advertisers (7 percent of respondents) use online channels as a testing ground for offline channels.
• Only 30 percent of respondents said they work effectively with their agency partners.

The current talent gap could easily lead to a vicious circle, especially for those companies that are slow to address their shortcomings. Marketers that cannot attract, develop, and retain staff with advanced digital skills risk falling behind, since talent in today’s increasingly transparent marketplace is quick to recognize companies that do not measure up.

The reverse is also true: talent attracts talent. Companies that commit themselves to transforming their marketing operations into agile outfits, with learning and development playing a front-and-center role, have the opportunity to market themselves as go-to destinations for digital talent.

It’s not enough to address individual skills. Marketing organizations need people who appreciate the strengths and shortcomings of each channel and can marry this knowledge with a comprehensive understanding of the consumer journey, supported by technology, to make use of the ever-increasing amounts of data available.

The goal for forward-looking companies should be not only to “follow the consumer” but to get ahead. Given where many companies stand today, this is a tall order and will likely require a broad corporate commitment to a multiyear journey. But those companies that transform their capabilities first may be hard for others to catch up with.