Last updated - April 13, 2023
We live in a digital age, and marketing budgets are steadily shifting away from conventional marketing channels toward digital marketing. Businesses are expanding their online presence, and as a consequence, there is a rising demand for digital marketing positions globally, which means that a career in digital marketing, either as a freelancer or working for a company, can be both long-term and lucrative.
In this article, experts from job aggregator Jooble take a closer look at what digital marketing is, how to start a career as a digital marketer, and tips on how to go about getting a job in this dynamic field.
What Exactly is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is a marketing role that oversees online marketing strategies and campaigns, as well as digital advertising initiatives. Digital marketers advertise brands, individuals, products, services, and businesses on the internet. They employ a variety of digital marketing strategies to achieve this. Some of these include content creation, clickable advertisements, blog posts, websites, social media management, email campaigns, and more.
What is the Role of a Digital Marketer?
Digital marketers produce, oversee, and assess web content with a view to marketing. Their work often concentrates on these main areas:
- Creating online marketing strategies
- Using SEO to rank websites in search engines
- Managing social media
- Mounting email campaigns
- Creating marketing copy
- Developing influencer relationships
- Studying analytics reports
- Keeping abreast of ever-changing online trends
Can You get a Job as a Digital Marketer Without a College Degree?
When hiring digital marketers, formal education isn’t necessarily the main concern for hiring managers. Since the industry is developing and changing so rapidly, many companies favor applicants with practical experience over theoretical qualifications.
Skills Required by Digital Marketers
When starting out, developing your skills should be your top priority. Some of these soft skills include:
Writing Skills
Writing blog posts, emails, and other forms of content is a significant component of digital marketing. Successful campaigns are created by digital marketers with strong writing abilities.
Communication
Strong communication skills are essential in order to effectively deal with clients as well as formulate marketing campaigns.
Analysis
To determine which digital marketing strategies are most effective for their clients, digital marketers need to be familiar with statistics and analytics.
Algorithms
Digital marketers must stay up to date with the ongoing changes in internet algorithm systems, which can have a huge impact on their marketing strategies.
Website and Blog Development
Understanding how to create and design websites and blogs is crucial to becoming a successful digital marketer.
9 Essential Steps to Becoming a Successful Digital Marketer
Here are 9 steps to help you build a career as a digital marketer:
Learning the Basics of Digital Marketing
When starting out, understanding that digital marketing is made up of a variety of elements that encompass the facets of online marketing is the first step. Digital marketing campaigns are made up of a number of these components (channels), which include:
- SEO (search engine optimization)
- Paid advertising
- Online Marketing
- Content creation and marketing
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing (Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
- Mobile marketing (Google Play, Apple Store apps)
- Video marketing (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
- Affiliate marketing (promoting products and getting commissions)
A competent digital marketer should be familiar with, and able to work with, all of the aforementioned channels.
Creating Your Own Website
Creating your own website is one of the best ways to begin learning the fundamentals of digital marketing as well as various marketing principles in practical situations. Start a blog or website and attempt to improve your rankings, choose a product to market through advertising, and try to increase your revenue. Having your own website will not only assist you in learning new marketing methods, but you can also use it as part of your portfolio to persuade prospective clients or employers to hire you.
Learning SEO
You can’t become a digital marketer if you’re not proficient at SEO (search engine optimization). Knowing SEO will enable you to create websites that rank high in search engines. You can later use the same concepts when mounting marketing campaigns for clients. It is essential to learn to master your SEO skills before anything else.
Obtaining a Google Ads Certification
Google Ads will be used as part of your responsibilities as a digital marketing consultant to advertise goods and services online, and getting a Google Ads certification is the best way to learn these necessary skills. This will show potential employers or clients that you have the appropriate expertise for the job.
Learning How to Use Facebook Ads
As a digital marketer, you must understand how the various social media platforms operate (Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.). However, the major portion of your efforts and budgets for campaigns will be allocated to Facebook and Instagram ads. In order to make use of Facebook as a marketing tool, you will need to learn how to use its advertising platform.
Becoming a Google Analytics Expert
Analytics is one of the primary elements of every digital marketing campaign. Learning how to analyze the statistics of a campaign is essential in order to gauge its effectiveness and make decisions based on actual data. This tells you the number of people who viewed your campaigns, how many of that number clicked on your ads, how many sales conversions the ads generated and various other metrics that cover every facet of a campaign.
Applying for a Job as a Digital Marketer
Before applying for a job as a digital marketer, you will need to be familiar with analytic reports, managing budgets, managing client accounts, and developing customer communication skills.
Entering an Internship Program
Enrolling in an internship program with an established online marketing agency will be beneficial to your future as a digital marketing professional. Without prior working experience, it will be more difficult to start out because you’ll have to figure out everything on your own from scratch.
Keeping up with New Developments
The fast-paced world of digital marketing is ever-changing. Each year, Google makes hundreds of adjustments to rankings, organic traffic, and sponsored searches, and the Facebook algorithm is also changing continually. This means that keeping up with the latest developments will be an ongoing part of your working life.
2 Tips to Help you get a Job in Digital Marketing
Follow these steps to help you get a digital marketing job:
Develop your Online Presence
Before contacting digital marketing companies, first establish a strong online presence to verify your credibility as a digital marketer.
Track Record
Before applying for a job, you should already have some proven success with marketing your own websites/blogs/products, completed an internship program, or have completed successful marketing campaigns for clients as a freelancer. Past successes will demonstrate the value you can bring to future digital marketing campaigns and go a long way toward landing a job at an established digital marketing company.
How Much do Digital Marketers Earn?
A full-time digital marketer makes, on average, $58,000 annually, depending on the employer and the size of the company. In some circumstances, digital marketers have the potential to make significantly more money, either as a freelancer or working for a company.
