If a business can’t be found on the web nowadays, it’s almost as if it doesn’t exist. Whether it’s finance, tech, nonprofit, food or drink, or entertainment, all organizations need an active and visible online presence. In this day and age, it’s the best way for a brand to reach new and existing customers and communicate the benefits of its products or services.
To accomplish that goal, though, these organizations need the help of an array of talented and knowledgeable professionals to build their digital assets, manage their online communities, and analyze the results of their efforts. From creative talent to data wizards, digital marketing professionals come in all shapes and sizes, with room for people with widely varied personalities and skillsets.
Sound interesting? Read on to find out what you can expect from a career in digital marketing.
What is Digital Marketing?
Let’s start by explaining what digital marketing actually is. At its most basic level, digital marketing is the practice of communicating a product or service with customers online through digital channels. This could involve social media marketing, email campaigns, paid and organic search engine marketing, or many other techniques and channels.
Digital marketing can be used to reach a variety of goals, such as increasing brand awareness or driving sales. It’s a varied industry, and you could specialize in a number of different areas, like search engine optimization (SEO), social media, or content development after digital marketing training.
Work In-house, in an Agency, or Freelance after Digital Marketing Training
A career in digital marketing can be whatever you want it to be. All businesses use – or could benefit from – digital marketing strategies. This means that you should be able to find work in an industry that suits you, your interests, and your career aspirations.
Digital marketers can choose to work in-house for a business in another field, in an agency that provides digital marketing services to other organizations, or independently as a freelancer. Each of these career paths offers different work cultures, hours, and pay.
Careers to Suit a Range of Skillsets
Do you have an analytical mind? A way with words? Maybe you’re good at managing budgets, or love to get to grips with new and exciting technology and media?
Whatever your strengths, there’s a digital marketing career to fit them. Because the industry combines a range of creative, analytical, and technological functions, there is a need for professionals to fill a variety of diverse roles, including:
- Digital marketing strategists
- Social media marketers
- Content marketing specialists
- Digital ad managers
- SEO strategists
- Analytics experts
- Designers
- And more!
You can choose to specialize in a particular area, or package yourself as a more versatile, well-rounded digital marketing professional to access an even wider range of opportunities. Whatever path you choose, you’ll never be short on choices.
An Evolving and Fast-Changing Industry
Digital marketing is an exciting industry to be involved in because it is constantly evolving. In a digital marketing career, you need to be aware of how your customers use the internet and adapt your strategy accordingly.
For example, you might need to consider the social media habits of your audience as you put together a digital marketing strategy for an organization. Do they spend all of their time on Facebook or Instagram? Do they follow influencers? Maybe they don’t use social media that much at all? You need to identify and know your customer to succeed in digital marketing.
Measuring Success
Finally, you need to be able to measure and demonstrate your success. In digital marketing, you can’t always use the same approach and expect results. You need to be conscious that as people and their internet habits change, so too will your methods.
With that in mind, digital marketers need to be creative and prepared to try different approaches. Perhaps even more crucially, they need to be able to define what success looks like, and set benchmarks to measure that success.
At the start of any digital marketing campaign or strategy, you will need to set objectives and carefully thought out targets. For example, you might start a campaign with the hopes of increasing traffic to an organization’s website by 30% within one month.
You can then show how effective your campaign or strategy was to your client or senior management, and use this to improve your future digital marketing efforts and further your career.
