If you’re looking to get a new job as a digital marketer this year or looking to become a digital marketing expert, make a career change, leave a desk job to travel as a remote digital worker, or improve your skills at your current digital marketing job
Here are the essential digital marketing skills, you should learn to start your career as a digital marketer that will help you advance in your digital career and ultimately start your own digital marketing agency.
1- video Marketing:
Video continues to take the internet by storm and this isn’t about to stop. Customers love videos, particularly on social media, and 8 out of 10 people have purchased after watching a brand’s video. For marketers, 93% who use video say it’s an important part of their strategy and 87% report it gives them a positive Return on Investment (ROI) according to The State of Video Marketing research.
2-Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Search Engine Marketing (SEM):
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is key to all levels of digital marketing and anyone going into the field must have a basic handle on it. You can certainly leave the highly technical, back-end stuff to the more technical people on the team, but knowing how SEO really works and a solid understanding of best practices and content optimization are crucial for running a successful digital marketing campaign.
3- Content Marketing:
Content is at the core of digital marketing and content marketing will continue to be a crucial part of the game no matter what happens. But content marketing is a huge job in itself. You have to be able to create high quality, SEO-friendly content for many channels and understand how to create an effective content strategy to engage and convert audiences.
4- Data / Analytics:
Data Analytics refers to the utilization of functional procedures and modern softwares to gather and process a wide range of information from different online interactions of your target market. These online interactions could be in the form of content consumed, online transactions, search queries and other relevant footprints relevant to your business.
5- Understand Design Thinking & Planning:
Visual content today gives you more exposure than written content. Videos are taking over the internet because they are now known to have a higher conversion rate, engagement and higher SEO rankings.
6- Be Tech Savvy:
Because the industry is technology-driven, you need a decent grip on technology as well as be able to learn it quickly. If you’re millennial-age or younger, this is probably going to be second-nature as a digital native, but older generations may want to take some time to learn not only specific technologies, but also get familiar with commonly used software and tools such as audience listening or SEM.
7- Be Persuasive:
A great digital marketing leader will not only possess great people skills, they’ll also be able to combine analytical thinking with creative problem solving. This will help their teams come up with innovative marketing campaign ideas to drive businesses forward.
8- Highlight Your Unusual Skills:
As far as soft skills go, great digital marketers should be curious, enjoy versatility, forward-thinking, business-focused and strategy-centered. But there is plenty of room in this field for all kinds of personalities and skill sets. So, you should leverage your unique personality to stay competitive in the industry.
Digital marketing strategies work for B2B (business to business) as well as B2C (business to consumer) companies, but best practices differ significantly between the two types.
Here's a closer look at how digital marketing is used in B2B and B2C marketing strategies:
For many small businesses and beginner digital marketers, getting started with digital marketing can be difficult. However, you can create an effective digital marketing strategy to increase brand awareness, engagement, and sales by using the following steps as your starting point:
Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely (SMART) goals is crucial for any marketing strategy. While there are many goals you may want to achieve, try to focus on the ones that will propel your strategy forward instead of causing it to remain stagnant.
Before starting any marketing campaign, it’s best to identify your target audience. Your target audience is the group of people you want your campaign to reach based on similar attributes, such as age, gender, demographic, or purchasing behavior. Having a good understanding of your target audience can help you determine which digital marketing channels to use and the information to include in your campaigns.
A budget ensures you’re spending your money effectively towards your goals instead of overspending on digital marketing channels that may not provide the desired results. Consider your SMART goals and the digital channel you’re planning to use to create a budget.
From content marketing to PPC campaigns and more, there are many digital marketing channels you can use to your advantage. Which digital marketing channels you use often depends on your goals, audience, and budget.
Make sure to analyze your campaign's data to identify what was done well and areas for improvement once the campaign is over. This allows you to create even better campaigns in the future. With the help of digital technologies and software, you can obtain this data in an easy-to-view dashboard.
A solid strategy starts by analyzing and examining. This gives you a clear idea of your starting point and how you stack up against your competitors and a deeper understanding of your customers. So Analyze your performance and Evaluate your competitors.
Build a clear strategy based on what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it. The GSOT strategy framework stands for goals, strategies, objectives and tactics and will help you align your plan.
Based on your marketing objectives and your target audience, map out a content plan. This should identify the main topics or buckets of content to include in your execution.
Too often, businesses start executing but struggle to answer the question of whether they are really getting results. Each activity that you invest in should have a clear KPI, which is your measure of success. Next, set benchmarks. Your benchmark is what you want to achieve. For example, with email marketing, my KPI could be my email open rate, and my benchmark could be reaching 25% or better.
If you miss executional steps you may find that you aren’t getting the results you expect. Take some time to make sure that you are using best practices. Digital marketing changes frequently, and something that worked on last year may require tweaking to work now. Keep in mind that it is better to do a few things well than many things poorly.
One of the things that makes digital marketing so powerful is the ability to pivot and adjust. You don’t have to create a set plan and stick to it. For example, if an ad isn’t delivering results, pause it and try new creative. If your website isn’t converting visitors, run an A/B comparison test with different calls to action. For example, you can test a "learn more" call to action against "sign up now" to see what performs best.