Digital Marketing is on the Rise, but Can Anyone Pull off Being a Digital Marketer?
Zeynep Burcu Yenipinar
Female Founder | Advisor & Growth Professional | Digital Marketing Enthusiast | Sustainability and Clean Energy Supporter | Passionate Startup Builder | Branding Expert | Athlete
The digital industry’s coverage is very wide and it can be pretty tough to navigate through if you’re not familiar with how to use digital marketing for different industries. There are so many branches of digital marketing you need to focus on to have a full grip on it. For example, you need to master search engine optimization and content marketing, while knowing how to interpret the data you obtain from data analytics tools.
Besides these ‘general skills', you need to be someone who’s agile and easily adapted to different decisions, situations, and updates of the digital world. The digital world is constantly evolving so you need to be open to learning and self-improvement at all times. Moreover, the digital marketing world has no hours because the ‘internet never sleeps’ so get ready to work anytime, anywhere (this is always the best part). It’s definitely not your boring typical 9 to 5, where you do the same things over and over. You learn something new every day from working with different people from different industries or niches and also from diverse teams and clients.
The great news is that since everything is becoming more digitized day by day digital marketers are in high demand globally because companies are trying to digitally transform all their processes eventually, so they will have those digital experts to lead the way. Businesses are interested in hiring digitally savvy consultants, experts, etc. to help them transform to keep up with the competition in the market. Our greatest advice to you would be to leverage your existing skills and add new ones according to what the most needed skills are today along with your soft skills to move forward.
Let’s talk about a few must-have skills to pull off being a digital marketer.
1. Data Analysis and Interpretation:
Digital marketing data analysis is not only web analytics and website visitor performance, but also the data created through customer experience across various platforms and communication channels.
As a digital marketer, make sure you know how to use Google Analytics, ads, Facebook ad manager, Meta, and other social media analytics tools. Also, you should know how to keep that data in excel if you’re working in a startup environment, where there is a limited budget to purchase those expensive “analytics tools’. You can always analyze campaign results and calculate the amount of ROI that they’re going to bring. A great digital marketer needs to own the storytelling skill, not only with words but also with the collected data.
2. Content Marketing in General and Channel Specified:
Content is KING and will always be in the future. Written content used to get all the credit, but for now, video content has taken its place with TikTok taking over that space. Content marketing is a huge responsibility to cover because you need to research, stay up-to-date with the latest trends, create high-quality content that answers people’s questions, and be SEO-friendly for different audiences and channels at the same time while creating an entire content marketing strategy.
Just like I mentioned above, video content has claimed the first spot, but it can be in any form such as newsletters, emails, website content, social media content, blogs, case studies, etc. As a content marketer, you should be able to have a grasp and understanding of each branch.
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3. Project Management and Organization Skills:
As a digital marketer, you need to be able to master multitasking, which means you need to be able to run multiple digital campaigns while creating content along with analyzing data. That’s when the omnichannel marketing strategy comes into play. It includes different technologies and various measurements that lead to a lot of parts coordinating and working together. Digital marketers can also be considered project managers that need to bring together and harmonize cross-functional teams to work together to complete the idea creation.
Marketers in general have the skill of being highly communicative so that’s why they’re the ones to communicate approvals and objections to create the perfect flow between teams. As managing these teams and projects get harder, digital marketers need to have experience with agility, using project management tools such as Trello, Asana, etc., and also with CMSs.
4. Social Media Savviness:
Social media is a great and very widely used channel to find potential leads and reach out to different audiences. Most companies use social media marketing as an effective way to boost traffic for their websites that is aimed to result in sales.
Social media marketing is not only posting content to social media platforms occasionally so digital marketers need to understand that they need to manage posts, paid social advertising, social chatbots, and how to build communities on social. As a successful digital marketer, make sure you understand where your audiences are at, create content accordingly, analyze and interpret results and calculate a reachable ROI.
There are of course other requirements that need to be met if you want to be the superstar digital marketer out there, but just know that the ultimate rule of thumb is to be a lifetime learner. Just make sure you gain new skills, stay up to date with trends and just make sure you read and network A LOT!
What about other skills that you can think of? Can you pull off being the ultimate digital marketer?
Cheers!