So you want to know how good is a career in Digital Marketing & How to Get Started? Buckle up!
UPDATED Feb 2020: A few links and resources added.
- Google’s 2019 Research Report (Helps understand trends for 2020)
- LinkedIn has published a post: The Skills Companies Need Most in 2019
Today we are living in a fast phase life, technology is getting smarter and the way we search, communicate, buy things are rapidly changing the behavior too are changing due to cheaper smartphones, internet, voice assistants like Google Assistant, Alexa, and other devices.
Here is recent research by Google:
Google’s 2019 Research Report
Google’s 2019 Research Report is all about Insights for 2020 – An in-depth Analysis
“This year consumer journeys became increasingly complex. New channels of media consumption emerged, traditional industries went digital, and standards in privacy and digital wellbeing were raised. This is a review of the insights we uncovered in 2019, based on Google and YouTube data and research. Our analysis uncovered five key themes that underpin the changes we saw this year, all of which are trends we expect to continue into 2020” Source: Think with Google
LinkedIn has published a post: The Skills Companies Need Most in 2019
In that list: (All these are part of Digital Marketing Course)
Number 3. Analytical Reasoning
Number 7. Video Production
Number 10. Audio Production
Number 14. Social Media Marketing
Number 18. Digital Marketing
Read the entire post here:
The Skills Companies Need Most in 2019 – And How to Learn Them
Summary: (All free Resources and links below)
1. Build your base/foundation – What is your career objective & goals?
2. Practicing what you learn
3. Build your personal brand
4. Opportunity within your team/organization
5. Additional skills to become a Digital Marketer
- Creativity
- Writing
- Content
- Logical reasonings
- Analytical skills
- Open-mindedness
- Learn basic coding
- Ongoing learning
FREE Resources for you to get started below
Before that, here is what you have to be prepared with:
Let’s understand the Concepts:
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital Marketing is a term defined to achieve your business objectives and goals using the online channels that include but are not limited to search engines, social media platforms, content creation & advertising in order to educate, engage & market your product or service to potential buyers.
Further readings: What Is Digital Marketing? (What Is Digital Marketing?)
Google search tips: (VIDEO)
Google Search Tips (Google Search Tips)
Blogs/books to follow – Bookmark these blogs
o Digital Marketing Books. Social Media Books to Read (Digital Marketing Books. Social Media Books to Read)
Basic Excel Skills: (VIDEO)
Now that you understand the basics. Here are a few steps to help you get started:
A Google trend shows the growth of key terms: Digital marketing. In the last 2 years, it has skyrocketed similarly the term social media has equally hiked.
Today Digital marketing requires a lot of skills than how it was a few years back. When I started my career in 2002, it was completely different.
1. Build your base/foundation:
Option a) To acquire any new professional skill set, you need 2 things Time and or Money. It’s an investment for yourself. You can take up a course like our 3-month professional digital marketing course. Ideally, you need at least 2-3 months to get at new skills for the foundation + your experience + Practical implementation
Option b) There are few blogs, websites, videos, podcasts you can listen and learn on your own. Attending meetups, webinars are good to start.
Free Resources to get started in Digital Marketing:
* Google Free Certificate course: https://learndigital.withgoogle….
* Google Free YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/lea…
* Hubspot academy: http://academy.hubspot.com/certi…
* Moz Blog: https://moz.com/blog
* Search engine land: http://searchengineland.com/
* Podcast: Neil patel : http://neilpatel.com/podcast/
* Web Marketing Academy Blog: http://bit.ly/1O2c9uy
* Digital India Podcast: http://bit.ly/2r3fPM8
2. Practicing what you learn
Digital marketing is dynamic and constantly upgrading, to keep up to date you have to practice what you learned.
Study: Brain Science: The Forgetting Curve–the Dirty Secret of Corporate Training: http://bit.ly/2rb3FNo You have 24 hours to practice. This study shows that within one hour, people will have forgotten an average of 50 percent of the information you presented. Within 24 hours, they have forgotten an average of 70 percent of new information, and within a week, forgetting claims an average of 90 percent of it – Brain Science, author: Professor Art Kohn
3. Build your personal brand
What does that mean? You have to allocate at least 1 hour to practice in the initial stage. If you are learning about content for blogs, you have to create a blog, start to write content for that blog that is relevant, useful for the readers backed with stats, image, etc or practice while you are learning even better.
Resources:
* Medium, WordPress, LinkedIn Post are free to start a blog
* Canva, Pixabay are sites where you can create images in a few minutes
* Facebook live videos you can just aim and shoot with your phone. Show your expertise to build your personal brand. It’s Free
4. Opportunity within your team/organization
The challenge is to implement what you have learned in your organization. Think about how to convince the upper management. Anything you talk about the competition will help. So do some research and come up with how well the competitors are doing in Digital/Social media space. Take screenshots and present it to the management.
Anything to increase the sales, revenue, ROI works well to convince the management.
Prove, show them what you have done and what you can do for the organization. Example. If you tell them, by implementing digital strategies, you can show an increase of even 1 % of the revenue you might get a chance. Don’t just tell, you really have to back it up with specific goals
Digital Marketing Careers in India
5. What additional skills do you require to become a Digital Marketer?
a) Creativity – Why? If you want to stand out creativity is the key, be it an ad copy, image, video, blog post, email subject line. All of the activities you do in digital marketing requires creativity apart from an understanding of each channel, platform.
Resource: https://greatist.com/happiness/w…
b) Writing – Why? Writing a blog post, emails will be part of digital marketing. Learn how to write, the process of writing, ideas for writing, editing, spell check, fact check
Resource: www.answerthepublic.com
c) Content – Why? Just like writing content is one of the most important parts of digital marketing, the reason goes to social media or the internet is to consume content. You have to give what people are looking for with context. Content is not just text. Your status update, Facebook post, Images, videos, PPT’s, podcasts, Case studies, ebooks are all part of the content. So start developing content in multiple formats.
Resources: QuikApp: http://help.quik.gopro.com/ Canva Design school: https://designschool.canva.com/
d) Learn basic code – Why? Knowing how to code simple HTML will make the job of a digital marketer easier so that you don’t have to rely on the IT person all the time and takes a lot of time to finish. In today’s world speed matters.
Resource: Code Academy: https://www.codecademy.com/
e) Willingness to change – Why? The advantage of digital marketing is that you can always test and if something doesn’t work you can easily make changes. Learn to adapt.
Want to work in Facebook? Facebook 5 core values 1. Be bold 2. Focus on Impact 3. Move fast 4. Be open 5. Build social values
f) Number – Why? To measure the success or failure of a campaign you need to have a basic understanding of number, analytics, excel skills.
g) Socializing – why? If you know how to socialize offline, it’s the same online, Social media being an important topic in Digital marketing, you should know how to socialize both online and offline.
h) Ongoing learning – why? Digital, social media is dynamic and it’s updated on a regular basis, you have to keep yourself up to date on the latest changes across the platform
Hope you learned a few things. Like to get a Free Beginners Guide to Digital Marketing? (Link)