Scope of Digital Marketing in India & How to 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. Scroll down to see the list of skills required with accompanying free resources & tools.

The competition is high. Everyone wants to get into digital marketing. From our internal data (students at web marketing academy) HR professional, sales & marketing, customer support, IT professionals, developers, web designers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, content writers, stay at home parents, fresh graduates.

Apart from regular digital marketing skills. Here are a few other skills you might need to Get Started in Digital Marketing in 2020 and beyond

1. Soft skills
2. Communication
3. Writing -- For blogs, SEO, Ad copies, social media descriptions, captions, comments
4. A presentation including public speaking
5. working with teams
6. Leadership qualities including empathy, EQ
7. Working under stress
8. Training the team
9. Socializing skills
10. How to pitch to a client or your boss or team
11. Technical skills including basic HTML
12. Design skills like basic image editing- Don’t worry you don’t need to learn photoshop, learn to use apps like http://Canva.com
13. Video editing skills again use apps like Adobe spark video, Quikapp
14. You pick any form of content whichever you are good at and be good at it like for some it’s written content, for others it might be audio, for some they might be good in front of a camera, or visual content whatever you are comfortable with the pick that and create content
15. Basic excel skills
16. Google analytics -- knowing and interpreting the data

In this article, you will find the latest Digital Marketing Trends, Scope, Resources

How you too can start/upgrade your Career (UPDATED 2020)

Here is how our students transforming to Digital Marketers

Digital Marketing Trends to watch in 2019/2020

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning is transforming the way business run today
2. Voice Search, Voice Assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Home is growing at a rapid phase 
3. Voice shopping is changing the way we shop: Imagine ordering a product without seeing it. It’s unbelievable. That’s possible now! Your #alexa does all the shopping without you seeing it. Take a look at this video:
4. Technical skills are one of the most wanted skills for Digital marketing
5. Recently Google announced major changes to its advertising platform. Google Ads now adds AI artificial intelligence to its ad platform
6. We are living in a mobile-first to the mobile-only world, where people expect your websites to load faster and they want information whenever and wherever they are. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) project from Google designed to make really fast mobile pages
7. Voice assistants like Alexa, Google Home, Cortana. Alexa skills, Google Actions are part of Digital Marketing
8. Customer-Centric Approach, Customer-centric marketing backed with Data/Insights will help understand the customers better
9. Social Media is already part of our day to day life
10. User experience, the design is something every marketer should know
11. Personalized Searches will dominate as our mobile, assistance are all integrated with our personal devices. Every experience to be tailored just for them. Mobile searches for “——-- for me” has grown over 60 % in the last 2 years: Source: Think with Google
12. Content is the core of digital marketer in 2018, and moving forward Customized Personalized Content will dominate

Question: Is Digital Marketing a good career? Here is my detailed QUORA answer: https://qr.ae/TUG6Lx

Digital Marketing Skills required in 2019/2020

Today’s Modern Digital Marketers should constantly sharpen their skill sets. In the early days, it was the worldwide web, then social media, then mobile and now Artificial Intelligence AI and machine learning.

The rise of Voice Search: “Half of all searches will be voice searches by 2020 according to ComScore while 30% of web browsing sessions will take place without a screen by that time according to Gartner. And smart speakers are set to be the fastest-growing consumer technology this year” -- Source: eConsultancy

Free Resources for you to get started in Digital Marketing:

1. Google Developers AI & Machine Learning Crash course
2. AMP 
3. Alexa skills kit
4. Google Actions
5. Understanding user behavior – Think with Google

What does this mean for a Digital Marketer?

A few months back, yes few months not years back, Digital Marketing was about learning skills like Content, Social Media, SEO, Google ads, Facebook ads, but now it’s all about Machine learning, AI, Voice Assistants and more. Now a digital marketer should be updated every minute, AI is smarter than human,  here is how Google Duplex works. A digital marketer’s job is to make things easy for robots.

How can you make it simpler for AI to find your information? You have to learn technical skills like AMP, Structured Data, Voice SEO, Customized ads for Individuals. For example, people are searching for search terms like Is Digital Marketing Course Right for me? Should I take up an AI course?

How to Get Started in Digital Marketing

This article was published earlier. Digital Marketing has changed a bit, we have designed a NEW ebook for this Modern Digital Marketer. It’s FREE, up-to-date with step by step instructions & resources for you to become a Modern Digital Marketer. Updated The Modern Marketer’s Guide to Digital Marketing – Vol. 2 – 2018 

Vol 1: Download the e-book here: 

I wish I could have learned about digital marketing, the career opportunities it has to offer and everything else related to the field, in college. But, unfortunately, most colleges do not have anything to do with digital marketing in their curriculum. At best, we can find a couple of courses in E-Commerce basics.

Digital Marketing is so much more than E-Commerce and the only way for someone who is interested to learn about it is through self-effort and a handful of institutes like Web Marketing Academy (WMA). At WMA, we are looking to make some progress on this front, and after evangelizing for a few years, we are proud to have helped introduce Digital Marketing in the curriculum of Christ, Vanguard, and WLCI.

Read the Search Marketing Industry  India Research and Finding

Want expert suggestions about your Digital Marketing Career -- Call Us @ 8792299538

To cite an example, one of our own students, who had an experience of 8 years in a traditional Marketing role, quit the job to take our Digital Marketing course. Two months after the course, he had an offer from a Fortune 500 company of 17 lakhs per annum. There are many more examples like this. If you look at the job listings on LinkedIn, about 20-25% of the jobs listed are in the Digital Marketing realm. This is no surprise as the  Digital Marketing industry is growing at a fast pace and in need of skilled professionals.

Unlike a few years ago, it is a bit of a challenge to stay up to date in the Digital Marketing industry today. It is no longer enough to read a few blogs and the occasional book. This is probably enough to have a superficial knowledge of the industry and is certainly a good starting point. But it is nowhere near enough if you want to become a skilled professional. The industry is so dynamic that by the time a book is published, what is written in it will be outdated.

The question is How do I start a career in Digital Marketing?

Here are a few ways to get started in Digital Marketing

Here is one of a Facebook Live Video for you to Keep Up to Date:

 

1.  You don’t have to quit your current career to get started in digital

I had a few participants with more than 5-6 years of experience in traditional marketing. They quit their current job to pursue a career in digital and had to wait a couple of months after taking up the digital marketing management course to get an offer. But they ended up with an offer to double their previous pay. Finding a job that fits you might be challenging, so unless you have to quit to get started don’t quit your current job. Get started while you are still at your job, and spend a few hours a day on digital. We will get into blogs, websites to follow in a bit.

2.  Start by reading digital marketing blogs

This is the age where a lot of industry experts maintain their own blogs and websites where they regularly update their ideas and learnings. For example, SEOmoz, http://www.seomoz.org/blog  Hubspot http://blog.hubspot.com/, and Avinash Kaushik’s Occam’s Razor http://kaushik.net. These blogs are very rich in information and they’re free. It is a wonderful place to pick up industry insights that you can apply for your job or to your own website. Here is a blog post with links to blogs, books every marketer should follow: https://www.webmarketingacademy.in/blogs-every-digital-marketer-should-follow/

3.  Attend digital marketing events, webinars, meetups in your city

While learning from written content is one way, another highly effective way is by participation.

I used to be a shy guy until I got exposed to events in 2003 when my ex-boss John used to take me to a lot of networking events. This was when I got rid of my shyness and gained confidence. And when I moved to India, I realized that there are many of us, who have great talent but don’t have the opportunities to meet like-minded people and a platform to network.

That is the reason for starting the OME Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/omecommunity/. There are several meet-ups and hangouts happening in your city similar to this. Attend a few and stick to the ones that you will benefit from the most. If you attend events, webinars, and conferences, you will not just learn from the speakers, but also from your fellow attendees who will be more than willing to exchange experiences. It can be a good place to see how your peers are doing things and how you match up to them and what you can learn from them.

Your Story, Startup Saturday, Alok Kejriwal all have some good events. Attend these events and network with like-minded people. You will learn a lot from them

4.  Attend conferences related to digital marketing and new media

Andy, with whom I was working with, is a speaker, who helps CEO’s in their leadership and business. In one of his sessions, in front of all the attendees, he announced that “Today, Suresh will speak to you about how to create a blog.” I was scared to death, and I told him, “Andy, it is hard for me to even speak with our colleagues and you’re asking me to talk to these CEO!  He replied, “Don’t worry, just share what you do for Fox advertising.” So I shared how to create a blog.

The interesting thing was the CEO’s didn’t care about how I spoke, but they cared about what they got out of it. Each and every one of them came to me after the event and thanked me for sharing. It was one of those wonderful moments.

Since then I have learned to speak in public. Yes, it wasn’t easy for a shy guy to speak in front of people. It took a lot of time and practice, and I’m still working on it.  During those days, I loved attending conferences. In 2005 & 2006, I attended Podcamp, Pub Con, and several such events.

I learned most of the digital by attending conferences. It is about the energy and people that come to the events. Learning from others is one of the best ways to learn. When they share their passion, it makes it easier for us to make things happen. Attend Conferences like the ones we did in 2011:  Search marketing summit Bangalore: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08ienQhNMrA  Adtech, TFMA, Click Asia Summit, Search engine strategies Expo to name a few.

5.  Start your own blog.  (Time to start – 5 minutes)

It takes less than five minutes to start a blog on WordPress or Blogger. Here is a blog post written by Amada titled, “What I Wish I Learned in Business School” where she talks about blogging. And update it frequently. Do not worry about who reads it or what impact it makes to someone else. The first person a blog will impact is the author herself.

Like Seth Godin famously says ‘If you do not ship, it is not art”. You should put your thoughts out there in the public domain. Putting down your thoughts will ensure that you do research, which will help you learn better. When you put things down trying to ensure that another person reading it will be able to completely understand what you say, you will reassess your assumptions and indulge in a logical thought process.

6.  Take the Inbound Marketing Certification from Hubspot for Free

Hubspot offers them for free and these certifications are widely recognized in the industry. Before you take the exam, read this blog post on how to pass the Inbound marketing certification: https://www.webmarketingacademy.in/inbound-marketing-certification-2013/. I have to say it is not easy to pass, but going through the videos will be extremely useful.

7.  Is it worth taking up online digital marketing certification courses?

Even though, we are in the digital era, having a one on one instructor-led program is valuable and you will learn more in classroom settings, where you can ask questions and practice it. There are plenty of free YouTube videos. If you plan to take up an online course, I would strongly suggest taking up a course with market motive by Avinash Kaushik. It is amazing and worth spending that money with market motive. http://www.marketmotive.com/

8.  Digital marketing workshops, webinars, videos

Again there are plenty of workshops conducted in your city. Before attending those workshops, do your research, look at the past workshops, talk to the attendees if possible and see their career, how it has impacted their career, and then take a call. However, attending webinars and videos like Whiteboard Friday from SEOMoz will add a lot of value and you will learn a lot. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/whiteboard-friday and Hubspot conduct weekly webinars on a variety of digital marketing topics, attend those webinars. http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-webinars

You can also sign up for Web Marketing Academy’s upcoming workshops on digital marketing. www.webmarketingacademy.in send us an email suresh@webmarketingacademy.in or call us at 9731388721

9.  What about taking a digital marketing course from web marketing academy?

Well, you can, but before that, see how it has changed the lives of these people: http://goo.gl/W0YZO.

Still, have questions about digital marketing for your career ? Give us a call and talk to us, we would love to guide you in the right direction. My number is 9731388721.

More Resources:

• My Medium post on A Complete Beginners Guide to Digital Marketing: A Beginners Guide to Digital Marketing
• Digital Marketing Career Path in India: https://www.webmarketingacademy.in/digital-marketing-career-path-india/ 
• Cost of Digital Marketing Course Fees in Bangalore: https://www.webmarketingacademy.in/digital-marketing-course-fees-in-india-with-options-resources/ 

Summary:

The scope of Digital Marketing in India. How to get started in Digital with detailed beginners guide to Digital Marketing. What are the skills to become a digital marketer in 2019? Resources to upgrade your skills with these latest trends.