How to Become a Digital Marketer

Anyone who has a computer, laptop, or smartphone has most definitely experienced digital marketing. It can take the form of an e-mail sent to your inbox, an ad on Facebook, or a post by your favorite influencer on Youtube. Our digital world is full of digital advertisements vying for our attention. In this post, you’ll learn how to become a Digital Marketer.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketing encompasses all of the marketing efforts that utilize electronic devices or the internet. Businesses perform Digital Marketing by leveraging various digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with current and prospective customers. Digital Marketers are responsible for developing, implementing, and managing marketing campaigns that promote a company and its products and/or services. They are valuable team players that play a major role in enhancing brand awareness within the digital space as well as driving website traffic and acquiring leads/customers.

Why You Should Learn How to Become a Digital Marketer?

Digital Marketing is a high-growth industry where skilled professionals and dedicated individuals with a drive to learn and succeed are both high in demand. Digital Marketers are valued for their diverse skill sets, from creatives to analysts. They can work in-house or agency roles but the most exciting part of being a digital marketer is the ability to work remotely and freelance!

Traditional marketing mediums are dying out. Companies are starting to shift their marketing efforts and budgets to digital. In fact, digital marketing skills are asked for in four out of 10 marketing job listings. Between 2017 and 2018, SEO jobs increased by as much as 43 percent! Even better is that the demand for digital marketing talent in 2017 was 56 percent while the supply was only 24 percent. This means that the opportunities are great for those wanting to transition into this industry! The average salary for a Digital Marketing Manager is around $65,579 according to Payscale with salaries at the higher end being well over $100,000 for those with experience.

Specializations

There are many specializations for those that want to transition into Digital Marketing. There 4 basic paths that one can choose. They are SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay-Per-Click), Social Media Marketing Specialist, and Digital Marketing Specialist.

SEO Specialist

Main KPI (Key Performance Indicator): Organic Traffic

Those specializing in SEO are some of the highest-paid digital marketers. This is because search engines like Google constantly change their algorithms and SEO experts are needed to stay up-to-date with these changes. It takes skill, persistence, and time in order to rank high in search engine results. SEO Specialists must focus on Advanced SEO, Content Marketing, and Web Analytics. Content marketing is what will ensure that pages rank in search engines and web analytics will assist in tracking results to improve page rank positions.

PPC Specialist

Main KPI (Key Performance Indicator): Lead Generation (Conversion) Rate, Campaign Click-through Rate, etc.

PPC also known as Pay-Per-Click is an internet marketing model in which advertisers display ads on web pages. The only time an ad is paid for is when it is clicked on. It’s basically a way to buy visits to a website. This differs from organic visits through SEO. This is where web pages receive visitors organically via unpaid results. To succeed as a PPC Specialist, it takes strong analytical skills, project management, and attention to detail. You’ll be consistently optimizing advertising campaigns and ensuring that the keywords that you use are optimized for costs and conversions. You’ll need to study the Principles of PPC and paid search, become proficient in paid campaigns, and learn how to generate paid traffic through various PPC marketing channels. Some examples could be Facebook Ads, Google Ads, or Bing Ads. Mastering display advertising will be useful when you work with ads, remarketing campaigns, cookies, and third-party agencies. You’ll learn how to optimize conversion rates on landing pages, microsites, and websites. With an understanding of web analytics, you’ll know how to interpret a wide range of data to improve the results of your PPC campaigns.

Main KPIs (Key Performance Indicator): Follows, Impressions, Shares

This is actually a pretty fun specialization and many online business owners will have had experience in this! Social media is used to generate, share, or exchange content via information, ideas, pictures, or videos in virtual communities. Social media usage is growing rapidly with over 3 billion users predicted by 2021. Businesses and brands can capitalize on this by finding out where their customers are and developing a strong social media presence. The channels that they use can market goods and services to current and potential customers. As a Social Media Marketing Specialist, you’ll utilize the latest techniques to attract traffic in addition to promoting and protecting your brand’s online reputation. You’ll be utilizing tools such as Hootsuite to plan and execute content marketing strategies to promote your brand and use web analytics to gather data to help you improve and reach new heights for your brand.

Digital Marketing Specialist

If you aren’t interested in specializing in SEO, PPC, or social media, then the fourth option as a Digital Marketing Specialist is for you. You’ll develop an in-depth understanding and advanced knowledge of the most critical digital marketing areas. This mastery of the core fundamentals will allow you to manage a team and make informed decisions on the digital marketing channels that you’re responsible for. In a small company, you may perform many of the above specializations described above at the same time.

Buyer’s Journey When Learning How to Become a Digital Marketer

You’ll want to understand the Buyer’s journey as a Digital Marketer to better help your content marketing. Your goal should be to improve your brand’s prestige and ultimately increase the sales of your products. The buyer journey consists of a three-step process:

Awareness Stage: Buyer realizes they have a problem.
Consideration Stage: Buyer defines their problem and researches the available options to resolve it
Decision Stage: Buyer chooses a solution

Digital Marketing Resources

The following resources will help you get started on your Digital Marketing Journey:

Free SEO Resources

Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO: A comprehensive 10-chapter guide that is a must-have resource for new interns. This guide covers everything from how search engines work to measuring and tracking your success through various KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Each chapter discusses a different SEO topic and is filled with helpful examples for beginners. It’s also a great resource for experienced marketers that want to refresh their knowledge. This is a great place to start when learning how to become a Digital Marketer!

Backlinko’s Definitive Guide to Keyword Research: SEO success is highly dependent on choosing the right keywords. It’s a complicated process for even veteran marketers. This in-depth guide explains how to find the right keywords with a guide that breaks down common mistakes that you’ll experience in your Digital Marketing career. It also gives you the tactics necessary to help you create optimized content.

Backlinko’s Definitive Guide to Link Building: Backlinks are links on other websites that point to your website. The number and quality of these backlinks are very important factors when ranking your website. This guide will give you the fundamentals and strategies to successfully link build to build your online presence and increase your page rankings in search engines.

Moz’s On-Page Ranking Factors: This resource for content writers is Moz’s overview of on-page ranking factors which goes into detail on how content can be optimized. These on-page factors are good to know as they impact a web page’s ability to rank in search engine results.

Ahrefs’ Outreach Guide: This guide discusses the best and worst ways to reach out with suggestions on how to improve your approach. Great for those that are involved in link building.

Free PPC Resources

Google Academy for Ads: This is a great place to start for those that want to know the ins and outs of paid advertising. Google provides free training on its full range of products and gives users a better understanding of the basics of PPC such as setup and bidding. Google Academy for Ads offers just the right materials to suit your needs.

Facebook Blueprint: It’s getting harder and harder to perform organically as social media algorithms constantly change. As a result, companies are looking to speed things up via paid advertising on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. With Facebook Blueprint, there are more than 90 eLearning courses that cover everything from ad targeting, ad formats, and measuring performance. Facebook owns both Facebook and Instagram so you have the benefit of learning two platforms!

How to Get Started

After learning how to become a Digital Marketer you’re going to need to get started somehow. A great way to do this is to apply for internships. We all know the story of how companies want “1-3 years of experience”. The great thing is, that if you can demonstrate your Digital Marketing mastery through a great portfolio you can find employment. This is because Digital Marketing skills are in high demand. So how will you build a portfolio? Ask around and advertise yourself via your “warm network” of family and friends. Utilize social media to advertise your services. You can offer a discount to the first few people that you work with in exchange for testimonials and permission to showcase case studies of how you helped them on your website. Show how you increased their followers on social media, show how you increase sales with optimized PPC campaigns, etc. What future employers and clients want to see is that you can deliver results. So showcase your results and demonstrate your value through a great portfolio website.

Did you learn how to become a Digital Marketer?

I hope this blog post taught you the basics of what a Digital Marketer does and how to become one. Digital Marketing is definitely an exciting field to get into and it’s one that’s highly rewarding as you can work remotely if you’d like as a freelancer. The opportunities are endless and the job is quite fulfilling when you make clients happy. Be sure to educate your clients and keep them informed that sometimes it may take 6 months or longer to rank their pages in Google. SEO optimization is a time-consuming process and paid advertising can bring in traffic much more quickly. Your job will be to find the optimal solution for your client’s needs. I’m confident that you’ll be able to do so as you master all of the components of Digital Marketing and contribute to both you and your client’s success. Good luck!