The methods that businesses use to market goods and services to customers have changed dramatically in recent years. While there is still utility in advertising in places like magazines and newspapers, it’s more common for marketing professionals to focus their attention on digital spaces.
As today’s companies continue to grow their online presence, the need to market online will continue to grow as well.
Knowing how to leverage tools like social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and email marketing can be a tremendous asset to any organization. These newer methods of advertising can reach wider audiences of people in an instant. Digitizing your marketing efforts also enables you to collect and analyze data so you can better understand your customer base and target future campaigns to potential customers.
Advantages of Digital Marketing
There are several aspects to digital marketing that make it a highly advantageous business tool. For one, it can be relatively inexpensive compared to print advertising. This is especially helpful for small businesses and startups; something like an email marketing campaign costs very little and gives you a way to instantly communicate with everyone on your mailing list at once. It also means that you can yield a larger return on your initial investment.
Digital marketing campaigns are also much easier to adjust in real-time. More traditional marketing strategies take a longer time to create and, if they aren’t performing as well as you’d hoped, you’ll be stuck with your current advertisement until a new one can be developed. With digital marketing, you can easily invest more money in a campaign if it is going well. If not, it takes relatively little time to adjust the campaign or pull it altogether.
Analytics are simpler with digital marketing as well. You can quickly measure the number of people who interact with your advertisements and whether they take further action after seeing them. This allows you to hone in more specifically on your target audience and have more control over when and how you spend your advertising budget.
Types of Digital Marketing
Since most consumers have multiple devices where they can receive advertisements, there are several different methods of digital marketing to be aware of. It’s vital to understand these different methods so you can connect with your customers in all sorts of ways. Below, you’ll find a few of the most commonly used digital marketing channels, but this is by no means an exhaustive list.
- Social Media Marketing: A recent report determined that nearly 4.5 billion people use one or more social media platforms every day. These include popular sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Social media marketing allows you to boost your company’s visibility and get your brand as much exposure as possible.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The goal of SEO is to help your business or webpage to show up near the beginning of a search engine result page (SERP). The best SEO uses tools like content and keyword research to help increase traffic to your site and help expand your customer base. Many businesses take advantage of SEO because it is more direct than other strategies like social media marketing; you’re actively trying to bring more customers your way instead of creating an advertisement and hoping people see it.
- Email Marketing: As previously mentioned, email marketing is an extremely affordable method to reach a large number of customers. Some providers offer exciting tools to ensure you’re maximizing your contact with your mailing list. For example, some providers can calculate the best time to send emails to your customers based on each person’s typical email routine. They can also help you determine which kinds of subject lines are most likely to get people to open your email and interact with the information inside.
Careers in Digital Marketing
Because there are so many different types of digital marketing and ways to analyze their results, there is no shortage of exciting career opportunities in this field. One of the perks of working in digital marketing is that the careers often offer flexible hours and remote working capabilities.
If you enjoy being creative, becoming a digital marketer may be the best choice for you. These professionals create marketing campaigns, but they also know how to analyze and update their campaigns to help an advertisement be successful in reaching customers. Digital marketers have an average salary of almost $61,000 per year, with the potential to increase as you gain more experience. If you’re more interested in analyzing data, you could look into Digital Analyst job opportunities. In this role, you would work alongside SEO experts and digital marketers to gather information about how a campaign is performing, then create reports and recommendations for the future based on these results.
Learn Digital Marketing With Career Centers
If you’re ready to dive into a career in digital marketing, check out these digital marketing classes with Noble Desktop, a partner program with Career Centers. Their courses can be taken at their campus in New York City or live online from the comfort of your home. If social media is your focus, they offer multiple six-hour courses for beginners in areas like Blogs & Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube & TikTok. If you’d prefer to combine all of these platforms into one course, there is a Social Media Marketing Certificate program available instead. This class is 30 hours long and covers today’s most popular social media channels.
Noble Desktop also offers an SEO Bootcamp and a Google Analytics Bootcamp. These courses are each two-days and give students a solid foundation in these crucial marketing skills. Their Digital Marketing Certificate is a comprehensive 78-hour course for beginners that will give you all the necessary tools to successfully market your business.