Digital marketers are typically in charge of any social media pages their client has, email marketing strategies, and creating content for mobile platforms like TikTok. They need to stay on top of current social media trends and manage an array of digital channels to promote their client’s brand. In addition to these more creative responsibilities, digital marketers are also skilled in various analytical platforms to help measure the success of their campaigns and determine where to make future investments.
Here, you’ll find a detailed exploration of the different skills required to become a successful digital marketer and what to expect from your daily life as you pursue this exciting career.
Skills Needed for Digital Marketing
There are a variety of careers that fall under the umbrella of digital marketing, but many of them require similar skills. These include both hard skills and soft skills, which are equally important to develop before climbing the ladder or starting a new career altogether.
Hard Skills
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is a vital tool that digital marketers use to help their client’s website show up at or near the top of search engine result pages (SERP). This is a complex process that involves multiple technical strategies such as mobile optimization, social media, and backlinks to show users that your website is credible and worth further investigation. SEO is especially important because, if done properly, it doesn’t require any major financial investment in advertising and other marketing campaigns.
- Analytical Tools: Programs like Google Analytics help digital marketers keep track of important data about how users interact with a website and where your brand’s name is being mentioned on other social media platforms. The information gathered with these tools informs where money is invested in the future and when to make changes to a marketing strategy.
- Social Media and Email Marketing: These days, a business that doesn’t take advantage of social media is going to have a tough time growing a customer base. Tools like Loomly and Sprout Social help digital marketers make data-driven decisions about how to manage a social media platform. These tools help to schedule content releases at ideal times and provide information about which posts garner the highest level of interaction from your followers. Email Service Providers (ESP) are another tool that can be helpful to digital marketers. These help keep track of customer contact information so you can personalize email messages to boost sales.
Soft Skills
- Adaptability: Effective digital marketing strategies are always changing. As new software and analytical tools are being developed, a successful digital marketer needs to understand these new technologies and be open to changing strategies when better techniques come alone. Digital marketing is also a diverse field in general, so it is beneficial to learn about multiple areas like social media, content marketing, and email services. Adapting to a wide range of skills will help you remain a valuable employee.
- Teamwork: The process of developing and rolling out any marketing campaign is complex and requires many people to work together. You must be able to put your ego aside and implement the strategy that will work best for everyone, not just you. To work effectively within a team, you need to practice listening to others and getting to know members of your team that you may not ordinarily spend time with.
- Creativity: It will come as no surprise that folks who work in marketing need to have a flair for creativity. However, many people consider creativity to be an innate talent rather than a skill that can be improved upon. People who work in any creative profession typically have a preferred method to help them organize their ideas and keep their creative thinking skills sharpened. Before diving into a digital marketing career, it’s a good idea to practice some of these techniques so that you can contribute innovative ideas to your team regularly rather than hoping for a potential burst of inspiration. You can also keep track of some of your favorite brands on social media to see how they engage with customers and keep their ideas fresh.
Daily Life and Beyond For a Digital Marketer
A career in digital marketing combines aspects of advertising and communications. Their responsibilities vary widely depending on their clients, but here are some common tasks that you can expect to do in your daily life as a digital marketer:
- Review the data produced by various digital channels and develop actionable insights based on your findings.
- Manage both positive and negative customer feedback on social media platforms. If a negative mention is made, attending to it quickly is crucial to maintaining a brand’s credibility.
- Staying current with social media trends and learning how to take advantage of new platforms as they arise.
Careers in digital marketing are competitive, but they are expected to rise as more businesses turn to social media to advertise their products and services. Digital marketers command an annual salary of around $61,000, although this depends partly on the city you’re working in; a digital marketer in New York City earns much more than a digital marketer in a smaller city like Phoenix. This number has the potential to grow as you climb the ladder.
Learn Digital Marketing Skills with Career Centers
If a career in digital marketing sounds appealing to you, the digital marketing courses offered by Noble Desktop are a great place to start! Noble Desktop is a partner program with Career Centers that teaches courses both remotely and in-person at its Manhattan campus. The programming ranges in both price and required time commitment, so you’re sure to find something that can meet your needs without overwhelming yourself.
If you’d like to start with a smaller course, Noble Desktop offers several beginner-level classes covering topics like LinkedIn, Blogs & Twitter, and YouTube & TikTok. If you’re interested in learning about all of these social media platforms at once, you can check out the Social Media Marketing Certificate program. This 30-hour course covers all of the material from the shorter courses at a reduced rate.
For those interested in a more comprehensive education in digital marketing, Noble Desktop offers a Google Analytics Bootcamp and an SEO Bootcamp as part of their programming. Both are two days long and, as stated above, cover these vital tools for anybody interested in a digital marketing career. The Digital Marketing Certificate is the most comprehensive program in this area at Noble Desktop. It is a 78-hour course that provides a solid foundation for how to successfully market a business.