Bruce Mars / UnsplashDigital marketing is all about leveraging all digital channels, such as SEO, PPC, social media, and content marketing to promote businesses and their goods and services to customers. The main job digital marketing establishes through online marketing strategies is to inform, attract, and convert. The digital marketing industry is growing rapidly, and it is a field in need of skilled professionals.
Whether you’re a beginner or you have some marketing experience, becoming a digital marketing specialist demands you to have these specialized skills:
- Customer service
- Marketing
- Strategy
- Planning
- Time management
- Problem solving
- Analytics
- Creativity
- Presentation
- Knowledge of all key marketing areas
- Social skills
- Industry-news tracking
- Ability to quickly create a social presence
These are some of the skills a digital marketing specialist should have, but it is not necessary to have all of them. Some skills can be developed gradually with experience in this field.
Table of Contents
Understanding the Role
To become a digital marketing specialist, you need to be familiar with the roles and goals you will be handling. You will have to indirectly promote company products or services, increase brand awareness, and drive prospects to conversions. Instead of using traditional marketing channels, digital marketing specialists need to effectively communicate through appropriate technology platforms. A digital marketing specialist must handle the following duties:
- Perform consumer research
- Acquire knowledge about consumer trends and demands
- Evaluate the needs of the consumer market
- Understand how and where to implement business strategies
- Initiate effective marketing campaigns online
- Translate business goals into successful marketing campaigns
- Evaluate and analyze results
- Discover other ways of reaching customers
A digital marketing specialist should also have a wide knowledge of SEO, Google Analytics, content marketing, email marketing, PPC, and Google Ads. If you know how to use these marketing tools, make a strategy first and start applying strategies in areas where it suits best. You must also possess knowledge in all the marketing strategies that will help you become a digital marketing expert. If you don’t have knowledge in any of the above-mentioned areas, getting complete training will help you brush up your skills and gain new ones.
Choosing an Area of Specialization
As a digital marketing specialist, you have a list of options on what you can specialize in.
SEO and Content Writing
To become a digital marketing specialist, you must understand the basics of digital marketing. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the area where you can start from scratch, where you can generate leads and conversions through organic traffic. It is differentiated as on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is all about the activities you do within your website while off-page SEO involves all the activities outside your website, such as link building. These days the demand for skilled SEO experts is high. Therefore, you need to stay up to date with market variations.
SEO and content marketing are closely related. You can achieve good search rankings only through good quality content. It takes diligence, expertise, and time to rank high in search engine results. Analytics will help you track the performance of your content, and based on your search preference, you must change and improve your content strategy to rank higher.
If you think that you can manage both of these areas intelligently and creatively, choose this area of expertise.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media is one of the most preferred platforms for most human beings. If you think you can skillfully handle social media by engaging with your followers, attracting new customers, and maintaining existing ones by generating, sharing, and updating content, choose social media as your specialization.
You can use social media to target either a specific or a large number of audiences. Demographics and target audience selection all depend on the type of business you’re dealing with. A digital marketing specialist must learn the most advanced techniques and always try to protect a brand’s online reputation.
PPC Specialist
To become a PPC specialist, you must first learn the art of PPC (pay per click) and paid search. There are different search engines that offer you paid search campaigns, including Google Ads (previously known as Google AdWords), which is the most popular. As a PPC specialist, you must learn how to generate paid traffic using various PPC marketing campaigns and channels. Google offers certification for different channels and platforms. Learn and earn a certification from Google to become a PPC specialist.
Google Analytics Specialist
Google Analytics is the most critical digital marketing area, which requires average intelligence to understand but creativity to plan a strategy. Google Analytics is where you can track all the activities happening on your website. It also enables you to track your customers’ and visitors’ behavior. It will help you make relevant decisions regarding the best suited digital marketing strategy and channel for your client’s business.
Google Analytics helps you track and analyze reports of all the strategies and goals you have set and established. Therefore, learning Google Analytics or understanding it with the help of an expert will help you become a valuable digital marketing specialist for your client’s business.
Stay Updated and Keep Learning
Your journey as a digital marketing specialist never stops. You need to stay updated to move against the tide. The changes in the digital marketing industry are never-ending and continuous. Therefore, if you want to be a digital marketing specialist, never stop learning. This is also one of the reasons why being a digital marketing professional is challenging and at the same time interesting. If you like all these things, simply go ahead!
If you’re ready to become an expert in the digital marketing field, you must study the best digital marketing tips that will help you improve your career as a digital marketer.
By Sharafudheen Mangalad
