How To Start A Career In Digital Marketing
Are you looking to get a piece of the digital marketing pie? Welcome aboard! The digital world is in trend right now – businesses are constantly looking for digital marketers to help them go online.
Mastering the art of digital marketing requires a simple recipe of knowledge, hard work and creativity. In this blog, I’d like to share the pathway towards building a secure career in digital marketing.
According to LinkedIn, this is what the demand for digital marketers looks like in India. There’s a greater demand for them than the supply. By 2023, there will be almost 666 million active internet users in India. As a result, a more significant percentage of people are moving online, which compels businesses also to move online.
You don’t necessarily need a 3-year degree in digital marketing – that’s the best part about the industry! However, you must take online digital marketing course to gain the necessary skills and knowledge to start your career in digital marketing. Here’s why I’ve put together a list so you can kick start your career!
Steps on How To Start A Career In Digital Marketing
#1 Skill Yourself
You cannot enter any industry without having the necessary skills or knowledge required to excel in the industry. As a first step, you should work towards developing your skillset. I’ve listed some of the necessary skills for a career in digital marketing:
- Basic Design Skills
- Communication Skills
- Content Creation
- CRM
- Data Analysis
- SEO & SEM
- Social Media
You can find an online digital marketing course that covers these topics and more. Many short-term courses can give you a push and help you understand the industry better.
While you’re learning the concepts, you can take up a friend’s or a family member’s business and digitize it for them. This will help you understand what you’re learning and help a company achieve its goals through you! So, a win-win!
#2 Choose a path
Online digital marketing courses should help you realize which part of digital marketing you enjoy the most. Here are some of the paths you can choose under digital marketing:
Social media marketing:
One of the most crucial success drivers for a business is social media. Your job as a social media professional is to make it a reality. Social media has great potential, as you can always be up for experimenting. However, this goes beyond just casual posting and updating. You require a full-fledged social media marketing plan and set goals to see actual results.
Web development, SEO:
The practice of optimizing pages to rank highly in search engines such as Google is known as SEO. The best part is that search engines will provide you with free, passive, and constant traffic once you rank. However, the disadvantage is that it takes a long time to work. To see results, you’ll need to be patient, and it is, nevertheless, rewarding.
Online Ads:
This entails purchasing advertisements on platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Instagram. In general, this method works well for quickly increasing visitors to your website. However, turning on an ad and letting the traffic flow isn’t enough for managing internet ads. To avoid losing all of your money, you’ll still need some expertise and experience.
So, if you have the financial means to test and study this channel, go for it. Otherwise, it’s not the right fit for you.
Content Writing:
The content writing process includes planning, writing, and editing web material, usually for digital marketing objectives. Writing blog posts and articles, film and podcast scripts, and content for specific platforms like Twitter or Instagram text posts are all instances of this.
These are just some of the many things you can do to establish a career in digital marketing. Once you’re in it, you’ll find a pool of opportunities – all you’ll have to do is grab them and make them yours.
#3 Start Using Automation And Tools
Being familiarized with the most helpful tools will make your work easier and help your resume stand out among a bunch of job applicants. You don’t have to go big and buy a premium membership for a bunch of tools.
Try experimenting with the free version of the tools available, and check out which one benefits you the most.
#4 Make A Portfolio
Based on the path you choose, you need to start building up a portfolio as a collection of your work, your experiences – any work you’ve done that you can consider helpful. Here, you can add all the businesses you’ve helped, the social media pages you handled while training, and even your assignments that you’re proud of.
Maintaining a current marketing portfolio demonstrates your commitment and engagement, which could lead to new connections or even employment offers.
#5 Get Practical Exposure
Internship:
Getting genuine work as a digital marketing assistant in an established digital marketing agency is another way to expand your abilities and expertise quickly. Most online digital marketing courses will help you get an internship after the course completion.
This is highly recommended because you will gain valuable insight into how a modern digital marketing agency operates and will be able to apply some of their best practices if you later decide to establish your agency or work for another company as a digital marketing specialist.
Freelancing:
Freelancing is an excellent approach to gain more practical experience while also improving your earnings. If you’ve been in the workforce for a few years, there’s a decent chance you’ve already secured some freelance work.
#6 Network And Connect With People
According to sociologists, the majority of non-visible, high-paying employment are not obtained through your closest connections. Instead, they’re discovered through weak links, such as casual acquaintances or persons with similar educational or cultural backgrounds.
This is why you should be networking all of the time.
To begin, identify one or a few people in the field of digital marketing which you appreciate. Second, keep in regular contact with them and find out what they’re up to. Follow them and admire their work, and you might get a job offer!
This leads us to the next step.
#7 Start Applying For Jobs
Once you have enough training and experience, you must start looking for jobs to begin your career in digital marketing. As you start broadening your network, finding jobs wouldn’t be a monumental task.
Make sure you have your resume updated with all your skills and experiences along with your portfolio – and start applying!
#8 Stay Updated WIth New Trends
Digital marketing strategies evolve regularly. Some digital marketers love it, while others despise it, but it’s undeniable that digital marketing is a rapidly changing field.
Every year, Google makes hundreds of adjustments to its organic and sponsored search algorithms, the Instagram algorithm is constantly evolving, and the digital marketing landscape is incredibly dynamic in general.
This means that if you choose to pursue a career in digital marketing, you should be aware that learning will be a daily activity for you.
#9 Keep Growing And Learning
Even after you’ve secured a good and high-paying job, never stop learning. It is the most critical factor in not just the digital marketing field but in any industry. Maybe, you can stay at home and freelance or start your agency – only learning more will help you get better at doing whatever you do!
That’s it! That was relatively simple, wasn’t it? No matter which path you pick, always remember two things to have a successful digital marketing career : Networking and learning. Speaking from personal experience, I can guarantee you that networking has helped me get so many opportunities. Learning has helped me make full use of those opportunities.
Did this blog help you? Let me know in the comments below!
