How to Become a Digital Marketer

Digital marketing is a field that entails assisting in the promotion of businesses and services in the online space. Becoming a digital marketer entails joining this niche in the marketing world and developing digital media marketing campaigns. These campaigns are typically focused on a variety of digital channels, such as email marketing, websites, social media platforms, and live chats.

Joining a marketing agency, working in the marketing department of a business or company, consulting, or doing freelance work can all lead to a career as a digital marketer. Learn how to become a digital marketer, including common skills and education requirements, as well as why you should.

Important Takeaways

If you want to become a digital marketer expert, you must keep three things in mind:

• You must learn how to use each digital marketing channel.
• Continuous learning is part of a digital marketing specialist’s daily routine because the industry is dynamic.
• Salary and compensation are heavily influenced by years of experience and results.
• There is no requirement for a formal university degree, though many schools offer digital marketing degrees.
• There is nothing stopping you from starting a career in digital marketing if you are willing to learn and put in the necessary effort.

What is digital marketing?

What is digital marketing? is simply any marketing effort carried out to promote goods, services, and brands via a digital platform. It is, in essence, any marketing conducted over the internet. Digital marketers work in advertising agencies or marketing departments, creating advertising campaigns for clients or for the company’s marketing department.

Digital marketers’ job responsibilities include assisting in the creation of awareness and interest in the company’s products or services. This can be accomplished through the use of a website, social media channels, mobile devices, and even emails. Aside from creating marketing campaigns (and their components), digital marketers may conduct market research and data analysis to determine which marketing efforts are working well and which need to be tweaked. They may also be involved in the financial end of the marketing spectrum, such as developing pricing strategies for products or services and ensuring that marketing budgets are met.

To understand what digital marketing is, it’s also important to know some common areas of digital marketing to become a digital marketer:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social Media Marketing
• Pay Per Click (PPC)/Paid Search Marketing
• Marketing Automation
• Email Marketing
• Digital Public Relations (PR)
• Inbound Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing
• Sponsored Content

Also read: Best Digital Marketing Books

Working in Digital Marketing Requires a Specific Set of Skills

Organized by Specialty to become a digital marketer

Digital marketers may specialize in one area, but they are more likely to have a diverse set of skills related to digital marketing. Content marketing focusing on search engine optimization (SEO), copywriting, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, including online advertising such as Google ads, social media marketing, and email marketing are all niche areas in the digital marketing services sphere. You may also choose to specialise in data and analytics.

Digital marketing strategy includes content marketing as well as copywriting. While content marketing refers to written content with the goal of converting a visitor into a paying customer, copywriting refers to text written specifically to sell something. Copywriting is the text included in anything from web pages to social media ads with the goal of hooking a client and getting them to buy something. Content marketing includes web articles that are optimised for search engines, whereas copywriting is the text included in anything from web pages to social media ads with the goal of hooking a client and getting them to buy something.

Aside from written content, digital marketers may concentrate on data analytics to determine how their digital marketing campaigns are performing and whether they need to make any changes to encourage more conversions.

To read more: How Digital Marketing Works for Business

What Qualifications do You Need to be a Digital Marketer?

A digital marketer specialist is a multi-skilled professional who is in charge of the digital marketing of a website (business or product) through all available digital marketing channels.

He or she must be well-versed in all digital marketing disciplines and tools. The following are the job responsibilities:

• SEO campaign design, implementation, and monitoring
• PPC campaign analysis and optimization
• Managing content marketing campaigns
• Making use of social media networks (for traffic, awareness, and sales)
• Managing the rest of the digital marketing team
• Coordination of all digital campaign activities
• Set objectives and assess the performance of all digital marketing channels.

A digital marketer specialist differs from an SEO specialist or a PPC specialist in that a digital marketer specialist must be an expert in more than one area and have a broad understanding of how digital marketing works in general, rather than just one discipline.

It takes a lot of effort and hard work to become a digital marketing specialist, but it is the best digital marketing job you can get in the online marketing industry.

Read more: Digital Marketing Plan

However, if you are willing to put in the necessary effort, there is nothing stopping you from pursuing a career in digital marketing.

This guide will teach you what a digital marketer specialist does and how to develop the necessary skills.

How to Become a Digital Marketer Specialist 

These are the steps to becoming a digital marketer.

• Learn the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing
• Work as an SEO Specialist
• PPC Advertising Expertise
• Improve Your Social Media Marketing Skills
• Execute Content Marketing Campaigns
• Discover How Email Marketing Works
• Improve Your Team Management Skills
• Discover How to Use Data Analysis and Reporting Tools
• Obtain a Certification in Digital Marketing
• Keep up to date on the most recent digital marketing trends
• Discover How to Use Important Digital Marketing Tools
• Create a Portfolio of Digital Marketing
• Make Marketing Connections by Networking

Learn the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing

The first step in launching a career in digital marketing is to develop core technical skills in SEO and SEM, analytics, social media marketing, and advertising, and email marketing. Along with these, look for ways to prove that you have the many soft and skillsets that a Digital Marketer should have, such as leadership, a strong writing voice, and an understanding of the online landscape.

If you try to learn email marketing, SEO, analytics, and other skills piecemeal, it may take months or even years to turn a passing familiarity into a cohesive skill set.

Digital marketing is not a single discipline, but rather a term that encompasses a variety of techniques and methods for promoting a website or products online.

The following are the most important digital marketing channels:

• Social Media Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing (includes SEO and PPC advertising)
• Content Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Website Marketing

As a digital marketer, you must understand each channel’s role, what it does, and how to use it & become a digital marketer.

Work as an SEO Specialist

Once you understand what we mean by digital marketing, the next step is to master SEO and become an SEO expert , digital marketing specialist.

SEO plays a critical role in the success of a digital marketing campaign, which is why learning how to become optimise a website for search engines is essential.

Improving your SEO skills will also make it easier to work with other forms of online marketing.

Although you are more likely to have dedicated SEO experts on your team, as a digital marketing specialist you will have to supervise them, and the most efficient way to do this is to have professional experience with SEO.

PPC Advertising Expertise

A significant portion of your time and budget will be dedicated to managing PPC campaigns on Google Ads or Facebook.

As a digital marketer specialist, you must understand the various types of campaigns available and how to become properly measure and analyse the results.

Depending on the size of your team and sector, it is common for a digital marketing campaign to only include PPC campaigns, so mastering PPC is critical.

Improve Your Social Media Marketing Skills

You must learn how to market on other networks in addition to using paid ads on Facebook.

Depending on the type of website to promote, you may need to explore other social media networks such as Twitter, Pinterest, or LinkedIn, so having the necessary skills is essential.

Execute Content Marketing Campaigns

Content with the following characteristics is required to power all of your digital marketing campaigns:

• fulfils the user’s intent
• Users will find it interesting to read.
• Each platform has been optimised (SEO, FB, etc.)
• Rankings, leads, and conversions are generated.

Content can take the form of text, video, or audio and can be presented in a variety of formats such as articles, YouTube videos, landing pages, podcasts, and so on.

As a digital marketer expert, you must plan what type of content to create and when and how to measure the performance of each type of content.

This is the essence of content marketing.

Your job in the well digital marketing team will not be to provide content (you will have dedicated authors for this task), but to ensure that appropriate type of content is produced for the various campaigns.

Discover How Email Marketing Works

Email remains one of the most popular sales tools. Despite the rise of social media networks, marketers still rely on email marketing to close sales, generate leads, and engage with customers.

Email marketing is typically the final step in a marketing sales funnel. All other digital marketing campaigns (SEO, PPC, Content Marketing, and Social Media Marketing) generate leads for email marketing, and email marketing converts those leads into sales (or any other type of conversion) thru a series of focused emails.

Because most teams lack an email marketing specialist, the responsibility for running email marketing campaigns falls directly under the supervision of the digital marketer.

Improve Your Team Management Skills

To become a digital marketing specialist, you must be able to manage a team.

The reason for this is that you will be responsible for leading and managing a team of other specialists who make up a digital marketing team.

In large digital marketing agencies, the digital marketer is essentially the team manager (or team leader, if you prefer), and he or she must have the necessary skills to manage a team of people in addition to technical knowledge.

This includes knowing how to use project management tools, setting goals and targets, training your team, and performing all other duties expected of a manager.

You may not have to manage people if you work in a small team or as a freelance digital marketing expert, but you must know how to create project plans, set milestones, and monitor project progress.

Discover How to Use Data Analysis and Reporting Tools

A digital marketing specialist, daily tasks include data analysis and report preparation, in addition to monitoring and optimising digital marketing campaigns.

A digital marketer, whether reporting to the marketing department or directly to the client, must be familiar with a variety of digital marketing tools.

The following are must-have tools:

• Google Analytics
• Google Data Studio
• Google Search Console
• Facebook Ads Reporting
• SEMRUSH or (Ahrefs, Moz, HubSpot, etc)

Obtain a Certification in Digital Marketing

Digital marketing course is one of the quickest and most efficient ways to become a digital marketer specialist.

A digital marketing course will teach you everything you need to know about digital marketing without the need for you to read multiple guides or seek out additional resources.

Obtaining a digital marketing certification from a reputable company is an excellent way to demonstrate your knowledge of digital marketing.

Certification does not verify that you will be a successful digital marketing expert, but it does demonstrate that you have the required knowledge for the work.

Of course, in order to get a job in a large agency or company, you must have several years of work experience and ways to demonstrate your expertise (success stories and case studies).

Keep Up to Date on the Most Recent Digital Marketing Trends

Google updates its search results and algorithms thousands of times per year, Facebook is constantly adding/changing new features, Google Ads is moving toward AI, and so on.

The changes in the digital marketing industry are constant (I would say daily) and numerous.

Studying never stops for digital marketing experts, which makes this profession both interesting and challenging. There is never a dull moment because there is always something new to learn.

If you cannot accept this, then becoming a digital marketer specialist is not the best option for you.

If, on the other hand, you enjoy working in a fast-paced environment, you must ensure that you are up to date on all of the latest trends, and the resources listed below will assist you in doing so.

Discover How to Use Important Digital Marketing Tools

The more experience you have with digital marketing tools, the easier it will be to become a Digital Marketer. Digital marketers can use Google Analytics and Google Ads, for example, to measure and track the performance of marketing campaigns and initiatives. SEO tools such as Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush are also essential, allowing marketers to research relevant keywords, check backlinks to your pages, identify related keywords, and analyse competitors’ SEO.

When looking to break into digital marketing, experience with an email campaign tool, such as MailChimp or SendGrid, can be extremely beneficial. Knowledge of a customer relationship management (CRM) programme, such as Salesforce or Hubspot, can also help.

However, perhaps the simplest way to get started is through social media. Digital marketers are increasingly relying on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and others to drive traffic, generate leads, and build their brands. When applying for a job in digital marketing, developing a following (or at least a visually cohesive style) and using social media management tools like Hootsuite, Later, and Buffer can help you stand out from the crowd.

You should also experiment with free stock image sites like Unsplash or Pexels, as well as graphic design platforms like Canva, to help you create standout content for your social media platforms.

Create a Portfolio of Digital Marketing

Developing a portfolio is an added challenge for digital marketers. Rather than simply displaying a finished product, you must demonstrate your processes and outcomes in a way that demonstrates your teamwork, planning, and strategic thinking.

If you have samples of published work, such as newsletters, social media posts, or content marketing articles, clearly indicate your role in their creation—did you create the strategic plan? Did you write the copy? Create the layout? Coordination of the advertising campaign? Sharing credit is essential; rather than hogging the attention, it is in your best interest to showcase that you can work as part of, or even lead, a team.

If you lack work experience, your portfolio can include the outcomes of the hands-on exercises you completed as part of your digital marketing specialist. Once you’ve gathered all of your materials, upload them to the internet in a slick, well-organized package. Use this section to describe your process and the innovative solutions you came up with at each stage.

Your digital footprint is a component of your portfolio, and that should reflect your creativity, voice, and professional competence. If you prefer to keep your social channels private, consider starting one for a passion project—say, an Instagram account to share your surfing photography, or a blog dedicated to cooking and recipes—and including it in your portfolio.

Make Marketing Connections by Networking

Developing a large network as a Digital Marketer, unsurprisingly, begins online. In addition to the aforementioned social channels and blog, you may want to start your own industry-related newsletter to showcase your original content, demonstrate thought leadership, and share your work while also growing your personal platform. Building a strong online presence is beneficial in almost any field, but especially in digital marketing, where the proof is in the pudding.

There are also a number of networking events for Digital Marketers in both the online and offline worlds, providing additional opportunities to network within the field. For example, the annual Digital Marketing Conference is held in Toronto, and the industry website MarketingTerms lists dozens of virtual networking events dedicated to a variety of specialisations and market sectors.

How to Become a Digital Marketer With No Experience?

It is possible to become a Digital Marketer even if you do not currently have marketing work experience; however, you must first develop the necessary skills – and be able to demonstrate them. Every Digital Marketer requires a few core technical competencies in SEO and SEM, analytics, social media marketing and advertising, email marketing, and customer relationship management tools.

Along with your technical digital marketing skills, try to demonstrate that you have the many soft and transferable skills that a Digital Marketer should have, such as leadership, a strong writing voice, as well as an understanding of the digital landscape.

As you develop these skills, you can start creating your own projects – newsletters, social media posts, content marketing campaigns, and even research, project management, and strategy – to demonstrate your abilities and showcase your work. These will serve as the foundation for your professional portfolio, which will be a valuable tool in your job search.

If you lack work experience, your portfolio can include the outcomes of the hands-on exercises you completed as part of your digital marketing specialist. Once you’ve gathered all of your materials, upload them to the internet in a slick, well-organized package. Use this section to describe your process and the innovative solutions you came up with at each stage. Your online presence across all social media platforms is included in this package, so keep it creative while remaining professional.

With a strong body of work to show for it, all that is left is to put together your resume – tailoring it for each job you apply to, highlighting the most relevant skills – and start networking. Your online presence will be an important part of your professional profile, but you should also consider connecting with the digital marketers  community directly through on- and offline networking events.