Digital Marketing is a rapidly growing sector, becoming more and more popular with each second that passes. In fact, the digital marketing industry has recorded an amazing 9% CAGR.
So, what does it mean for a budding digital marketing expert like yourself?
An increasing number of businesses are moving online, and online businesses need online traffic.
And, that’s where digital marketing comes into play.
Why should you become a Digital Marketing Expert though? What’s so great about this field?
Well, Digital Marketing is a great space for you, if:
- You thrive in Change
Digital Marketing is an ever-evolving career. Just when you think you know everything, something new, trendy and fresh comes along. Maybe new technological changes happen, or the trendy narrative shifts. It is a career guaranteed to keep you on your toes.
- You want personal satisfaction
Helping businesses grow their online presence and enable them to reach out to millions of people with their innovative or sustainable goods and services is truly rewarding.
- You want a career that isn’t going to become obsolete any time soon
The digital century has just started. And online marketing is not going to go away anywhere, anytime soon. The world needs businesses, businesses need marketing, and marketing needs a channel. And the most popular marketing channel is the digital channel.
If you identify with these reasons, congratulations! You have what it takes to become a Digital Marketing Expert.
But the real question is How?
In this post, we have compiled a list of 7 easy steps to becoming a self-made digital marketing expert.
Let’s get started!
- Know Your ‘Why’
Since, you are reading this post and have made it this far, we can safely assume that your goal is to be a Digital Marketing Expert.
It is good to have goals, and even better to be reading about how to achieve them but there is one question that often gets ignored in the midst of all this hustle.
Why?
Why do you want to be a digital marketer? What is pulling you towards this career?
The reasons are for you to know.
Maybe you have a business and you are going digital? Maybe you have a passion for marketing?
Whatever your motivator might be, a deep understanding of your ‘why’ is absolutely essential if you want to be able to brave the storm.
Being a digital marketer is no easy feat. It takes time and effort. It takes constant learning, confidence and a great amount of skills.
But if you know why you are putting in your blood, sweat and tears, the road might become just a tad bit easier. Your reasons and motivations will keep propelling you forward, even when you feel like giving up.
- Learn As Much as You Can
Digital Marketing branches off into a number of online strategies. You will need a good understanding of Content marketing, SEO (organic and paid, both), Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Website Design….and well, the list just goes on and on.
You should know that this list is never ending. There is always something new happening in the digital space that you would need to keep an eye on, just in case, it becomes the next big revolution in the sphere of marketing.
This may sound overwhelming but luckily, there are tons of digital marketing resources available online, most of them even free!
We have included the best three resources to get you started:
- A Digital Marketing Course
An online digital marketing course will give you a solid understanding of digital marketing and its numerous branches. You’ll learn the ropes with experts and get a taste of their true and tried strategies.
You can even go a step further with a Marketing Certification. This will prove your knowledge and skills to your future employers, to a great extent giving you a great amount of credibility.
- Keep Up With the Trends
Get on social media. Follow experts on Twitter. Join groups on Facebook. Get insights on LinkedIn. Just throw yourself into the best marketing arenas on social media and pay attention.Second, read blogs.
There are a ton of marketing bogs packed with actionable advice. Take some time out to go through them, note down the crux of it. Pose questions.
Keep learning and reading and observing until you are able to connect the dots behind the most innovative marketing strategies. - Build a Website
Get your hands a little dirty, and instead of just reading, DO!
The best way to learn something quickly is to practise it.
A self-made digital marketer must go through the regular trial and error method, even more so than others.
Learn the process of building a blog, an online business or website because you’ve done it yourself.
By doing, you will learn the shortcuts and best ways of doing a task. Separate the useful and the unnecessary.
Think about it for a moment. What kind of digital marketing expert would you be if you didn’t have a solid digital presence in the form of say, a website?
A website won’t break the bank, so don’t worry about the money.
Here’s a breakdown of the website essentials:
- Website hosting —$100-$150 per year
- A domain —$12-$14 per year
- A content management system — WordPress is free and is the most popular CMS out there.
- A website theme —you can either use a free theme or buy a premium theme. Premium themes can range from $50-$150.
Affordable, isn’t it?
If you are still unsure, why don’t you practise with someone else’s resources. Test out the strategies on other online businesses. Help someone else out, and in the process, gain an experience for yourself and for your portfolio.
A win-win situation, right?
Here’s the catch – their business is theirs, not yours.
Yes, you can test out marketing strategies and create a portfolio using another business.
But with your own website, you can try out marketing strategies, start a portfolio, AND build your brand.
Credibility is pretty necessary in the online space with plagiarism, unoriginality and blatant stealing festering everywhere. Your brand will boost your credibility and help you down the road.
So, which option should you go for?
Answer: Both of them.
Build your website and take these opportunities as they come your way.
- Test Out the Waters
Work on driving traffic to your website.
Here are 2 important strategies to start with: - Content Marketing
Content marketing is all about:
- Targeting your audience with a buyer’s persona
- Satisfying the needs of your users
- Using content to build long-lasting customers
Content builds your reputation and shapes your brand into something truly unique only to you.
The easiest way of dabbling in content marketing is by starting a blog. If blogging sounds too old-fashioned, you can try creating videos, infographics, landing pages etc.
- SEO
Just as with content, you need a deeper understanding of SEO. It helps online businesses rank high on Google at a low cost.
76% of the marketers are found to use organic traffic to determine how successfully their content is resonating with the viewers.
If your content doesn’t rank high on Google, who’s going to see it?
Bonus is that content marketing and SEO go together like bread and butter.
Content remains hidden without SEO, and SEO will be able to do nothing without content.
While we are on that note, let us tell you that your future client will expect you to know the following:
On-Page SEO — This includes keywords, linking, readability, and headlines.
Off-Page SEO — This is tracking your analytics such as your bounce rate and click-through rate.
How to Audit a Website — SEO auditing is analysing other factors that may affect your ranking. For example, website speed.
As you practise these tactics and create content, you will get a hang of pairing content marketing with SEO in the best possible way.
It’s important to add here that other marketing strategies are equally useful and we will discuss more about that later in the post. - Track Your Success
Prove your success with data.
As a digital marketer, you’ll need to learn how to track your client’s website and content with analytics.
Your online traffic, in particular, has to be measured. You need to know if your content is driving users to your business.
A few useful tools to measure online traffic:
Google Analytics — A huge part of digital marketing is being seen on Google. With that in mind, Google Analytics is the #1 tool you’ll need. It analyses your website’s traffic, such as your bounce rate, page visits and PPC advertising.
Search Engine Platforms — Search engine platforms track your content and how well it’s ranking. Most platforms track keywords, analyse links, and compare your content to other sites.
Facebook Ads Reporting — Facebook ads track paid-per-click advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. Many online businesses use PPC advertising on these social media handles. It’s a common practise to use PPC along with SEO, so it’s only wise to know both.
Remember, Data doesn’t lie. - Try Other Digital Marketing Strategies
So you have content marketing and SEO down, AND you’ve analysed your traffic using analytics. But to step up your game, you should first be a jack of all trades before becoming the master of any one.
It’s not just to build up your skills and adaptability, it is the requirement of this field. Different businesses have different requirements. One may get more success on social media while the other may build traffic through PPC.
Here’s a quick list of marketing strategies to look into:
- Email Marketing
How many times do you check your email every day?
We know the answer.
B2B marketers rated email as the most important channel for content marketing. Emails are popular both in B2C and B2B spheres. So, it’s a necessary skill to learn.
- Affiliate Marketing
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could earn money just by linking another site to your post?
That’s called Affiliate Marketing.
When you link to an affiliate partner’s site, it improves their SEO and drives more sales. So if a customer buys a product through your link in your blog post, your affiliate partner will give you a percentage of the profit.
- PPC Advertising
Paid-per-click advertising continues to be used along with organic search. While it’s known to be used on Google, it’s fast gaining popularity on various social media handles. - Marketing Technology
As AI becomes the norm, so does marketing technology. Automation comes with its own benefits and challenges, but it’s a strategy to become familiar with as marketers transition to it. It’s one of those changes you have to keep up with.
Remember that these are just a few of the many types of online marketing strategies out there. - Show-off your skills
After gaining the requisite skills, it’s time to show the world what you can do.
A portfolio is a sure shot way of building your personal brand, but for the sake of diversification here are a few other ways to get clients:
- Build Your Social Media Presence
Connections are everything in the digital world. Social media is your platform to voice your expertise with fellow professionals and potential customers.
Twitter, for example, is a great platform to share quick insights and tips about digital marketing.
What content you use on what platform will depend on your target demographic.
- Guest Post
Guest posting is when you write articles for other digital marketing sites.
Your website will grow popular when a large audience sees your posts on reputable sites. The key is posting on websites with high domain authority.
Most blogging sites encourage this facility with pages marked as ‘Write for Us’ or ‘Contribute to our blog’.
You can also search, “write for us” (add your niche here) on Google.
Like SEO, generating leads from guest posts doesn’t happen overnight. You have to be consistent with it.
- Use Your Knowledge
Now that you have gained the knowledge and expertise in digital marketing, it’s time to use your insights and data to create a buyer’s persona and target your audience
Who’s coming to your site? How are they finding you? What can you do to lead them to your services?
Ask yourself these questions to contribute your time to the essential. Remember to use analytics to track your results.Key Takeaways
Hopefully, this article will guide you well on your path to becoming a great digital marketing expert.
We have created a summary of this post in case the full version was a bit too much to absorb at once: - Understand Your Motives
Your answer as to why you want to become a Digital Marketer may end up changing your whole approach and perspective to this career path. And it can be a good thing too. You just need to ensure that you are doing this for the right reasons to save time and energy. Your ‘why’ will keep pushing you through this struggle when things get tough, which they will. - Be in the Know
Digital marketing is changing as you read this article!
Keep up with the trends with social media and digital marketing blogs. Use these insights to enhance your strategies and to understand your audience’s wants and pain points.
- Practice Makes Perfect
It’s not easy to get a hang of anything on the very first attempt. Hence, keep practising. Digital marketing is all about trial and error. Some things will work, and others won’t. That’s a fact.Celebrate your successes, persevere through the blocks, and learn from the failures. Digital Marketing is a very exciting field, approach it with that intensity of passion.