Digital marketing services are at an all-time high as companies grapple with keeping up with the time and ever-changing landscape of channels to manage and optimize for success. Becoming a digital marketer is now a well-defined career occupation. However, the bar to entry may be misleading as a vast bank of knowledge is to be learned here.
Companies know they must shift their marketing efforts and budgets to digital. As a result, four out of 10 marketing job listings now ask for digital marketing skills, and jobs in digital marketing are on the rise. For example, one study shows SEO jobs increased by 43 percent between 2017 and 2019, while content marketing jobs increased by 33 percent during that same time.
However, the people qualified to do these jobs are not keeping pace. According to data reported by MarketingProfs, over half of businesses struggle to find skilled professionals for marketing positions, with 46 percent citing the search as somewhat challenging and 7 percent claiming it to be challenging. Another study states that the demand for digital marketing talent was 56 percent in 2017, but the supply only 24 percent.
As digital marketing and the tools used to operate them have become more sophisticated, the need for specialized skillsets that offer a dedicated focus is in demand.
SEO Specialist
Some of the highest-paid digital marketing jobs are those specializing in SEO. This demand is partly because search engines like Google are constantly changing their algorithms, and businesses need SEO experts who stay up-to-date with these changes. But it’s also because SEO is hard to achieve, and it takes skill, persistence, and time to rank high in search engine results.
PPC Specialist
Pay-per-click is an Internet marketing model in which advertisers display ads on web pages but only pay for an ad when that ad is clicked. Essentially, it’s a way of buying visits to a website rather than attempting to earn those visits organically through SEO. It takes strong analytical skills, project management, and attention to detail to succeed in PPC.
Social Media Marketing Specialist
Users use social media to generate, share, or exchange content in information, ideas, pictures, or videos in virtual communities. As social media usage becomes more widespread, with over 3 billion users predicted by 2021, businesses and brands will need to be where their customers have a solid social media presence. And they’ll need to use those channels for marketing their goods and services.
Digital Marketing Specialist
If you’d instead not pursue a specialty such as SEO, PPC, or social media, you can choose the fourth learning path to become a digital marketing specialist. This fourth path gives you an in-depth understanding and advanced knowledge of the most critical digital marketing areas, so you can lead a team and make informed decisions regarding those digital marketing channels that best fit your company’s overall strategies and goals.
Tools of the Trade
You are only as good as the tools you know how to use. There are a lot of resources for marketers these days. From entry-level tools ranging to enterprise-level software, you’ll need to know your stuff to make as a digital marketer.
HubSpot Sales
Overview- Focused on the sales process as a whole, HubSpot Sales allows you to create and share e-mail templates. Every lead’s contact info, e-mail leads, and clicks get logged automatically.
Features
- Automated e-mails, including follow-up e-mails
- Works with Gmail, G Suite, and Outlook or Office 365 for Windows
- E-mail tracking, including open, click and reply data
- Customizable templates
Buffer
Overview- Buffer makes managing your social media easy. Nicknames like “The Siri of Social Media” and “Social Media Assistant” apply to Buffer. It allows you to optimize your posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, App.net, and Twitter, by scheduling them in advance; Buffer posts them at the best time based on time zone.
Features
- The free trial period for paid plans
- Detailed analytics
- Multiple social networks
- High security with two-step login
- Posts the same message to all platforms or customizes for each
Sprout Social
Overview Sprout Social provides solutions for social media management, marketing, analytics and customer service. It’s integrated with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and more. You’ll get excellent statistics across all of your interlinked social networking sites.
Features
- Social media dashboard
- Link performance analysis
- Can view Twitter follower demographics and contact details
- Discover customers by interest or by location
- Monitor competitor activity
- Customer relationship management tools
- Integrated analytics
- Free trial
Facebook’s Power Editor
Overview – A powerful tool designed for more significant Facebook advertisers, Power Editor lets you create, edit and publish multiple ads at once. Facebook’s Ad Manager is for beginners; Power Editor is a more advanced and effective way of managing ads.
Google Analytics
Overview – Google Analytics is a comprehensive freemium web analytics service available to anyone with a Google account. It helps you understand your site users and figure out which digital campaigns are working and which aren’t.
Features
- Custom reports
- Cross-device data
- Segmentation for analysis of subsets
- Built to work with Google’s other media and publisher products
Dropbox
Overview – Dropbox is a tool for sharing, saving, and syncing files. Files saved on Dropbox can be accessed from anywhere worldwide, including on mobile devices, and shared with people who don’t have a Dropbox account.
Most e-mail services limit the size of attachments, meaning large files generally can’t be sent over e-mail. However, photos, videos, Word documents, presentations, and spreadsheets can all be backed up and shared using Dropbox.
Features
- File storage and sharing
- Accessible from any device
- Preview ability
- Automatic updates
- Simple link sharing via e-mail, chat or text message
- Online backup and file recovery
- Offline access
Visual Website Optimizer
Overview Visual Website Optimizer lets you create various versions of your website and landing pages to see which would generate maximum sales. You can request a demo.
Features
- A/B testing
- Split URL and usability testing
- Behavioral and geographical targeting
- Revenue tracking
- Plug-ins and integration
- Real-time reports
Moz
Overview
Moz began as an SEO consulting company in 2004. It offers Moz Pro and Moz Local to help you improve search rankings to get more views and customers. Moz Pro is “the SEO toolset that’s got it all: keyword research, link building, site audits, and page optimization,” according to the website, while Moz Local helps with SEO-integrated business listings.
Moz Pro Features
- Industry-leading SEO metrics
- Many ranking tools
- Site audit tool identifies errors
- User-friendly analytics
- Free trial
SEMrush
Overview SEMrush helps you maximize your efforts in the areas of SEO, PPC, social media, content, and public relations. It offers info on best-performing posts, performance versus competition, strategy analysis, and trending topics.
Features
- Analytics cover organic, advertising and keyword research and more
- Data visualizations for fast competitive analysis
- Site audit
- Brand monitoring
- Position tracking
BuzzSumo
Overview – When you’re creating your marketing strategy, you’ll need to look for what is trending on sites and what is clicking with your audience. BuzzSumo is a tool that ranks content shared on social media sites based on the number of hits it gets. You can easily find who the most influential content curators or aggregators are within any niche.
BuzzSumo also gathers statistics on the industry’s influencers along with their associated websites. When used wisely and paired with some of the other tools on this list, the possibilities are endless.
Piktochart
Overview Piktochart helps you create professional-looking infographics even if you have no design experience. The tool provides over 100 templates that you can customize or fill out.
Features
- More than 600 professionally designed templates
- Very user-friendly interface
- Library of more than 4,000 images to use
- Import data from Excel or Google spreadsheet or Survey Monkey
Vimeo
Overview The top-rated Vimeo site is a platform that lets you view, upload, and share videos. It has primarily original content instead of TV shows and movies.
Features
- Can embed your logo into the video (Pro version)
- No ads before the video, unlike YouTube
- Supportive community
- Fewer videos than YouTube, so less competition for viewers
Unbounce
Overview Unbounce helps you build, publish, and test landing pages. In addition, the site provides an easy-to-use editor to create high-conversion landing pages.
Features
- Landing page and overlay templates
- Real-time stats
- A/B testing
- Lead generation tools
- Multiuser and client management
- Integrations
- Text replacement automatically changes selected keywords to match those used in search queries
- Free trial
Becoming a Best-In-Class Digital Marketer
Are you eager to propel your digital marketing career to the next level? The tactics above help you learn, grow, and excel as a digital marketer, both online and offline. A career in digital marketing can be rewarding, allowing you to understand your own goals and the world around you a bit better.
Suppose you aim to start a successful self-run digital marketing business and brand or a management position on your digital marketing team. In that case, the industry is full of opportunities for those willing to put in the time to hone their craft and adapt to changing demands.
Be sure to check out the INNERface Digital recruitments page and let us know if you’d like to join our expanding team of experts! We’re busy; please hurry!