Now more than ever many brands are leveraging digital channels to connect with their audience as well as drive growth for their businesses. As a result, the need for skilled digital marketers has become high in demand.
Brands and even people that don’t know they need digital marketers sure know that they need someone to do things like: create (text/visual) content for their websites and social media pages, optimize their contents to reach more people, manage their social media pages, run an ad for them, etc.
As many companies struggle to get their feet back on the ground because of the pandemic, the need for digital marketers has increased. This is the point you would want to say; “thank God I am a digital marketer…!”
Yes, digital marketers are high in demand, but what kind of a digital marketer are companies looking for? The truth is that skilled and capable digital marketers are high in demand. According to McKinley Marketing Partners’ Marketing Hiring Trends Reports, “digital marketing continues to be the most sought-after skill set”.
We are sure that when you look around your network, you will notice that many people are now digital marketers. The question is how good are they at digital marketing?
If you are looking to build a career in digital marketing then you need to be at the top of your games to beat the competition. To do that you have to ensure you acquire the right digital skills that employers today are looking for.
I know that you must have heard many times that content is king when it comes to digital marketing. Well, it is true because if there is no content there will be nothing to market to people online.
Online brands know that they need to create high quality and compelling content to engage with their audience and to attract new people to their brands.
No doubt, content is indeed an integral aspect of digital marketing. Brands look for people that can create, plan, strategize and market compelling contents.
Nowadays, anyone that can create compelling, SEO friendly content is in high demand from a large range of recruiters in the digital marketing space and even recruiters from other fields.
Aside from the fact that content is ‘king’ in digital marketing, content touches almost every aspect of a complete digital marketing strategy. Regardless of the niche, you play in, understanding the value of compelling content is what will eventually help you retain and attract new customers.
When someone mentions digital marketing, the first thing that comes to the minds of many is the “internet, social media”. Well, this is not wrong, but there is more to digital marketing than social media platforms. SEO (search engine optimization) is another core aspect of digital marketing.
If you want to land a digital marketing job soon, then learning about search engine optimization is the way to go. Search engine optimization deals with the different ways you can make web contents visible to search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
These days, most people search for different things on search engines. When they search, they are likely to click on the results on the first page (preferably the first or second result). As an SEO, you want your content or your client’s content to come out top in search result pages.
The thing is that search engine algorithms are constantly changing, so you have to keep learning. You can start learning about SEO by knowing the following:
Yes, we know that almost everyone has a social media account, but not everyone understands the dynamics of social media marketing and advertising. No doubt, social networks have a highly engaged audience that anyone can take advantage of, but how easy is it?
There are many people on social media, but at the same time, there are loads of contents pouring in almost every second of the day. With the amount of content that is available on social media, it is easy for someone’s content to get lost in the pool of thousands of posts.
This is where you come in. As a social media marketer, you would want to ensure that your content and that of your clients get seen. One of the ways you can achieve this through sponsored posts, paid ads, and influencer relationship.
As a social media marketer, you can help companies maximize their reach with paid social media advertising.
The fact that you can market products and services to people using social media platforms to target the right audience makes it a great skill.
Social media allows you to build your brand and reach the target audience with tailored paid promotions and with contents that interest them. To build your social media marketing career, you can take this free social media online course by Buffer.
Tools you need to horn your social media marketing skills:
Almost every brand indeed has its space online (it is either they have a website or a social media platform), but most of these brands still struggle with decision-making.
You might say that brands have access to huge data especially with the different available tools like conversion tracking cookies, analytics, video view tools, etc. Yes, brands have access to tools that can help them get data, but data is useless if you cannot derive useful information from it.
This is where you come in as a data analyst. As a data analyst, it is your job to help brands and individuals read the mountain of data they have at their disposal and help them turn it into useful information.
Brands are looking for digital marketing experts to help them read the data they have so that they can make business decisions.
Asides from the fact that data analysis equips you with the ability to find out the challenges that brands are facing in the digital space, it also gives you the power to profer solutions. A great data analysis skill makes you a business problem-solver in the digital world.
You can also transfer your data analysis skills to other fields and businesses.
If you want to get better at data analysis, then resources like Google analytics Academy and HubSpot Inbound Academy is a great place for you to get started.
When it comes to digital marketing, email marketing is one of the oldest marketing forms to reach a wide range of audience. Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies because it allows you the opportunity to reach out to a target audience that needs your product and service.
Even if email marketing is considered the mainstay in the digital marketing space, you still have to learn new email marketing tactics to cater for the needs of your company or clients.
Big brands and businesses are looking for digital marketers that are skilled with email marketing to help them retain and grow their email subscribers.
Email marketing is a valuable digital marketing skill because it is flexible, which means that it could be used for a variety of things. Great email marketing can convert leads, engage customers, build customer loyalty, etc.
Having an understanding of computer languages like HTML, CSS, and other languages is a great addition to your digital marketing skill. You don’t need to be an expert in coding to be a digital marketer, but even a basic coding skill can help you stand out among other digital marketers.
Your knowledge of coding will attract employers to you because they know that you can troubleshoot some problems without the help of an IT expert to make recommendations and improvements.
Understanding a programming language as a digital marketer allows you to perform a complexity of tasks, and you would be able to make useful suggestions about online strategies. Your ability to code will enable you:
Conversion rate optimization is one skill you should acquire if you want to land a big digital marketing job soon. Getting traffic and visitors to a website or followers to a social media page is a lot of achievement and a mark of success to you as a digital marketer.
While this is great, business owners that have little knowledge of the digital space don’t care about that. All they want to know is; how much of their product or services you have been able to sell with your strategies at a particular time.
If you want to stand out as a digital marketer, you have to learn to optimize your company or client’s website to turn visitors into paying and loyal customers.
How can you achieve this?
Creating the right content, design, appropriate CTA, and user experience for each of your product/service page on your service page will do a lot to improve your conversion rate.
While other digital marketing skills like content creation, SEO, etc. helps you drive traffic to a website, conversion rate optimization equips you with the skill to meet the most pressing business need which is to get more people to buy product or services.
To better optimize conversion rate, you need to have a deep understanding of Google analytics, A/B testing tool to have an understanding of strategies that can work. Tools like HotJar are great to have too.
Being a good digital marketer involves a lot that many people are not aware of and this is what can help you stand out among others. Project management is one of the skills that recruiters are looking for in digital marketers.
As a digital marketer, you would have to take on different projects from time to time. Whether it is a blog post, an e-book, or even a product launch, employers are looking for a digital marketer that can take up a project effectively from ideation to completion.
Regardless of the project, you may have to work with other people like writers, web developers, social media marketers, etc. Regardless of the kind of people you work with as a digital marketer, your project management skill will ensure you create a process, set deadlines, and provide instructions while moving the project forward.
What makes project management a valuable digital marketing skill is that it allows you to create an effective campaign with a combination of a brand’s digital resources and its human resources.
Your project management skill will ensure you help brands convert their digital marketing ideas into actionable, tangible plans that involve other team members. This will help you break down complex digital ideas into a well-defined task for both you and your team members.
Digital marketing is no doubt one of the most sought after skills in today’s job market, but how equipped are you to land a digital marketing job? Employers are not just looking for digital marketers, but digital marketers with the top skills listed above.
If you want to build a career in digital marketing, you must be committed to learning new things regularly. Are you currently looking for digital marketing opportunities? See the latest digital marketing jobs in Kenya today.
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