If you use the internet, you are a victim of being prompted to do things at the will of digital marketers. These guys are smart chaps, who work for almost all kinds of businesses and have only one goal, persuade people fiddling on the internet to take some pre-planned actions. Do you want to join this league of Digital Marketing Specialists? Then read on.
After reading the intro, you might feel like there is some kind of digital mafia that makes us act how we act on the internet. It is somewhat true. But it’s not a mafia. It is a marketer trying to give you options to choose from. Each one of them pitching their product. Some of them are mediocre with their job, and some of them are specialists. In order to become a digital marketing specialist, you need to know some deep shit.
Let me first talk tell you about a few questions we as digital marketers receive often.
How to do Digital Marketing like a Pro?
This is a question that is repeated often on digital marketing forums. The answer is simple yet complex. I would say, be a digital marketing expert and things will change. You will be able to think and execute awesome campaigns with ease. It is just about your mental capacity and technical ability to do this that you do well in digital marketing.
What is a Digital Marketing Specialist’s Salary?
Digital Marketing Specialist Salary Source – Seek
The simple answer is that the salary of a digital marketing specialist will vary. In India, a specialist can earn up to 30 lakhs per annum. I will keep the base salary at a minimum of 10 lakhs per annum. Most digital marketing specialists will work as managers. If money is your only driving force then you may opt to be a freelancer or an agency owner. Your opportunities to earn as a digital marketing specialist will grow in multitudes.
Anyways, getting back to the topic. I know I digress a lot. Here I am listing the top 7 tips that I feel are of profound value to people interested in becoming a Digital Marketing Specialist.
Btw, do you know that according to MarketingProfs, ‘More than 50% of businesses are not able to find a Digital Marketing Specialist for their team’
1. Understand the Role of a Digital Marketing Specialist
In the world of Digital Marketing, even a generalist has to be a specialist. That’s something weird!? You guessed it right.
In Digital Marketing, you might have channel experts, but at the same time, you also have a leader who knows all these channels inside out. A channel specialist is not a full-stack digital marketer. He only knows his channel and can work to enhance that.
At the same time, a Digital Marketing Specialist needs to know all the channels and understand the ROI on each. That’s how a specialist can create a budget and a strategy.
So, what do we learn here? Digital Marketing Specialist needs to know some technology, SEO, Copywriting, Blogging, PPC, E-Mail Marketing, Social Media Marketing and has to have his hands deep soaked in Web Analytics.
An online marketing specialist needs to manage his team, so he would be the point where errors and problems are escalated to. He needs to have answers for bugs, problems and failures. He has to have the solutions.
Do you think it is an unattainable foot? Nay, not really! Read on to understand how to go about becoming a Digital Marketing Specialist.
2. Learn All the Channels of Digital Marketing
Digital Marketing Channels Source – School of Digital Marketing
After you have understood the overall role of a Digital Marketing Specialist which creates a strategy and to predict ROI, you have to move further. Oh yes, I missed something, he also should know how to manage the whole online campaign with various stakeholders involved.
Now the channels of Digital Marketing are many. The most important ones are SEO, PPC, Blogging, Inbound, Social Media, and E-Mail. There are supporting subjects that you will need to study. They are analytics and design.
The best way to learn all this is by taking a well established digital marketing course. Never settle for a mediocre course, go for the best. If you are investing your time money and effort in something, make sure that it is only in the best of the lot.
3. Execute Whatever You Learn
Make sure that you work on all the channels listed earlier. You have to have a fundamental understanding of each of them. Just having an understanding will not do, you rather need to be hands-on each of them.
Execution is what will make your learning effective and will also reveal your strengths. Some people, for example, are good with long form content, while others are good with writing just snippets. Some people host great podcasts, others are simply camera shy.
Once you work on each of these channels, you will pick points from personal experience. Those small things that you are going to pick is a sure treasure. Something that you will cherish lifelong. That is what will give you a reasonable understanding of strategy making.
4. Specialise in an Organic Channel & a Paid Channel
Once you have adequate knowledge of each channel, you should take up a few main channels on which you can concentrate. These would be organic and paid respectively.
If a person is good with social media, he may work on lead generation or branding through it, all using paid budgets. Someone with good technical expertise can take deeper interest in technical SEO, UI/UX and automation.
5. Get Yourself a Full-Time Job in an SME
If you are serious about becoming a Digital Marketing Expert, you should get yourself a job at an SME or a startup. This helps you to work on creating things from scratch. Nothing is already built to be milked. It will drain you out, but you will rise a better Marketer and a stronger executor.
And to become a top digital marketing specialist, you can look for nothing less than this. Or let me say, anything more than that. Getting your hands dirty, creating automation, blogs, profiles and everything that you can think of in the online marketing game.
Working in an SME means that you work in smaller teams and you work close to each other. You have a complete view of what others around you are doing. Nothing is hidden from you. People will also come to support you on things that you don’t know. They will be willing to share the tactics that you are using.
In a nutshell, you grow more at an SME and a startup, only if you are passionate about a top-notch digital marketing Career. If you start working in an MNC, you will only understand the campaign you run and not get an overall idea of how they execute their digital marketing. Example, there is a department for content writing, another for web design, another for social media etc. So, it is hard for you to pick all these skills without having a clue about how they are being done.
6. Start Your Own Website
Start Your Own Website Source – WebGen
You might or might not have your own website. In any case, you need one. Invest an hour a day on your own venture. Have a business model in your mind and don’t just start a blog or a website for the sake of it.
I say this because the ultimate aim of having any Marketing activity done is drawing revenue. If you don’t do it, you will never understand the complexity involved in turning visitors into customers. And nurturing loyalty in your existing customers.
Running campaigns with ROI in mind is far more complex than running campaigns to seek impressions and visitors.
7. Experiment a Lot
On your own website, you have plenty of opportunities to learn and grow. There is no fear of getting fired if you wreak havoc. Experiment a lot. And I mean it, experiment a LOT. Change the positions of the forms, fiddle with the CTA, the colours, fonts and your e-mail campaigns.
One fine day you will get to that secret recipe. By the time you reach there, you will have a very strong understanding of overall digital marketing. By this time you will have studied digital marketing first hand, executed campaigns along with teams where some members are no short of being digital marketing superstars, created a website from scratch, working on it to get traffic. And finally, you have some experience in generating real ROI on your activities.
Now isn’t that a super recipe for success?
Conclusion
If you follow the above-mentioned steps religiously, it is highly likely that you will become a digital marketing specialist sooner than later. Most people do not try to learn and execute things hands-on and that’s where they fall.
So follow this path and you will soon realise it’s importance. By the way, this was how I learnt and became a Digital Marketing Specialist.
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