Digital marketing is a wide term. In layman language, it is a marketing where one promotes their products/services online or on internet. But if we go in-depth, it is more than promoting product/services. Digital marketing is a platform where buyer can directly interact with their target audience, can analyse preference and lifestyle through campaigns. But to run campaign, a digital marketing professional should have understanding of their customers. He should have understanding of various digital marketing channels, Google tools for analysis, content creation and many more. Tips to become best digital marketing professional are discussed below.
Digital marketer should have an ability to identify the opportunities and strategies to take the right action.
Let’s discuss in detail, how one can become efficient digital marketing professional
1. Understanding the core/basic concept of digital marketing:
As a digital marketing professional, one should have clear understanding of various digital marketing channels:
- Website Marketing
- Search Engine Marketing (includes SEO and PPC advertising)
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Video Marketing
Digital marketer should know these channels in-depth and know how to use it. These channels are used to promote a website or product online.
Digital marketing professional should know their customer’s need and demand. He should also have clear understanding of sales funnel and how to relate it with customers need.
2. Content:
This is the vital part in digital marketing. To run an online campaign, for creating website, or any marketing to be done on digital platform, digital content plays an important tool. Few points to take in consideration while creating content is, it should:
- Be Interesting and attractive
- fulfil the demand of user
- Be optimized on each platform
- Increase rank of the page,
- Create leads and helps in conversion
- unique
- An eye catcher
Digital marketing content should be flexible, creative and should have personal touch. It can be in any form of audio, text, animation, video where digital marketing professional can deliver his ideas to the target audience.
It is the duty of digital marketer professional to create the content according to target audience for the campaign.
3. Search Engine Optimisation:
For a successful campaign, one needs to understand the process, type and technique of SEO. On-page and off-page optimization techniques should be implemented by the digital markete
On page optimization consist of:
- URL Optimization
- Content Optimization
- Keyword Optimization
- Image
- ALT Text
- Internal Link
- External Link
Off page consist of:
- Social media marketing. For example, Facebook, Instagram
- E-mail marketing
- Blogging
- Backlinks
- Domain authority
- Page authencity
- Link building
SEO skills should be developed by digital marketers and should have good expertise in it.
4. Digital Paid marketing:
Digital paid marketing consists of:
- Pay-per click
- Display ads
- Retargeting
- Paid influencers
- Paid content promotions
- Social media ads, like Facebook ads
Digital marketing expert should know various channels of paid digital marketing and have the ability to identify the right tool for the right campaign. one of the important points, a digital marketer should be able to measure (ROI) return of investment on these tools.
5. Social Media Marketing:
Social media marketing helps to interact with target audience and one can get instant feedback from customers. A digital marketing professional should make strategy i.e., which social media will be useful for which campaign and accordingly plan and publish the content. Social media marketing is best tool for engagement purpose. A Digital marketer must track the success of social media post so as to frame the next campaign effectively.
Popular social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, twitter, Pinterest
6. Marketing Analysis:
A Campaign is futile if not measured. Marketing analysis tells us about the campaign presence, customer insights, performance and many more details. (Refer the Diagram below). Tracking performance study of Analytics is a day-to-day task in digital marketing world.
There are various digital marketing tools which a digital marketing expert should have knowledge are:
- Google Analytics
- Facebook Ads Reporting
- Google Search Console
- Moz
- Semrush
- Hubspot
7. Updated with the latest changes:
A digital marketing professional should keep himself updated with day-to-day changes.
This can be done through:
Personal Research: One can collect knowledge from podcast, online articles.
Networking: Networking is an important to know the latest changes and trends in digital marketing world. Digital marketer should attend various seminars and conferences. Creating groups with other digital marketing professional and can discuss on the latest trends and challenges in digital marketing.
Learning: Google has made lots of update in their search engines and crawlers in these recent years and are currently making changes every day. The changes are continuous and a digital marketer should learn these changes every day. One need to accept the changes and use it as an opportunity.
8. Basic Designing Skill:
A digital marketer should use his hands on basic graphic designing. Canva or adobe photoshop are the common graphic tools used to make design for the campaign. This helps the marketer to be self-reliable and can cater to all needs of the client.
9. Communication skills:
A digital marketer should excel his soft skills. A digital marketer should learn the art of selling. He should be a good story teller and know how to engage his users. He should know how to deliver his ideas clearly. He should have the art of persuasion which help to build a strong goodwill and brand image.
10. Practical Knowledge:
With the theoretical knowledge, a digital marketer should have done practical implementation on various digital marketing tools. This can be done through:
- Internships
- Live projects
- Freelancing
- Job
A marketer should be well aware of the external challenges and with the help of real-life experiences, he must learn how to convert challenges into opportunities.
11. Digital marketing portfolio
A digital marketer should build his portfolio over the time. He should work on his resume and LinkedIn account and should be able to express his experience and challenges faced in each campaign and his key learning. With this experience, he can attract many users and can become a mentor of other digital marketing aspiring professionals.
There are many certifications in Digital marketing journey. One should complete these certifications and can become certified digital marketing professional. These certification works as a booster for getting a good job.
Key Learnings
To become an efficient digital marketing expert, one needs to have knowledge of digital marketing concepts and tools. a digital marketer should have clear understanding of process and steps involved in running a campaign and how one can deliver it to target audience.
He should possess these qualities:
- Problem solver
- Leadership
- Agile
- Can adapt to the changes
- curious
He should be able to plan each step strategically in the campaign. To be a successful digital marketer, one needs to have positive attitude and should be a continuous learner.