Skills Required To Be A Digital Marketer
More than just passion and interest, Digital Marketing is a profession that requires a wide variety of skills and talents. There are some aspects of the job that demand deep knowledge, while others are skills that you learn and develop as you grow professionally. The skills that you’ll need to be successful also depend on where you work and what you do.
Here’s a list of skills that are always greatly appreciated, and can definitely help you with your career if you use them the right way!
We’ve listed out some of the top qualities we focus on helping you learn and develop here at CDA – so dive in!
SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing)
The primary goal of a Digital Marketer is to market products and services digitally, meaning people should see what we’re doing. All your hard work is wasted if no one can see your output. The first and, probably, most important step in connecting with your audience is driving traffic to your web assets, particularly your landing pages. To be a successful Digital Marketer, you must be adept at utilising SEO and SEM to their full potential.
SOCIAL MEDIA
It should go without saying that Digital Marketers should be well-versed in all of the social media platforms they use to share content and engage with customers. Each site has its own quirks; you’ll need to know what works and what doesn’t, when and what to publish, and how to modify your tone to appeal to different audiences who use different platforms. Digital Marketers can prioritise numerous strategies within social media marketing, such as social listening, live-streaming, direct messaging, and hashtagging.
DATA ANALYTICS
While Digital Marketers don’t need to be as skilled with data analytics as, say, a Data Scientist, they should know how to use Google Analytics and other analysis tools. The Digital Marketer’s most valuable source of audience insight is their detailed information about where your traffic comes from—the most appealing keywords, the most popular times of day, and invaluable data on your audience’s age, gender, and location breakdown, as well as their interests and the devices they’re using to reach you.
While Digital Marketers don’t need to be as skilled with data analytics as, say, a Data Scientist, they should know how to use Google Analytics and other analysis tools. The Digital Marketer’s most valuable source of audience insight is their detailed information about where your traffic comes from—the most appealing keywords, the most popular times of day, and invaluable data on your audience’s age, gender, and location breakdown, as well as their interests and the devices they’re using to reach you.
PAY-PER-CLICK & SM ADVERTISING
If a Digital Marketer’s budget includes advertising, they’ll need to know what to spend it on and where to spend it to get the most bang for their buck. This covers both direct advertising and platforms like Google Ads, as well as social media ads and sponsored postings on numerous websites around the web. Spending the right amount in the right places at the right time decides the success of a campaign.
STORYTELLING
Excellent storytelling abilities (including writing, editing, and visual storytelling) are always a plus for a Digital Marketer, whether it’s tagging an Instagram post or writing a 1000 word essay for a blog. It’s critical to be able to express your ideas not only coherently, but also in a way that seems compelling to the individuals you want to attract, especially when it comes to content marketing. Blogs on themes relevant to your audience are a key tool in SEO.
BASIC DESIGN SKILLS
While larger teams may have a dedicated art department with Graphic Designers or even UI/UX Designers, everyday chores like picking and modifying photos for the company’s social media feeds or putting together the layout for an email newsletter are generally left to the Digital Marketer. Basic design abilities, such as how to organise information for legibility, are extremely useful in this situation. This frequently starts with an instinctive grasp of the customer’s experience.
EMAIL MARKETING
Being able to communicate with your customers via email is a very effective marketing method. It’s simple to send out email campaigns; it’s far more difficult to send out efficient email campaigns. Email campaigns are regularly used by big brands like Zomato and Myntra, and can definitely show an increase in customer interaction. So better learn to reel people in with emails!
CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING
As a Digital Marketer, whatever you’re attempting to accomplish, your competitors are most certainly attempting to accomplish the same thing. Your competitive advantage comes from your capacity to innovate and out-think them, and develop innovative answers to all of the other difficulties that arise throughout the day, from identifying new paths to your consumers to devising new ways to capture and hold their attention.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
When a Digital Marketer creates a multi-phase plan that will be implemented over weeks or months, all of these abilities come together. This, of course, necessitates meticulous planning, a forward-thinking approach, and a keen eye for future trends. Successful digital marketers are insatiably curious about how things operate and how they’re changing, both in their own industry and around the world. Keeping up with these trends necessitates continuous study.
SALES AND PERSUASION
Your duty as a marketer is to persuade individuals to change their beliefs. Obviously, learning the art of selling will benefit you! But the power of persuasion isn’t restricted to the hard pitch; it’s also vital when building a strong brand image over time, or even trying to persuade your colleagues to support a new campaign idea.
Now that you’ve got an idea about some of the different skills it is important to have as a Digital Marketer, from the must-haves to the must-learns, take some time to figure out which these skills you have! And if you don’t have an essential skill, then take the time to develop it!