Marketing is not about pitching to prospects, it’s about communicating with people. It’s comprehending what resonates best with them and why, and delivering value on those terms. It’s not asking them to buy, it’s constructing trust so that when the time comes for them to make a decision, they willingly choose you.
Digital marketing is no different; it’s just that the dialogue occurs over electronic arenas. While the soft skills required for marketing have not changed like communication, curiosity, and empathy, the hard skills for digital marketing are slightly different. Over the last 10 years, digital marketing spending has surpassed traditional advertising and is now forecasted to reach $146 billion by 2023. At the same time, we’ve seen the demand for digital skills skyrocket, with digital roles in the media space growing 30% faster than other functions from 2011 to 2016.
The digital marketing industry is huge, and it can be tough to navigate for beginners or those looking to find their niche. So, how do you set yourself apart from competitors and fast-track your path up the corporate ladder? There are tons of digital marketing skills that are relevant for the future.
Check out these 5 vital things that will act as a magic wand for you in this ever-changing digital marketing industry.
1. Social Media Marketing
There is a lot more to social media marketing than just posting on Facebook. You should know how to generate user engagement on all platforms, build ads, create visuals and analyze reach and engagement. You also need to understand all of the rapid changes on each platform and when to utilize different platforms for different internal business goals. Social media marketing has traditionally created a medium where brands could easily share content with an audience. Over the years, this use case has rapidly evolved. With brands now focussing on delivering tangible business value through social media platforms, it’s never been more important for social media marketers to embrace data-driven strategies that drive conversion-based outcomes.
As a result, the skills required to be an effective social media marketer now include competency in analyzing performance data, making data-driven decisions, and developing agile strategies based on insights. With new industry updates being released each week, building agile strategies around new trends has become a crucial part of a social media manager’s role. Community management also goes hand-in-hand with social media management skills because it’s about seizing every opportunity you have to develop a better relationship with your customers.
2. SEO & SEM
A well-written blog post or newsletter is useless if the right people don’t find it. Remember, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are the social media strategies responsible for driving traffic to your website. A deeper understanding of it translates to better execution of your social media marketing strategies. If your company isn’t positioned near the top of search results, it may as well be invisible – meaning social media marketers benefit from having an SEO strategy to drive web traffic and improve lead generation. Organic search results are about 8.5x more likely to be clicked than paid search results, so it is IMPERATIVE to understand and utilize search engine optimization (SEO) in a digital marketing career.
Search engine optimization, as you know, is a usual part of the client journey for just about any industry. Whether they’re seeking the nearest cinema, looking at catering options for an upcoming occasion, a hair salon for kids, or comparing features for a car, consumers look to search engines to assist them to make optimistic purchasing decisions. As such, knowing how to get a business to appear for relevant searches is a crucial digital marketing platform. With the worldwide web becoming more crowded each day, it’s important to stay updated and be fully aware of the latest algorithm updates and factors that affect search ranking. That is how SEO digital marketing works.
3. Data Analytics
To be an effective internet marketer, you need to get comfortable with data. That’s because you have to be able to consult and interpret data in order to track the success of your projects and campaigns. Data analytics refers to the use of functional techniques and modern software to collect and process extensive collections of data forms, and various online interactions in your target market. These interactions come in different forms such as online transactions, content consumed, search queries, and other online footprints relevant to your business.
No matter what facet of internet marketing you are going into, Google Analytics will probably be central to your strategy. Monitoring and reporting via such tools are pretty straightforward, but the tricky part is how to gather and use that information to help you learn more about consumer behavior and apply it to new solutions that boost traffic and conversions.
Close to 90% of social media marketers use Google Analytics to measure the performance of social media campaigns as the ability to make data-driven decisions is now essential to optimize ROI and efficiency. True mastery of Google Analytics, however, can unlock several other benefits, allowing social media marketers to create an end-to-end analytics strategy that spans behavior tracking, data collection, and insight development. They can also transform data into meaningful, detailed reports that can be understood by internal and external stakeholders.
4. Basics of Editing
In the world of internet marketing, it can’t be all about text. So much of digital marketing today is driven by visuals. Content on all of the social media platforms performs better when accompanied by great images. As a digital wizard, you need to know how to create and edit your visuals. Basic photo and video editing skills can save your team money since you’ll be able to handle simple videos in-house (video editors, in particular, can get pricey). And a well-edited photo can be the difference between a blog post that gets a hundred shares and one that people skip over.
You don’t need to become a design expert, but it’s important to know how customers are interacting with your products, digital offerings, and campaigns. A good digital marketer should know how to identify user needs, conduct user research, develop personas, and create intuitive and navigable layouts. If you’re a beginner, using editing software can be a daunting prospect. What if you can’t get a handle on technology? What if it’s too complicated a process? What if it’s just too time-consuming? What if the images turn out horrible? So many what-ifs! I get it, I’ve been there. The great news is you don’t have to learn advanced tools like Adobe Premiere or Photoshop to create high-quality photos and videos. There are dozens of free tools for digital marketers out there, including editing apps that make it foolproof to rework photos and videos right on your smartphone using templates and presets.
5. Power of CRO
You are on the verge of excelling in the magic of internet marketing. Great! But you’re not a digital marketing wizard yet. What good does it do anyone if none of these visitors takes action on your site? This is where the skill of conversion rate optimization or CRO comes in to complete the picture. The point of an online marketing strategy should be to drive traffic to a website and convert that traffic to customers. CRO is the art of testing different website pages, copy, and call-to-action (CTAs) to see what converts the best. It combines the art of website design, copywriting, and user experience.
There are many different steps you must take to create a website that persuades browsers to act. That action could be enquiring about a service, making a purchase, creating an account, subscribing to a mailing list, or getting in touch. There are numerous reasons why digital marketing teams are increasingly spending their time and money on professional CRO training. You can capitalize on your existing traffic without having to spend money on search engine optimization, PPC, and other traffic-generating methods. A higher conversion rate leads to more repeat business and greater customer retention. Conversion rate optimization allows you to win customers from your competitors which is some of the benefits of conversion rate optimization.
Nearly one-third of the population is currently using some type of digital media platform and 97 percent of the global share of companies use online marketing. This makes digital marketing an invaluable skill just like a wizard’s wand. A great digital marketing wizard will have the ability to adapt quickly and learn on their own, even be ready to pivot into different digital careers as they choose or as needed should old skills become less in demand.
