Choosing a career path is a daunting process. You’re supposed to find something you love while also factoring in things like long-term stability and supporting the overall lifestyle you want.
A digital marketing career isn’t necessarily the dream job most people aspire to while they’re in school. But when you consider the opportunities in this dynamic field, you’ll see that the digital marketing career outlook is nothing but positive and will continue to be so in 2021.
The Digital Marketing Job Role Is Constantly Evolving
One of the reasons a digital marketing career is so exciting is that because the field is constantly evolving as different platforms are introduced. A digital marketing manager is always scoping out trends and seeing how they impact discoverability.
Building experience in digital marketing encompasses just about every facet of a brand’s presence online. As search engines roll out new updates, digital marketing managers determine how they impact website rankings. From there, the entire marketing team works together to create a strategy.
Why Digital Marketing Job Roles Are the Future?
While traditional marketing still has its place in the world, digital marketing is quickly taking over thanks to affordability and analytics.
Marketing managers are now able to see exactly where people are coming from, what they’re doing on the website, and which tactics produce the highest ROI. This data-driven approach makes it easier for professionals to prove their worth, and for leaders to see which strategies are most effective. Successes to be replicated over again, eliminating the guesswork for future campaigns.
What Is the Demand for Digital Marketers?
According to LinkedIn, the “Digital Marketing Specialist” role is among the top 10 most in-demand jobs, with 860,000 job openings. The most requested experience in digital marketing includes social media, content strategy, SEO, analytics, and more.
Because there are so many facets to digital marketing strategy, the number of related jobs is quite high. In fact, the industry is facing a crisis — the digital skills gap. A LinkedIn survey found a shortage of about 230,000 digital marketing professionals in major metro areas in the U.S.
With so many jobs and not enough professionals to fill them, now is the perfect time to get started in digital marketing.
How to Get Started With a Digital Marketing Role
As you get started in digital marketing, it’s important to understand the key specialties within the industry. There are many digital marketing job roles to consider, each with their own sets of skills to master.
Email Marketing
Email marketing sounds pretty self-explanatory — you send emails to targeted lists. But it’s that targeting that requires specialized skills.
Marketing emails are sent to lists of customers and prospects to drum up business and build awareness of products and services. They’re also frequently sent out to engage audiences, even when there’s no hard sale. It’s the email marketer’s job to test different subject lines, text, and formats to see which emails get the most attention.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
No matter what your experience looks like, Search Engine Optimization will probably play a significant role in digital marketing. It’s the backbone of every piece of content that’s written since all content has the goal of discoverability.
The digital marketing career outlook for SEO specialists is strong. There is a great need for professionals who understand social media, content quality scoring, competitive analysis, mobile search, and website analytics. These bases all must be covered to maximize online traffic.
Copywriting
As you gain experience in digital marketing, you’ll realize just how much writing is involved in the process. Copywriters produce a wide range of content, including taglines, product descriptions, emails, ads, and more. They even produce non-digital content like direct mail and video scripts.
Copywriters obviously need a strong writing background, but beyond that they must be creative and curious. Their job revolves around getting people to pay attention in a world full of distractions.
Content Writing
At first glance, content writing and copywriting may seem like the same digital marketing role, but as you get started in digital marketing, you’ll see that they have two distinct jobs.
Content writers focus specifically on longer-form content that draws readers to the site and nurtures them throughout the sales cycle. They create whitepapers and case studies, blog posts, and eBooks that educate readers and keep them coming back for more.
Social Media Marketing
It’s no secret that social media marketing is a huge part of digital marketing. Social media managers promote brands on networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn and others.
Social media managers develop campaign strategies, videos, and graphics; and research audience trends to get in front of the right people. It’s a job that bridges writing, design, and project management, and often requires the ability to work off-hours to respond to incoming messages. Experience in digital marketing and building communities is a must.
Advertising
The field of advertising has changed significantly over the past few decades, with digital advertising taking a dominant role in digital marketing.
Advertisers are responsible for matching the right products to the right audiences. They build relationships with media brands to determine what types of content will work best for each outlet and negotiate rates and terms that appeal to both parties. Digital advertising has a great digital marketing career outlook for competitive creatives seeking a fast-paced, people-oriented environment.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing is often confused with Search Engine Optimization, but the main difference is that SEM includes paid tactics. SEM managers research keyword trends to see what people are searching for and determine the appropriate amount to bid for such terms so the company pages appear in search results. It’s a blend of SEO and advertising that helps draw traffic to the website.
There are numerous tools and platforms used to research search terms, manage bidding, and perform A/B tests to see which variations are most effective. SEM managers must be highly analytical and data-driven to succeed.
Start Training to Land a Digital Marketing Job Role
Whether you’re looking to start a new career in digital marketing or just wish to add digital to your existing skill set, our program will make you industry-ready on day one. You’ll acquire the right skills through extensive hands-on practice on a wide range of projects that will enable you to create and execute your own digital marketing campaigns.