The Digital Marketer: Growing, Relevant and Increasingly Important

If you are looking for a career that pays well, is exciting, challenging and will constantly push you to do your best, look no further. A career as a digital marketer fulfills all the of the above, and then some. In today’s globally-connected, ever-changing economy, it would be impossible to ignore the importance of marketers in the digital sphere.

The chart above shows the search interest for ‘digital marketing’ on Google over the last 13 years. Since 2009, digital marketing as seen a steady increase in interest, especially in the last three years. The surge of interest leads to the conclusion that interest in digital marketing has increased over the year, by which we can infer that the demand of digital marketers have and will go up in tandem too. With more demand for digital marketers, job opportunities are abound too!

Roles and Responsibilities of a Digital Marketer

A digital marketer engages in marketing on and using digital platforms, usually on the Internet, but also including mobile devices, display advertising and all other digital mediums. The term “digital marketer” is an umbrella-term of sorts, as digital marketers typically have a specialisation (such as SEO expertise) that is based on their strongest skillsets.

Some digital marketing roles and specialisation include: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media Marketer (SMM), Mobile Marketing, Email Marketing, Web Analytics etc.

Because of the broad nature of digital marketing, digital marketers usually have a T-bone skill structure, where they have basic knowledge across the board of the different marketing functions and skills, but have a deep understanding of the set of skills they specialise in. For example, a Social media marketer would have the skills required to run an effective Facebook advertising campaign, but would also need to understand the basics of good graphic design in order to guide the design team to come up with attractive advertisements.

A good digital marketer must know how to sell their brand and business, with the purpose to drive purchase intent through improve brand recognition and trust. Hence, knowing how to engage with people is a must. A data-driven mindset with an eye on what strategies actually work will allow a digital marketer to create a strong, effective marketing campaign that will generate more sales and/or recognition for their brand and business. Last but definitively not least, a keen creative, analytical mind is always a plus-point for digital marketers.

Skills Required

Here are a range of useful skills that digital marketers should have and/or acquire.

• HTML, CSS or Photoshop
• Content marketing
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Paid Search (PPC)
• Email marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Digital Display Marketing (Ad Ops)
• Web Analytics and Reporting
• Mobile Marketing
• Data Analysis

How do you become a digital marketer?

To become a digital marketer, one should consider the following points;

• Get oneself acquainted with the various digital marketing functions (SEO, Mobile Marketing etc) and the skills required. Once you know the skills required, learn them as much as you can. Sites like YouTube and Udemy are very cost-effective ways to pick up digital marketing skills in a passive learning environment.

• Get certified. It boosts your credibility as a trained digital marketer, with the added benefit of a formal learning environment – which can be very effective in teaching you the necessary knowledge and skills required for digital marketing.
  
  Private schools like General Assembly (GA) have courses for digital marketing, which will equip you well with the requisite skills and knowledge to start. In Singapore, in addition to GA, various courses are offered by other institutes. Some are under the SkillsFuture program, which includes a 3-day course by the Marketing Institute of Singapore.

• Paper qualifications are not enough to stand out in this field – do your own projects to build your skills and test your strategies. For example, if you are building a skillset for SEO, create a website, learn, study and test different strategies to market it online. Do the same for other skillsets. Do consider helping your employer with their digital marketing – if there is an opportunity and time to do so.

• Be proactive in finding work! Learn the skills, acquire the knowledge, build your portfolio. Digital marketing and its related skills will become more and more important as our world evolves to become increasingly connected through digital means. This also means marketing yourself creatively and well; your social media profiles, resumes and portfolio design give potential employers a taste of what you are like as a marketer.

Conclusion

A digital marketer is a professional with strong relevance to the needs of businesses right now and in the future. As such, acquiring the skills required to be one could prove invaluable for your career.

You will be able to do wide variety of marketing jobs in an array of businesses, all of which will allow you to directly contribute to company growth. Freelance digital marketers also have plenty of employment opportunities, with several key digital marketing skills being the most demanded of freelancers. If you are entrepreneurial and prefer running your own enterprise, your digital marketing experience will come in handy too!

With all these in mind, consider becoming a digital marketer today!

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