STARTING OUT NEW DIGITAL SKILLS (4)

Being a Digital Marketing Manager

SOUNDS in August ends today, and we’re glad we could provide some value to people who followed through, or even caught just one of the posts. If you missed any, you can return and look them up. We’ve talked about:

Graphic design
SEO
Data Analytics

In this post, we’d attempt to treat one of the broadest digital skills you could learn. It is one that appears easy on the eye, but is a technical and very challenging field. A lot of people have dabbled into it and have touched one aspect or the other, but only few have actually learnt to be proficient in all relevant fields. If you guessed coding, you’re wrong; we’re talking Digital Marketing.

In this post, we explore what digital marketing is, what it takes to be a digital marketer, and why you should consider, seriously consider learning SEO, whether on the sides or as a fulltime career job.

"The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing" – Tom Fishburne

Marketing is the act or process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service. It can also be defined as an aggregate of functions involved in moving goods from producer to consumer.

Marketing efforts could either be done via one of two ways:

Traditional marketing (physical marketing)
Digital marketing (online marketing)

So, What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is any effort or an aggregate of efforts that makes use of the internet to market a good or service.

Unlike traditional marketing, which basically relies on the use of television, radio, and print, digital marketing is aimed at using internet connectivity to communicate with customers on behalf of brands in a bid to drive marketing efforts. It is a vast field, as there are various marketing channels that could be utilised and optimised for these marketing campaigns. Whether it is a simple chat on your preferred social media channel, or a text ad that shows at the top of your search results on Google, digital marketing aims to influence the customer’s marketing choices by taking advantage of every available space on the internet.

The major advantage that digital marketing has over traditional marketing is that it affords you the chance to target a specific audience, known as customer segment, in your marketing efforts. This means that you can control who sees your ads and ensure that only the right people who are likely to convert into customers get to view your ads. This results in lower marketing costs and higher potential revenue.

As the world is becoming more internet compliant, focus on marketing is shifting from traditional means as more people spend a constantly increasing amount of time on their digital devices. It is therefore imperative that producers gradually shift their efforts correspondingly from traditional to digital marketing.

Some Facts You Should Know

78% of internet users conduct product research online
There are 3.2 billion users of social media everyday
Global digital advertising and marketing estimate for 2020 was estimated at $350 billion
86% of marketers increased brand awareness using one or more digital marketing channels in 2021
Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional outbound marketing
On average, email marketing has a 4400% ROI

Being a Digital Marketing Manager

A digital marketing manager is a professional who is responsible for maintaining a brand’s online presence. The manager plans and executes marketing campaigns aimed at fulfilling marketing objectives, the end product of which is to drive sales for the business.

Key duties are: researching, campaign strategy and execution, content creation, and team coordination as well as campaign analysis and audit.

5 Must Haves for a Digital Marketing Manager

A digital marketing manager needs to be as rounded as possible in various fields of the job. It is therefore imperative that the manager possesses a wide range of skills and the right amount of experience and motivation.

Some of the requirements for being a proper digital marketing manager are:

1. Find your Passion

The nature of digital marketing makes the field somewhat tricky when orienting people about it. This is because you could learn a specific skill in digital marketing, for example push ads, in three weeks and therefore consider yourself a digital marketer. You could also go full swing and take your time learning and practicing all major fields in digital marketing including social media marketing, social media management, email marketing, SEO, content creation etc. This could take a full year and you aren’t even considered as strong enough within that first year.

Also, as a result of the ever-improving nature of the field, with newer trends appearing on a regular basis, there is no end to learning in the job. Trends easily become out-dated and while the basics are the same, the systems and methods may change easily. As a matter of fact, most digital marketing certificates are known to have a validity period of not more than one year.

If you want to be a digital marketer, you must define your parameters clearly; know what you want to do and why you want to do it. It takes a lot of effort to go fully at it, but in the end it is always worth it.

So, decide how much of digital marketing you want to do and prepare mentally for it.

2. Get a Device

A digital marketer has to almost always be in front of a screen. It doesn’t matter whether you are doing a job or just doing research or even testing out a campaign, you have to be on a device. You can use a simple android phone for certain tasks, such as social media management, but you’ll ideally need a computer for things like Web analytics, push ads, email marketing etc.

It is also helpful to have more than one device for your business. This helps you plan on one and test on the other. You are often your first customer and it’ll be hard selling what you don’t like yourself to others.

If you can, have a phone, a tablet and a computer for your job. If you deal with a lot of websites, you’d also want to get a solid internet connection and high-powered devices because in digital marketing, time is really money.

3. Get Your Preferred Tools

Just because a digital marketer does a lot, you should expect to deal with a lot of software. As every field requires its own software, a digital marketer is expected to be that jack of all trades and also master of all. As a young digital marketer, it is advisable that you choose the particular area of specialisation you would want to start with and follow through on it before growing to other fields.

If you have the resources to cover the bill, top SEO tools you should use are:

a. Content writing

i. Grammarly

ii. Wordtune

iii. ProWritingAid

iv. PaperRater

b. Social media management/marketing tools

i. Facebook

ii.Twitter

iii. LinkedIn

iv. Instagram

v. Meta Business Suite

vi. Whatsapp

vii. Pinterest

viii. Hootsuite

ix. Metricool

x. Buffer

xi.Zoho

xii. OneUp

c. Email Marketing

i. MailChimp

ii. SendPulse

iii. MailLazy

d. SEO

i. Moz

ii. Ahrefs

iii. SEOptimer

iv. Yoast SEO

v. Google Trends

vi. Seobility

vii. GTmetrix

viii. Lighthouse

e. SEM

i. SEMrush

ii. Google Ads

iii. WordStream

iv. Google Keyword Planner

v. Optmyzr

f. Web Analytics

i. Google Analytics

ii. Matomo

iii. Kissmetrics

iv. Crazy Egg

Many of the apps listed above are free, while others have free and paid plans.

You do not necessarily have to be able to use all. Find what does the job best for you and stick to it, you’ll grow faster that way.

4. Get Learning Materials

If you want to stand out in digital marketing, especially in the big leagues, learning and constant improvement is a hallmark you cannot disregard. From the day you start off into digital marketing, you should be prepared to learn, unlearn and relearn at rapid speed. The ever changing dynamics of the field would always ensure that whoever doesn’t stay updated gets left behind, and this means losing customers and falling out of relevance.

To learn and constantly improve, the internet is replete with abundant learning materials on digital marketing. You would find books, videos, audio files and more on digital marketing and even marketing fundamentals. These materials are also available at your local library. You can always look them up and learn new things.

A digital marketer should also look to learn outside the classroom. You never know where your inspiration might come from for that next project, depending on your client. Inspiration and ideas could come when you’re at home, it could come when you’re out on a date, it could come when you’re having a chat with a friend or even when seeing a movie.

Always observe, and work like search engine crawlers: Read, Index, and Retrieve when necessary.

5. Get a Tutor

You have probably gotten used to seeing this already, but without a tutor in digital marketing, get ready to crash or at least have a very turbulent flight. In fact, if you would be a good digital marketer, you need more than one tutor. This is because most experienced marketers do not more than two to three fields of digital marketing. They focus on them as their strong points, so if you’re starting off, you might want to engage about two or three of such people.

There are physical and online schools where you can learn digital marketing, whether free or paid. In previous posts, we have talked about the differences between free and paid classes and you should know the difference by now. It should surmise to tell you though, that a tutor is one who specially attends to your needs, personally tracks your progress, and of course, helps you learn in the best way possible.

With your tutors, preferably in a school, you are best placed for optimal learning and you get the chance to work on real life projects as you grow. This always puts your CV in a better light when applying for jobs as a professional as you grow in the field. You get to learn almost immediately from your mistakes and effect corrections.

You can have physical or online classes with you tutor, and it is best you take as much paid courses as possible from such a person, because that’s where the true and absolute value lies. You can ask anyone who has taken free and paid courses, and they would tell you the difference.

So, that’s it for now, welcome to the world of digital marketing. If you’ve read this, and you want to get into digital marketing, we’d be willing to guide you and hold your hands as you take your first steps. Our team is willing to help you settle into the field feel, only free to drop a comment or send me an email. If you would want exclusive coaching classes or training, you can also let me know, preferably by connecting with me on LinkedIn, I’ll be swift to respond.

Until I bring you another post next week, stay smart.

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STARTING OUT NEW DIGITAL SKILLS (4)