With the mass movement of businesses to the web, digital marketing has become quite the coveted skill. But to think of it as just one skill wouldn’t do it justice.
Yes, it’s the communication between businesses and their prospects online to make a sale. But there are many skills involved throughout the process of bringing prospects to your website and getting them to buy whatever your website sells.
As a result of the high value of digital marketing skills, many courses have sprung up. They all claim to have the secret to help digital marketers improve their careers. After some rigorous research, we’ve come up with 7 important skills you can learn through online courses to improve your digital marketing success.
Content writing involves using text and graphics to create and distribute valuable information to prospects and customers. Social media posts, email newsletters, blog posts, and forum interactions are all jobs of a content writer.
To be a good content writer, you should be familiar with SEO because you’ll need to distribute your blog posts and index them on search engines like Google and Bing. Hashtags are quite similar to keywords as distribution tools on social media platforms like Instagram, Linkedin and Twitter.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is basically an organic distribution system where businesses try to reach their target market through website content. Google is the biggest search engine platform with its sister company, YouTube, being its video equivalent.
An SEO specialist helps align a business’ website with those who could be possible buyers of their products. Say a skin cream company in New York City, wants to be in front of New Yorkers searching for solutions to their skin problems. They’ll hire an SEO specialist to help them rank on Google for skin care and treatment questions/keywords that prospects have asked. SEO specialists usually work hand-in-hand with content creators and copywriters.
Copywriting
Copywriting can easily be confused for content writing. They differ when it comes to intent behind communication.
Content writers write to educate prospects. Copywriters write to sell to prospects. As a result, you’ll find copywriters at the back-end side of a marketing campaign — converting leads into customers.
Some of the work copywriters do include search engine ads, social media ads, sales emails, landing page copy, and sales letters.
PPC Specialist
Per pay click is a system of advertisement where businesses can run ads on search engines, social media or other ad networks, and pay only when a viewer clicks their ads.
In an ad campaign, you’ll have graphic designers, copywriters, photographers, filmmakers, software developers, data analysts and the director of this group — the PPC specialist. They’re in charge of monitoring running campaigns, pruning the system of failed ads and backing the winning ones. They also galvanise other professionals we listed above to make the overall ad campaign a profitable one.
Graphic Designer
With millions of businesses flooding the internet, standing out is becoming a priority. From the design of your website pages to social media graphics, businesses have to be intentional with their appearance at every level of customer contact.
Graphic designers help businesses with logos, website themes and app design. Those with tech skills work as frontend developers and help with websites, apps, landing pages and more. Others work on product packaging, logos, blog and social media graphics.
Web Development
The internet is built with blocks of code. Software developers are the masons. Big businesses with unique website requirements don’t go for cookie cutter solutions of companies like WordPress. They hire web developers and software engineers to build their own software for them.
Of course, this is a capital intensive endeavour and thus is left for companies who can afford them. But web developers can work with marketers to create unique buyer experiences through additional website functions.
Photography and Filmmaking
We as human beings are visual creatures and communication is best done with video, graphics and pictures. Text had its place just like the newspaper did. But Radio and TV took the cake when it came to mass communications. The same goes for the digital landscape today.
Blogs are powerful but podcasts and YouTube videos will be the main form of communication in the future. Even blogs take advantage of pictures and graphics to stimulate the visual senses of its readers.
Photography and filmmaking are used in content creation and advertisements. They, including copy writers, make up the creative aspects of ad campaigns. It’s where the magic happens. With the obsession with marketing and ad tools to analyze data and optimize campaigns, the art aspect of marketing becomes a virgin ground to explore and adopt fresh ideas that bring in more sales.
How To Improve your Digital Marketing Skills
Digital marketing is as vast as it gets. It’s about communication and there are really no boundaries to the possibilities and opportunities. To improve on your skills, find mentors who are willing to guide you on the fastest path to competence.
Good mentors can be scarce so it’s not uncommon to struggle to find one who’s willing and able to help you grow. A second, but equal alternative is taking free online courses. It’s basically a digital version of mentorship at scale. They can be taken at your leisure and anywhere in the world. And there are usually fellow students and an instructor to bounce ideas off.
Success in digital marketing requires a passion for learning because the landscape of online communication is constantly changing and thus the learning will never end.
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