Most In Demand Skills in Digital Marketing in 2020. |

Skills that are definitely a must in the digital world in 2020

The 21 Century has been an era of constant change and challenges, in only 20 years technology has advanced at a pace never seen before. Every single industry has had to adapt to these changes and focus on digitalization in order to survive, especially throughout the recent events in the first semester of 2020. It has become clear that if we don’t integrate technology and connectivity in our businesses we will become obsolete. So jobs related to the digital world have become the future of all industries, in this scenario Digital Marketing is growing at an exponential rate, and accompanied with this are the skills necessary to succeed. 

The role of digital marketing is constantly adapting to the latest tools, strategies, and best practices, but spanning across such a diverse range of core areas can be difficult for marketers to understand which key skills they should focus on throughout their careers. As digital marketers we need to be able to not only have knowledge of the current online media channels but also have a creative and analytical mindset in order to overcome challenges, as well as being able to predict future trends. So how do we value the necessary skills to succeed in an ever changing Digital World? 

Here is a list of The Most In-Demand Skills in Digital Marketing.

Content Writing and Content Strategy.

It is no surprise that content writing and content strategy development is at the top of the list. The ability to communicate in a clear and concise way has become one of the most important skills that digital marketers need to develop in order to stand out in an ocean of information. Content creation has changed, it is not anymore a blog post or a logo catchphrase, content is now embedded into every single aspect of your marketing strategy. At the heart of any marketing strategy with multiple channels, quality content is the fuel that drives performance for each of these mediums.

Content needs to engage, educate and captivate the targeted users, for a digital marketer is essential to identify the best way of communicating the identity of your brand and create a shared value that allows for long lasting relationships with your audience. From Blog posts to videos, ebooks, webinars, social posts, events and even emails, every Digital Marketer needs to understand the value of each of these channels in order to develop the best marketing strategy. 

Here are some recommendations for Content Strategy development courses

In recent years we have seen a shift towards decision-making based on data analysis. Brands are no longer relying on intuition or traditional strategies, tracking and measuring every single aspect of data has become an essential process when trying to understand what is driving value to any marketing strategy. Technology has made it possible to measure every single action and impact of a marketing campaign, before brands would rely on few stats and assume the impact of a tv, radio or ad on the street. Data analytics has become one of the most necessary and important skills that marketers need to master in order to execute effective and meaningful marketing campaigns. 

As this data-driven mentality has taken a prominent role in every industry, digital marketers need to be not only creative but have an understanding on how to track and measure events across multiple channels and platforms. Google Analytics is not the only important skill that recruiters value nowadays, other tools like Tag Manager, Hotjar, SQL are equally as important nowadays. The need for generating predictive models based on data is why this skill is ranked at number 2 in our list and a must for any senior Digital Marketing professional.

Check out Google Academy for fundamental and advanced training in data analytics and Google Tag Manager.

Google analytics Academy

Complementary to Data Analytics, data visualization is a skill that has become very important for digital marketers in order to create interactive and engaging experiences when reporting results obtained through data driven strategies. It is not a minor skill to have since being able to present information in a clear way is as important as understanding the data you are presenting. For companies and brands, decision making based on data is only possible through an effective visualization of that data, combining analyses from multiple channels and generating variables and graphs that can present information clearly and effectively. We can have thousands of spreadsheets with data recollected and information but the way in which data is presented and visualized has become equally as important when making marketing strategy decisions. Data Studio and Tableau have become major players and is always a plus if you have knowledge of these platforms.

Here are some courses on Data Visualization 

Google Academy

SEO is not something new within digital marketing, positioning content or a website on the top positions of any search engine is key for long term success. Even though the theory behind SEO is simple, the actual process of performing successful SEO strategies is one of the most complicated tasks in the marketing world since it feeds off all the other parts of a digital marketing strategy and the exact algorithm that search engines use has never been discovered. So how do we perform good SEO strategies? This is where the creativity of digital marketers comes into place. There is no single way to do SEO, it is a combination of different tools and techniques that will eventually pay off in the long run. In 2020, SEO has been recorded to drive an average conversion rate of 14% from organic website traffic. When compared to paid acquisition channels that average just 1.6%, you can understand the importance of SEO complementary strategies.

From researching keywords search queries, writing content with a concise intent, fixing site errors, structuring websites in a particular way, building backlinks and understanding UX insights, SEO is in itself a skill that encapsulates multiple marketing skills. As paid acquisition channels keep growing, SEO has become one of the most important strategies that every digital marketer needs to focus on for long term success. 

If you want to learn more about SEO check for Google Academy tutorials, master tools like SemRush, Google Search Console, Screaming frog Crawler, Moz, etc. There are hundreds of qualified courses that will help you improve this skill. 

As a free course I recommend  three options.

HubSpot Free SEO training .

With more social media platforms than ever, the role of social media marketers has been evolving at a tremendous pace. No matter what your business model is, there is a social media platform that will work for you, both in an organic way of driving traffic and through paid advertising. The skills required for effective social media strategies are shifting constantly and recruiters consider these skills to be a priority when looking for candidates.

Social media was primarily  used as an excellent channel for brands to communicate and directly interact with users, but now that content, data measurement and the need of creating a shared value with customers has become the rule of thumb, digital marketers have to develop the skill of developing multi platform strategies that use multiple social media channels at the same time and cross measure the data collected from each of them.

Facebook, Instagram and Youtube have dominated the social media world for a while, but nowadays other social media platforms like Linkedin, pinterest, tik tok and even private messaging platforms have risen to become an essential part of a brand strategy. This skill is very important since it combines content creations, with data driven measurement and developing predictive analytics in order to understand how to maximize results.

Here are some recommended courses to increase your skills in social media marketing

Coursera social media marketing course

With the latest COVID situation affecting the entire world, digitalization and the concept that every single company must have a website has become a priority. But what a lot of brands are realizing is that you can have the best marketing strategy but if your website is not on par with that, it will be very difficult to develop a successful brand. 

Designing engaging landing pages, communicating content in an effective way, guiding users through your website and trying to keep them navigating has become one of the most important skills that any digital marketer needs. This does not mean that we need to know how to write in programming language or create graphic designs. But much similar to SEO, digital marketers need to develop a theoretical framework from which to understand how to layout a website or app that will keep users engaged. This will only become more and more important in the future as interactive content generation and engagement with users online will become the main way for brands to communicate with people in an original way. Design thinking will become the theoretical foundation of marketing strategies as we continue to connect in different ways with each other.

These are some of the most recommended free courses on UX and design thinking but there are plenty of options for beginners and advanced users.

UX Courses by InVision

Email Marketing is not new to the world of digital marketing. It has been a part of digital strategies for a long time, but it has never faded away. With over 3.5 billion email users in the world, having a clear understanding on how to use email marketing for brand outreach is key. But be careful, too many emails with non effective content can be detrimental to the overall marketing strategy. In order to deliver a good email marketing strategy we need to understand which users we are targeting and why.

When connecting with subscribers, brands have to try to generate value. There is a need for creativity and engagement when creating an email campaign. For example, if a customer left an item in their cart but never completed the purchase, you can send an email that pinpoints the specific product as a reminder to checkout. In any conversion funnel, if the user has started but didn’t complete the process, you can use email marketing to try to remind them about the unfinished process. You can also do A/B testing on the content of the email and compare visualization rates and interactions. The versatility email marketing provides makes it a very important part of any 360 strategy, even if it has been around for quite a while.

Here are some courses on Email Marketing that can be helpful.

Hubspot email marketing course

We have gone through a list of the most in demand skills in digital marketing in 2020. Of course there are other skills that we left behind that are very important as well, such as mastering Search Engine Advertising Platforms like AdWords, Facebook ads manager, etc. Of course you need to have experience with this platforms but the idea of this list is to show you other complementary skills that are more intertwined with general strategy development.  

There is one skill though that is worth mentioning before we finish this article, and I consider it the most important one of them all. The understanding that as a digital marketer you need to work with all the different teams in your company. There is no single strategy that works without understanding that there has to be a 360 approach. Working with programmers, graphic designers, sales teams, customer service teams, support teams, etc is the most valuable skill of them all. Understanding that in order to generate a great strategy, you have to work with others and think of every single group of people that work every day for the success of the brand. Marketing Strategies will never work on their own if there is not a team behind to make the brand successful. So the most important skill of them all is to be able to communicate and work with others with humility and passion, then you will realize that your job as a digital marketer will be much more successful.