The Unrealistic Job Ad
“Wanted: Digital Marketer with expert skills in SEO, PPC, Adobe Creative Cloud, photo editing, video production, video editing, HubSpot, MailChimp, Active Campaign, GoDaddy, WordPress, Brandcast, Pardot, Salesforce, email marketing, social media marketing, social community management, brand awareness, demand generation, growth acceleration. 1-3 years’ experience. $40,000/annually.”
Chances are that you’ve seen job postings like this before if you are a digital marketer. There’s an even higher chance that if you’ve seen a job posting like this, you’ve laughed out loud. That is one extensive resume right there!
As the world of digital marketing continues to expand, with more social media platforms than ever before and new services for CMS and CRMs every day, it’s hard to both keep up, and market things digitally.
It’s why we all tend to find our strengths and passions and dive headfirst into those. Because let’s face it: we can’t all be experts in everything. It’s the reason why agencies hire multiple people for various skill sets. It’s also why referral networks and co-ops have their place in the digital marketing landscape.
Start at Square One
As much as digital marketers want to be able to do all things digital marketing related, there are just too many different things going on to learn to be an expert in all of them. And that’s what your clients are looking for, experts who can guide them in the right direction and help them to market themselves effectively via digital platform.
If you’re new to digital marketing, you may be wondering where to even start. How do you even determine what to specialize in? Email marketing versus pay-per-click versus SEO versus social media. They are all very different and require unique strengths. But the only way you’ll know is to start dabbling in everything.
As a novice digital marketing associate, you want to get your hands on all aspects of the digital marketing strategy. It helps to work for a marketing department instead of freelancing at this point, so you can learn from people who already have a handle on how digital marketing works, but it isn’t the only way to learn. The internet makes it possible to be self-taught in many of these areas of focus.
Learn the basics of digital marketing in general, and each area of focus. See which areas you gravitate towards the most. If you like the creativity of designing websites, creating graphics, start there. Maybe you prefer the community interactions in managing social media accounts and monitoring social communities. Or the data-driven analytics of digital marketing may be more up your alley, with PPC, SEO and analytics and reporting drawing your interest. Dabble in them all and see what sticks.
Play to Your Strengths
Once you’ve found a couple of areas to pursue becoming more proficient in, the hard part really starts. You’ve got to keep your head down and like a sponge, absorb all the information you can find, from colleagues, e-courses, online certificate programs, and newsletters.
Find your strengths, be constantly learning, and don’t be afraid to try something new in the name of learning how to do it. But stay focused on those select areas of mastery. It can be tempting to want to hop on the bandwagon for every new SaaS, app, or social media platform that comes out. But diverting your attention each time there is a new “shiny toy” to play with means that you’ll be dabbler in everything and a master of none.
But Stay Relevant
The tricky balance here is to not dig your head so deep in the sand that you miss the opportunity to pivot and learn new skills that will keep you relevant and able to supply the necessary digital marketing needs that clients are looking for. If you’re still trying to make MySpace happen instead of realizing that all the potential is on Facebook and Instagram, you aren’t a digital marketing expert, you’re just a MySpace fanatic.
Look for opportunities for growth in your subject matter areas of expertise. If you’ve decided to focus on social media marketing, then absolutely download TikTok and Byte and get ahead of the masses. But if you’re working on email marketing or SEO tuning, then the latest viral app will probably be more of a hobby for you to play around with on your time off.
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