Things to Consider Before Making Career in Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a much-sought career worldwide. Today we will talk about the Scope of Digital Marketing. Over two billion people are expected to buy stuff online. With every business seeking a slice of the e-commerce pie, digital marketers will be in great demand.
If you are wondering how to start a career in digital marketing? you should read this blog post before proceeding in the digital world. I have covered everything in points for your better understanding.
Median salaries for digital marketers range between US$ 60,000 and US$ 80,000. The world will require some 150,000 digital marketing professional annually to meet the online shopping boom.
Things to Consider Before Making Career in Digital Marketing
Making a career in digital marketing is great if you possess some intrinsic or acquired skills
A very analytical, inquisitive mind
Data analysis plays a major role in digital marketing. Companies spend and make millions of dollars in marketing their products and services online. They expect commensurate returns.
All firms engaged in digital marketing are required to maintain accurate information on various topics including customer preferences, demographics and culture, spending patterns, knowledge about competitors, economic booms and downturns in various countries, political agendas, investment policies, and several other complex subjects.
Highly developed analytical skills combined with unwavering curiosity will help you make a career in digital marketing, as data analysts.
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1. A penchant for interaction, interpersonal skills
Facebook, with almost two billion users worldwide, is the undisputed leader in social media. Few anticipated Facebook’s breakneck growth at launch on February 4, 2004.
Facebook opened new vistas for companies to showcase their products and services. Micro-blogging website Twitter has some 330 million monthly average users.
Instagram, another social media website boasts of a 600 million-strong user community. WhatsApp instant messaging app for a smartphone has 1.3 billion active users.
These figures indicate, companies will depend upon social media increasingly for after-sales service, customer satisfaction, and genuine user reviews.
Interacting with clients- satisfied, dissatisfied, prospective or critical, requires excellent interpersonal skills. Possessing such skills are essential for making a career in digital marketing.
2. Astute mathematical skills for money
Digital marketing is all about money. Indeed, it is all about getting people to part with their money. It also involves parting with your money by paying for online clicks your company gets.
Digital marketing companies require brains to maintain accurate records of how much they will pay and receive. Amounts often run into millions of dollars a day for a successful e-commerce website.
Your employer will pay for every click received by your company through a link provided on somebody else’s website. Pay Per Click managers are essential to every digital marketing venture. IT professionals with excellent maths skills will find a career in digital marketing excellent.
3. Good working knowledge of IT systems
Making a career in digital marketing is fine provided you have sufficient hands-on experience in IT and computers. Colleges and universities offer courses in digital marketing, but they do not necessarily assure you of suitable jobs.
To qualify as a digital marketer, you require globally accepted certifications from Internet giants including Google, Bing, Facebook, and others.
The theory has to be practiced before implementation. Certifications by Internet bigwigs somewhat negate the requirement of a degree in digital marketing.
Most certifications as Search Engine Optimizer and Digital Marketing Executive are available free or priced affordably.
4. Giving wings to creativity
Careers in digital marketing are not confined to maths, calculations and data analysis. They require creative skills as well. Digital marketing requires companies to reach potential and existing customers through new, innovative mediums, including videos and messages.
Anyone with a flair for creative writing, visualizing videos, etc. can make a career in digital marketing.
You require the skills to create content that captivates and tempt people to patronize something, finding newer ways that appeal to a broad cross-section of the society.
This involves selecting pictures, designs, and other stuff to develop engrossing content. You can work as a conceptualizer, visualizer, content manager, content writer, content developer, and other similar positions.
5. Passion for relentless learning
Digital marketing, like any other IT related field, witness new developments daily. These occur in the form of technology, content, product and service offerings, local and global trends, the onset of holidays and spending seasons and a plethora of other reasons.
To pursue a career in digital marketing, you are required to be passionate about what you do. Honing and fine-tuning your skills daily is a must if your company and you wish to stay in business.
Thankfully, a lot of online tools and exam kits help digital marketers upgrade their skills.
6. Playing cat-and-mouse all life
Every e-commerce website requires excellent, state-of-the-art security. Any data mined or stolen by rivals or unauthorized entities can irreparably damage a company.
Data and security breaches can prove fatal as customer and investor confidence takes body blows. A great career in digital marketing awaits people willing to play the proverbial cat-and-mouse game all life.
This means, staying ahead of the bad guys and trapping them wherever and whenever possible. It involves securing your own IT systems.
Balancing act: A look at the flip side of digital marketing
Digital marketing may appear sound career choice when viewed against the backdrop of profits and boom. Here are some flip sides of a career in digital marketing.
1. Relocation is almost imminent
Qualified digital marketers almost inevitably have to relocate. E-commerce companies are based in specific areas in any country. They depend more on the Internet.
Hence, the location of the office does not matter.
A career in digital marketing will thus take you places. A large e-commerce corporation might post you abroad or in a location distant from your hometown.
This provides an opportunity to see and learn about a new place. For some, relocation is a living nightmare.
2. Sleepless nights are common
A career in digital marketing requires long and often extended hours spent at the office. E-commerce websites operate 24x7x365. They are accessed by people worldwide.
This means you need to stay on toes while others are slumbering. Internet security experts, PPC managers, and e-commerce specialists particularly have to burn the midnight oil at work.
They are required to respond to situations and emergencies at rather short notice.
3. Redundancy: The Damocles Sword
Internet technology develops at an accelerated pace. Newer technologies that may render some functions of digital marketers redundant can enter the market anytime. Probabilities are, companies will opt for these technologies rather than depend upon human brains.
The Internet and satellite communications have already rendered a few professions redundant, including the much-vaunted radio-officers in mercantile shipping. A repeat scenario can occur with digital marketers as victims.
4. Crowded job markets
The popularity of digital marketing will most likely cause several undergrads to opt for IT courses while professionals will study for certifications.
More colleges and universities offer IT courses now due to high demand. An emerging scenario could be, more digital marketers with few opportunities.
5. Great benders and downturns
E-commerce is prone to vagaries of economics- national and global. Any severe upheaval in the stocks market, major political developments that impact trade and currency rates, inflation and other money-related crises have shown they strike unannounced.
Quite a few digital marketing firms went down under and vanished from 2007 to 2010 due to the global economic downturn.
There are no safeguards and guarantees about when the next bender will strike. Such unpredicted financial crises can vastly mar a career in digital marketing.
6. Go ahead, follow your dreams
Anyone encouraged by opportunities offered in following digital marketing as a career is on the right path. Marketing will remain in demand until the end of the human race if any.
A career in digital marketing gives you the additional hedge against any economic slides.
Now it’s your turn share your views on Scope of Digital Marketing by commenting below.