Did you know that in 2022, a large number of businesses invested over 72% of their marketing budget toward digital channels? If the claim of this WordStream statistics report is worth its salt, it wouldn’t be wrong to call digital marketing one of the most booming and lucrative industries today. here are some tips to know How to Kickstart Your Digital Marketing Career
With an annual growth rate of 25-30%, a digital marketing career can change anyone’s life today. Not only it has the riches, but it also offers flexible hours and remote working, everything a youth today dreams of.
But we don’t need to convince you why it’s appealing to pursue a career in digital marketing; you’re probably already thinking about it since you’re here. So, let’s focus on helping you with what you need: A kickstart to your digital marketing career.
Here are ten tips we believe can give your professional journey the encouraging nudge that it needs. Check them out:
1. Soft skills are a great place to start
Whenever you’re new to any field, you cannot expect yourself to be the best at the hard skill required for the job. It takes some time to build them as you go, especially in an evolving industry like digital marketing.
Instead of rushing headfirst into learning the ropes quickly, you can begin by focusing more on your soft skills. Remember, in a world where a large number of equally-qualified applicants are applying for the same role; it’s their soft skills that decide the winner.
Your communication skills, time management skills, teamwork spirit, and emotional intelligence are traits that can set you apart from the competition and give you an edge. And the best part? You don’t need a course to teach you these things; you can learn and hone them with dedication and discipline alone.
2. Familiarize yourself with the basic concepts of the industry
At the beginning of your digital marketing career, you might feel more confused than ever. This is because you’re starting afresh and have trouble grasping even the most fundamental concepts of digital marketing.
How can you make it easy for yourself? Start by learning the smaller, more basic concepts first. For instance, look up the definition of Pay-per-click, read about what SEO means, and watch videos about what SERPs are and why they’re important.
Having learned these basic terms that are used time and again in digital marketing, you’ll be able to proceed toward grasping the bigger concepts of the industry.
3. Follow the successful digital marketers on social media
As a newcomer to digital marketing, you’ll know little about what working as a professional digital marketer entails.
What are some common challenges in the industry, how to analyze and introduce trends, and which quick tricks can make your job easier – these are the things one learns as they go forward in their professional journey.
But you don’t necessarily have to wait for your first job to figure it all out. You can also learn them from those who are ahead of you on the path – the seasoned professionals who are currently at the pinnacle of their digital marketing careers.
It’s both helpful and encouraging to follow veteran digital marketers as a beginner. You can learn a lot about their work on their social handles, especially professional ones like LinkedIn.
4. Be welcoming of criticism
Mistakes are an inevitable part of a learning curve. As a fresher digital marketer, you’re bound to have a few slips here and there and might even receive some critique about it from your superiors – in the industry or at work.
If being criticized easily makes you discouraged, then it’s time for that to change right now. It is only when you start taking criticism constructively that you can recognize the areas where you need work in order to become a better digital marketer.
Without being able to handle criticism gracefully, you might have to just kickstart your digital marketing career goodbye.
5. Cultivate creativity
Creativity is viewed as a priceless asset in the marketing industry for a long time. And in the digital space, where the attention span of your customers is even shorter, creativity is even more prized.
So, a creative mind can be the key to a successful digital marketing career. If you feel like you’re not creative enough right now, there are many ways of mending that.
Here are a few methods to practice cultivating creativity as a digital marketer:
- Stay updated to the latest trends, innovations, and technologies of the industry.
- Go beyond marketing; tap into diverse fields like art, theatre, literature, music, and fashion to inculcate diverse perspectives.
- Conduct research and analysis of the target audience for random products or services. Think about how you could appeal to them.
- Maintain a repository where you store your random ideas, quotes that sparked an interest, one-liners that could make great copies, and so on.
6. Pick a specific skill that you can excel at
As you might already know, digital marketing is a diverse field with many professions and roles falling under it. Some examples include social media marketing, email marketing, content writing, graphic design, web development, SEO specialization, and PPC specialization.
Being a digital marketer makes you a jack of all trades, but when you work for bigger concerns, taking care of all aspects of it becomes challenging.
In times like these, having a stronghold on any one of these roles can elevate your chances of building a successful digital marketing career considerably.
7. Establish a professional presence on your social handles
Once you’ve followed every tip we’ve mentioned above, it’s time for you to kickstart your digital marketing career for real. The first step of this journey involves making marketing your services to prospects. Put simply; it refers to letting people know about you.
How will that happen? By building your profile as a digital marketer online. Professional platforms like LinkedIn are a great place to start. Once you build your profile, you can connect with others in the same industry, check their profiles, read what they write, and network with them.
Give other industry employers and employees a chance to recognize you well before you approach them for work. The process starts with creating awareness and leads to building authority.
- Find a risk-free project to gain hands-on experience
Do you know how boxers practice with a punching bag before fighting other boxers? That’s exactly what you need to do starting out in your digital marketing career.
One way of doing that is by building something of your own – a product, info-product, or service – and selling it in the digital space. However, because that option might not be viable for every beginner, working on an unpaid gig is the next best choice.
Treat the project as a dummy job that prepares you better for the real one. Because the mistakes you make here would have lesser consequences than those you make in a professional setting, it can prepare you for the latter both safely and effectively.
9. Search for free resources to diversify your knowledge
Once you’ve worked on your first project, you’d have realized that there is so much more to learn about digital marketing than you initially thought. It happens to everyone, so there’s no need be feel overwhelmed about it.
What you can do to deal with it is look up free resources on the internet to diversify your knowledge about the field. This can get tricky because there are too many resources available online, with very few of them being genuine.
Here’s where you can get help from the connections you’ve made on social media. Other digital marketers can guide you better with which resources are helpful and which ones are useless.
10. Getting certified as a Digital Marketer: The last step of the process
When you’ve gathered all you could learn from free resources and are serious about building a professional digital marketing career, it’s time to get certified.
While learning the skill organically can enhance your knowledge a great deal, it will only take you so far. Most high-end digital marketing roles still require to see certification from applicants, especially when you have no work experience to prove your skills.
At Future Labs Technology, we offer a wide range of digital marketing courses and certifications to train students at beginner, intermediate, as well as advanced levels.
Those looking to specialize in specific branches within digital marketing – such as search engine optimization, social media optimization, or PPC – can find affordable certifications as well. Read more about these courses here!