Get a list of digital marketing skills currently in demand. Find the best skills to learn to become a digital marketer.
By Ogugua Belonwu
17 November, 2023
With the many opportunities and prospects in the tech industry, digital marketing has become profitable for tech enthusiasts. However, a successful career in digital marketing requires specific knowledge and skills.
If you are a digital marketer or are considering becoming one, this article will help you know what skills you need to become profitable. We have listed the important skills you need to be a successful digital marketer.
Let’s dig in!
Digital marketing is the promotion of a brand or business online to attract customers using digital communications and channels like the Internet or social media. It is any form of marketing that involves the use of electronic devices to support a customer’s journey.
It is also known as online marketing and can take any of these forms:
Search engines
Websites
Social media
Mobile apps
Text messaging
Web-based advertising
You should also know that digital marketing takes the same principles as traditional offline marketing. It takes into consideration the customer’s journey and preferences. It is only different because it happens in a digital space.
If you want to become a digital marketer, here are some steps you can take to set you on course.
Before starting to become a digital marketer, you must take time to understand digital marketing. Find out what a digital marketer does, what skill set they must have, and the career opportunities available as a digital marketer. It will put things in perspective for you.
As the name implies, digital marketing is about marketing. It is about positioning a brand and helping them attract their target audience. To become a digital marketer, you should assess your skills and identify the gaps. Once you are able to do this, you will know which skills you need to acquire to help you in your journey.
If you’re going to be a digital marketer, you must obtain the needed skills and knowledge to help you build your career. There are different ways that you can build your skills or obtain an education. You can:
Enrol for a degree program in any institution of learning that offers digital marketing. The program could be a bachelor’s degree, master's program or even a diploma.
Self-educate using online platforms that offer digital marketing courses. On these platforms, you can build your knowledge and skills in digital marketing.
Attend boot camps that expose you to the knowledge of digital marketing.
You can also begin to network with other digital marketers. Amazingly, the tech industry has communities that provide support to professionals. Tech events, boot camps and fairs are all opportunities to connect and network with other digital marketers.
To begin your career as a digital marketer, consider exploring internship opportunities. Internship opportunities will help you gain relevant experience for future job offers. You can also begin to practice by yourself using blogs or by providing free freelance services to build your portfolio.
SEO/SEM
SEO and SEM are the skills required for a digital marketer to make digital content rank high on search results when a user searches a particular keyword. Search engines drive the website traffic for any business, beginning from the landing page. Understanding the search engine strategy to connect to your audience is an essential skill of a digital marketer.
This skill requires learning Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing tactics such as guest blogging, the process of link building and producing high-quality content. SEO and SEM skills also demand that the digital marketer understand how to do keyword research for blogs, PPC and even website copy.
Email Marketing
Digital email marketing is a skill used by digital marketers to connect with customers and generate leads for their business. It involves creating personalised emails for clients to increase their customer base. To achieve this, digital marketers must know how to leverage content, develop email lists, and create newsletters and promotional copy content to drive email marketing.
Also, the digital marketer must know how to design email templates using brand colours, know how to use databases to store consumer information and persuade new and existing users to subscribe to emails.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is an amazing platform for attracting different people from different places and categories. With it, brands can get the attention of their target audience and keep them engaged. Social media marketing is about customizing social platforms to fit the ideals and emotions of a target demographic and creating various forms of content, such as graphics and photography.
Utilizing social media marketing as a digital marketer will mean that you must know current social media strategies, understand the different social media platforms and how they work, and keep your audience engaged through tailored content.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the ability to attract the ideal audience of a brand or business to the brand's digital platforms using appealing content. This content could be user-generated or generic. However, the goal is to give enough value to your target audience, making them follow the company on digital platforms.
Content marketing skills can be shown by producing engaging videos, written content and images to improve digital marketing techniques. It is used to create landing pages, social media posts, blog posts, and email campaigns.
Copywriting
Copywriting involves creating promotional texts that can be used in brochures, notifications, billboards, emails, and so on. High-quality written content can increase brand awareness and encourage users to perform a particular action like signing up for a website, buying a specific product, and so on.
With copywriting skills, customers are attracted to a brand and compelled to take action. Most copies always have a call-to-action which makes customers patronize.
Research Skills
Creating content that will resonate with your target audience as a digital marketer will entail that you understand what their needs are and how you can help them. This can only be done through research. A digital marketer must know how to conduct insightful research to help him market the brand or business appropriately.
Digital marketers must also be familiar with research tools and know their way around search engines and how to ask the right questions.
Design Skills
Visual content currently offers more exposure than written content, especially on social media. Consequently, digital marketers should have basic skills in design to help them generate their own images. With applications like Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.), Canva, Inkscape, or any other program, this can be done.
Digital marketers need to create images for banner ads, social media images, email banners, etc. These images can be generated with simple design skills by the digital marketer.
Video Editing and Marketing
A digital marketer can design creative and informational video clips using various software tools and equipment to engage customers. Effective video marketing involves developing and posting unique video content consistently to maintain a strong following and reach new customers to generate sales.
Video editing and marketing may be needed in website landing pages or blog content, social media platforms, and email marketing campaigns.
Marketing Analytics
Marketing analytics skills help a digital marketer get detailed information about the performance of the business or brand on any digital platform. The details include where the traffic comes from, the most engaging keywords, the most popular times of the day, and valuable demographic data, including factors like age, gender, and location, as well as users’ interests and the devices they’re using.
With this insight, a digital marketer is then able to make the necessary changes when needed to ensure the best performance of the business online.
Writing and Editing
Every digital marketer must know the skill of writing and editing. Commercial sites are expected to feature competent and commercial content free from errors on their platforms. To that end, digital marketing professionals need to be familiar with the basic rules of grammar and spelling.
Basic Coding and Programming Languages
In today’s IT-heavy world, it’s wise to have some basic coding or programming skills in your digital marketer skill set. Digital marketers occasionally need to use WordPress, update websites, write copy, employ marketing automation, or understand CRO. Therefore, a well-rounded digital marketer knows basic HTML and CSS.
Data Visualization
Data visualization enables data to be translated into a chart, graph, or other visual components. Understanding data visualization would help with understanding data quickly and cleanly. It enables brands to identify upcoming trends and respond to them quickly. Also, a clear understanding of data structure fundamentals and basic statistics can significantly ease the process of data analysis.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the practice of increasing the percentage of users who perform a desired action on a website. Desired actions can include purchasing a product, clicking ‘add to cart’, signing up for a service, filling out a form, or clicking on a link.
Every digital marketer must understand conversion rate optimization in order to help businesses grow and thrive. Leads will be gotten from the digital platforms and knowing how to convert them into customers is what conversion rate optimization is about.
Storytelling
In digital marketing, the art of storytelling is an important skill in attracting and keeping the right audience for a business or brand. Being no different from traditional storytelling, digital storytelling is only different because it uses online platforms to deliver its message.
To make storytelling more compelling, digital marketers can make use of customer-generated storytelling, data-driven storytelling, and mini-ads.
Messaging
Messaging in marketing is how a brand communicates what customers want to know about your brand. It goes beyond just sharing information about the product or service available; it builds your brand identity through the “why” of your company; its mission, vision, and values.
A digital marketer must know how to craft a business’ marketing message with care, specifically for the audiences they’re trying to reach. It should also address their pain points and present their business as a solution.
Community Building
In the current digital age, successful businesses aren’t just transaction-oriented. Businesses are in need of communities for their brands. The notion of community building extends beyond marketing and advertising. It hinges on the creation of strong, reciprocal relationships between a brand and its customers.
Community Building increases customer engagement and loyalty. People naturally gravitate towards businesses they feel a connection with. A well-established community often means a loyal customer base that continuously buys your product or service and advocates for your brand.
A/B Testing
A/B testing in digital marketing is a type of content experiment where marketers create two variations of a landing page or web page to determine which one performs the best against defined marketing objectives. They do not use completely different landing pages. Instead, they use variations of the same page with just one element changed, such as the call-to-action, sales copy, or the colour or position of an element on the page.
While split testing measures the difference in performance between two completely different pages, A/B testing tries to find performance improvements by making minor changes to individual page elements and measuring any resulting changes in clicks or conversions.
Paid Advertising (PPC)
Paid advertising is an area of digital marketing that involves promoting products or services through paid channels such as search ads, display ads, social media ads, retargeting, video campaigns, and more.
PPC requires a mix of creative and analytical strategies to target specific audiences and earn the best possible return on investment from various paid marketing platforms. This requires the planning and optimization of paid campaigns.
Retention
Beyond getting customers to buy from you, a digita marketer should know how to retain the customers he is able to get for the business. Retention marketing is a form of marketing that aims to maximize the value of customers you already have. It is the practice of engaging with customers beyond their initial purchase and making them loyal, long-term, and engaged customers.
Customer retention strategies are essential because returning customers tend to spend more than new ones. In fact, research has shown that acquiring new customers can cost up to five times more than keeping existing ones. That’s why digital marketers must understand and implement retention tactics.
Project Management
With the responsibility of managing different activities and projects simultaneously, a digital marketer must be skilled in project management. Those who are skilled in it can stay cool in a crisis, manage their time, and organize both their own tasks and those of more junior members. It’s also crucial to maintain a focus on the team’s overall goals, as big-picture thinking keeps a brand ahead of its competitors.
Communication
Communication skills are one of the vital skills of a digital marketer. He must be able to relay his ideas, concerns and needs to his team, manager, and stakeholders. It also includes writing and speaking effectively, establishing trust, building good relationships, making themselves understood, and disseminating effective messages.
Adaptability
A well-planned marketing campaign can sometimes change focus. The workload may also vary from month to month. Advertising budgets can shrink or grow. An excellent digital marketer knows how to roll with the punches, make mid-course corrections, and deal with unforeseen difficulties.
Prioritization
This is a very important skill in digital marketing. Priorities can change quickly depending on external events, digital trends, and consumer behaviour. A digital marketer will need to optimize his time, quickly re-prioritize, and align the priorities of the team to ensure everyone is working towards the same goals. You’ll also need to know which outcomes are most important to the overall company, so you can prioritize your own work accordingly.
Multitasking
Digital marketing professionals have a lot on their plates and are typically called upon to simultaneously keep many juggling balls in the air. Therefore, he must know how to allocate time, mindshare, and other resources to handle simultaneous responsibilities without diminishing quality or timely solutions.
Ability to Learn
A healthy interest in learning helps a digital marketer to know all there is to know about digital marketing and also why certain people react to messages in a particular way and others don’t. The curious person wonders why things function as they do and how to best function in those environments. Without learning, a digital marketer will not grow or reinvent when needed during the course of his career.
Take Online Courses
To help you gain digital marketing skills, taking an online course could be an option. With the different specializations in digital marketing, you can take a specialized course or a general course. Educational courses can give you an opportunity to enhance your current skills, expand your knowledge of digital media and potentially find new interests in other aspects of digital marketing.
Self-study and Practice
As an alternative to more traditional educational routes, you can build their skill sets in a less formal learning setting. This involves studying recommended reading material, listening to podcasts of respected marketers, following digital marketing blogs and social media channels of marketing experts, watching educational videos, and practising these skills in digital marketing campaigns. By choosing to study in this way, you can build your skills, learn how to use different tools and platforms and gain insights into the audience and consumer behaviour.
Mentorship
When embarking on a new career, the value of a mentor is high. A mentor can answer your questions about what it’s like to work in digital marketing, give you feedback on your portfolio, and even help you practice interview techniques. This is one way you can gain digital marketing skills.
Job Experience/Internships/Volunteers
To build the skills you need to launch a digital marketing career, you can volunteer for an organization or take up an internship. This will help you learn what you need to know about digital marketing and increase your experience. Also, with so many businesses providing remote opportunities, you can easily begin your career in digital marketing.
These are the most important skills you need as a digital marketer. Once you get them, you can easily land a digital marketing job role in any part of the world. You can also easily get a remote job too.
A digital marketer is a person who is responsible for promoting a business and its products using online channels. He does what a traditional marketer would do, but the difference is that he does it using digital platforms.
There are lots of skills you need to become a great digital marketer. The skills include:
SEO/SEM
Social media marketing
Content marketing
Graphic design
Video editing
Marketing Analytics
Data visualization
Email marketing
Digital marketing skills are a combination of soft and hard skills that you need to become a digital marketer. While some of the hard skills include SEO/SEM, social media marketing, email marketing, data analytics, etc. some of the soft skills needed are project management, adaptability, communication, prioritization, etc.
To begin your career as a digital marketer with no experience, there are certain steps you can take like:
Find an internship.
Take online courses.
Practice with a blog.
Network with other digital marketers.
Choose an area of interest.
Invest in your professional development.
Publishing an article is a great way of contributing to the community
