How to Take Your Marketing Skills Digital

The technology industry isn’t just for programmers and engineers — there are plenty of positions that don’t require a highly technical background or even coding skills.

One of the most integral roles that fits this description is as a marketer. While engineers can toil away to create the hottest new app or software out there, they need a pro to promote it to ensure their target users get their hands on it.

Marketing roles are nothing new — the traditional versions of this position have been around for decades. But if you’re a traditional marketer, it’s likely time to upgrade your skills by going digital. Digital marketing is a field that requires proficiencies in software and tools unique to the role — things like search engine optimization (SEO), Google Analytics, and social media marketing.

So, let’s unpack the intricacies of this role and take a look at some of the necessary skills to snag a digital marketing role.

What is a Digital Marketer?

On its most fundamental level, digital marketing is simply the promotion of a brand or product through various forms of digital media. The places you’d expect a digital marketer to push their brand is on websites, email, social media, and even text messages. No digital mediums are off limits for these resourceful pros.

Generally, digital marketers will create, deploy, manage, and track campaigns promoting specific products or brand initiatives. An example might include a digital marketer building and deploying a set of emails out to inactive users of an app to engage them with the brand.

Whatever their chosen channels for promotion and management, one of the most important responsibilities for digital marketers to monitor and analyze what initiatives are and aren’t working. Using tools like Google Analytics to monitor traffic and see what gets traction with targeted customer segments.

Digital marketers essentially engage and manage customer relationships across the aforementioned digital mediums. They work to communicate with customers and anticipate their needs and expectations. And this process of getting to know to target customers of their brand to ensure consistent and high-quality interactions and experiences. This helps build brand loyalty and build customer lifetime value.

Digital Marketing: The Essential Skills

Digital marketers are known to wear many hats, particularly as more digital channels become integral in communicating with current and prospective customers.

They must master a multitude of skills and tools to keep up with the proliferation of these digital channels. In addition to some of the aforementioned tools, including search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and Google Analytics for tracking purposes, digital marketers may need to familiarize themselves with a few other areas, including:

• Social media marketing: Creating organic and paid posts to promote your product and/or brand on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others.
• Inbound marketing: Drawing customers to your brand’s site with thought leadership pieces and content that delights prospective customers.
• Email marketing: Sending updates, information, and nurturing past, present, and potential customers through campaigns sent directly to their email inboxes.
• Public relations: Digital marketers also often have to help out with getting coverage from online publications (think blogs, online magazines and newspapers, podcasts, etc.) in an effort to help raise brand awareness.
• Pay-per-click (PPC) ads: Getting more potential customer eyeballs on your brand or website by paying a publisher or platform a fee for every time someone clicks on your ad.

While these are just a few of the digital channels you may need to juggle on a regular basis, this isn’t an all-inclusive list. Being adaptable is one of the most important skills a digital marketer must possess, as new digital channels emerge on a regular basis and must be considered for inclusion in your brand’s overall marketing strategy.

How to Get Started in Digital Marketing Today

Prepare for a career as a digital marketer in just 10 weeks with BrainStation’s part-time Digital Marketing course. Keep your 9-to-5 gig while you absorb all the latest tips and tricks over 30 hours of classroom learning. Classes cover topics like how to run digital campaigns, tracking analytics, social media marketing, email marketing, and brand building for your own brand or for a technology company.

And those with a specific interest in search engine optimization can take the part-time, 10-week SEO/SEM & Analytics course that helps students upgrade their digital skills. Learn basic SEM principles, get an intro to Google Adwords, learn how to run SEO campaigns, and gain the knowledge to run backlink analysis.

BrainStation also offers evening and weekend workshops for students to get an introduction to specific skills like analytics, social media marketing, and many others in a short period of time.

Considering a new career? Submit your application today.