A decade ago, digital marketing was just a new and different way of marketing. But now, it has become a mandatory and the most effective way of tapping into the relevant audience. We live in a digitized era. With a click of a button, we can get what we want. Technological advancements have created the need to think of innovative ways of doing everything differently – be it shopping or consuming content or preparing business strategies or reaching out to the desired target audience. Marketing strategies of various businesses across sectors have evolved to suit the business needs and thus, digital marketing has gained importance to support this environment. The digital marketing career scope in the Indian internet industry alone, is going to be worth $160 billion by 2025, according to a Goldman Sachs report. And due to the outbreak of the pandemic, businesses are more and more relying on digital marketing to reach out to their target audience.

With consumers and customers locked down at home, traditional marketing efforts may not solve their purpose. Businesses which did not focus on digital marketing before, need to immediately plan for digital transformation to communicate successfully with their audience. Hence, you can realize the growing importance of digital marketers. Since, more and more organizations will need to develop this part of the business, it will be a good option for students to opt for this course.

Now, what you generally have to do if you plan to become a digital marketer? Well, you have to design strategies to promote your company, brand or product through various channels. You will need to plan in advance on how you would like to increase brand awareness and then formulate strategies for the same. Also, effective digital marketing is not just about creating Facebook pages/posts and tweets, it includes specialized training in search engine optimization, data analysis and emerging digital technologies.

Does it sound too theoretical? Let’s understand it from a practical angle. How often do you receive mailers from your favourite online shopping companies? Have you ever noticed that the products you had viewed previously keep finding a way to come back to you? The website may offer you a discount for that particular product for a limited time. That’s how interesting digital marketing can be.

The marketers keep a track of every activity you are performing online – be it your Google searches or your social media connections. Very often you might have noticed a random Amazon or Flipkart ad popping up highlighting the same products you were viewing the other day on Google. So, in short, a digital marketer has to find a way of turning his/her potential customers into actual customers.

Let’s look at some of the prominent digital marketing skills and their roles:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

People across the world use Google to search about various things on which they require information to make a decision. For instance, if you want to buy a phone or look for the best education loan company, you search on Google to figure out the best possible options. A brand needs to ensure that with the help of SEO, the prospective customer should be able to view its website/related content when he/she is searching for it. Businesses are focusing on SEO to get more traffic for their websites. If the target audience base is huge, then the company can convert more potential customers into existing customers.

Social Media Marketing:

All marketers will find their audience on social media platforms. This segment has become extremely important knowing that these platforms have become reliable sources of information consumption. Hence, social media marketing has gained massive importance during the past few years. These can be used to communicate with the target audience directly and thus, get followers for the brand based on their interest.

Social media marketers also need to understand which platform their audience uses the most. For instance, if the brand’s audience is mostly the millennial crowd, then the marketer needs to tap them on Instagram or Facebook. If you are looking for professionals, then the right platform will be Twitter or LinkedIn. This way the marketers can stay in touch with the audience and offer relevant information to the prospective customers.

Content Marketing:

This refers to the creation and promotion of interesting and relevant content for the target audience. Relevant content will help build trust in the brand and thus, increase the number of visitors on the brand’s platforms. Tools like blogs on the resources section of a website or videos on YouTube channels are done by content marketing managers. The main idea behind this is to share relevant information with the prospects to solve an issue or query and thus, convert these prospects to your customers. As a marketer, you will have to plan, create and promote such content on various platforms. You have understood which form of content works best for your audience, your brand and the platform selected.

Email Marketing:

You have come across newsletters and various promotional emails sent by brands right? The content of these emails are decided by the marketers to reach out to the subscribers to share interesting information with customers/prospective customers. Email is still considered to be one of the powerful tools for lead generation. Hence, companies till date depend on email marketing tools to reach out to the target audience successfully.

These are some of the skills and techniques digital marketers need to know. There are a vast gamut of skills you need to acquire to become an effective digital marketer. For instance, Augmented & Virtual Reality marketing is gaining huge popularity these days. Hence, like all other sectors, this segment too is evolving day by day. Interesting tools are being implemented to take digital marketing to its next level.

In a world where everything is getting digitalized, organizations are focusing on developing strong online strategies to be in the limelight. Around 69% of businesses are going to hire more marketers, according to a report by Marketing Hiring Trends. The report also suggests that there is a considerable gap between the supply and demand of digital marketing professionals. Hence, why wait for a better opportunity. Just go for digital marketing courses to fill this gap and become one of the smartest professionals of this field.