Digital marketing jobs are a good fit for people of various professions that can occupy different positions.
There’s room for all. Even if you don’t know how to advertise to TikTok users or even what TikTok is (if the latter is true, check it out and get addicted like everybody else!)
Likewise with other blooming industries, there’s space for people of different backgrounds doing a wide range of things that still further the overall marketing effort.
Look at IT: Not everybody has to be (or can be) a developer, IT companies also require customer success specialists, account managers and other business-oriented people.
Digital marketing is a place for creative and innovative people. This article will help you find your place in this stimulus industry.
But first, let’s talk about perks and downsides of being a digital marketer.
Why digital marketing?
Digital marketing uses new technologies to create and promote content. This content may include your own products or offers from third parties.
And there are so many ways of promoting them. That’s why the industry has a lot vacancies for digital marketing jobs.
This all makes up for an exciting mix. Why?
- You can test your ideas quicker as digital assets can be made public in seconds.
- Digital marketing puts a data-based approach over guesswork. You can collect a lot of detailed information on user engagement and page visit statistics to learn about what works and improve your strategy.
- There are more possible angles or channels of communication than in traditional marketing.
- You have more chances of working from home and still getting customers from all around the world.
- New tech can help you unleash your creativity.
- Digital ad spend surpassed traditional marketing.
There was this pandemic thing recently, do you remember?
The time when everybody stopped walking the streets where the billboards were and started looking at their screens for hours watching ads between their content..
It’s not like digital marketing wasn’t popular before the pandemic. But now it is essential. From a small bookstore to a multinational company, everyone needs an online presence.
They all need people that can help them with that.
Digital Marketing Jobs
1 Affiliate marketer
Probably the most colorful and vibrant part of the industry. Affiliate marketing had its peak a couple of years ago but it is still a path to making more than a decent income for thousands of people around the world.
How does it work?
Affiliate marketing is about promoting other people’s products or services. For each successful event deemed valuable by the offer owner (called a conversion) you get a small payout.
You can get such an offer from a place called ‘affiliate network’, or sign up for an affiliate program (many respectable brands use it as an additional sales channel) and promote it using the traffic that you have access to. This may include either organic traffic, so traffic coming toward your site, or paid traffic.
Getting substantial amounts of organic traffic requires a lot of work (producing a lot of content for your blog or YouTube channel) and it fluctuates outside your control. That is why most affiliates choose the paid option.
The trick is to earn just a little bit more than what you spend on traffic. This doesn’t have to be much, mere cents will do – if your traffic volumes are high, cents will turn into hundreds of dollars.
Paid traffic can be found on social platforms (Facebook, TikTok), in search engines (Google, Microsoft Advertising), or from ad networks such as Taboola or PropellerAds.
You will also need a tracking tool, such as the Voluum ad tracker. This puts science into the whole mix and allows you to get ahead of other marketers that only have a general understanding of what is going on with their campaigns.
What do you need for this career path?
Affiliate marketing is one of those digital marketing jobs that have a really low barrier of entry. All you need to have is some budget (relatively low compared to other businesses), time and dedication. You don’t need to have coding skills for creating your own website – use a dedicated landing page builder. As for creating graphics, you can hire people for that.
You can learn, use tools or outsource all the intricacies of affiliate marketing – if only you have the will.
How to start this career?
Being an affiliate marketer is about entrepreneurship. You don’t apply for a job anywhere, you just start doing it. You don’t need any dedicated skill, you don’t need to register in any office. Just get your computer, sign up to an affiliate network and a traffic source, set up your landing page and you are ready to go.
2 Content writer
Digital marketing requires a lot of content. We are still not at the time when such content can be easily generated by AI, especially in foreign languages.
Content marketing is an important part of a good digital marketing strategy. Humans respond well to stories and well-designed videos. There is a whole new trend – storitization – that tries to turn every marketing message into a story to tell.
How does it work?
Digital marketing agencies content comes in a variety of forms:
- Blog post
- Guest articles
- Technical documentation
- Ebooks
- Emails
- Digital brochures
- Video scripts
- Web page copy
Copy serves several purposes. You can use it to inform about a product, provide information on the state of the industry, create guides or handbooks that will serve as lead magnets.
What do you need for this career path?
You need to be good with words, obviously. You need to know how to put your message concisely and in an attractive form. You need to know a bit about an industry that you write about – or be willing to do some research.
Think about your strengths and weaknesses. Some people prefer writing long forms: articles or guides, while others find short copy more attractive.
How to start this career?
You can opt in for being a freelancer and find assignments through websites such as Fiverr or The Urban Writers. Or you can apply to a digital marketing agency or any other company that has their own marketing department.
But to really start from scratch, you need to have some content already created. Start by creating your own blog or writing guest posts. This way, if anybody asks you for your previous work, you will have something to show.
3 SEO / SEM specialist
SEO evolved from something that was delegated to interns or done by students, to one of the most prominent out of all digital marketing jobs. This job employs skilled strategists who are now in the front line of any marketing work.
SEO stands for ‘search engine optimization’ and it is defined as an effort to get more organic visits by optimizing a website to rank higher in the search results. SEM, or ‘search engine marketing’ aims to get both organic and paid traffic.
Both of these strategies use similar techniques.
How does it work?
An SEO/SEM specialist wants to make your page, product or brand more visible on the net. They can do it by:
- Optimizing your web page’s content (on-site SEO). By placing keywords in a smart way, without overstuffing, and using headings and lists (which Google really likes), they can make your web page be more visible for search engines.
- Preparing linking strategy. Backlinks, so links that point to your site, are still probably the most important factor that Google uses to assess the importance of your site. Cooperating with other parties, exchanging links or paying for them, assessing link quality is the main focus of an SEO/SEM specialist.
- Search result pages also contain promoted links. Part of an SEO/SEM specialist’s job is to make sure that your page will appear after typing relevant keywords in a search engine.
What do you need for this career path?
While a degree in marketing may help, you can learn SEO by yourself. There are a lot of free or paid courses or other resources. Being an SEO/SEM specialist means learning constantly, because the way search engine algorithms work changes constantly.
How to start this career?
Many SEO/SEM specialists start by optimizing their own content, like a blog site. It usually starts with looking for popular keywords, then you typically learn how to design your content to make it more readable for search bots. Next thing you know, you are an SEO guru that can put their knowledge and expertise to use by working for others.
4 Performance marketer
Performance marketing is digital marketing at its finest. The performance part refers to the result-oriented approach.
Performance marketers aim to deliver concrete results for their customers or their own products. They use PPC (pay per click) marketing to drive traffic towards their page and get the desired number of visits or conversions.
How does it work?
Similarly to affiliate marketing, performance marketing aims to get concrete and measurable results from their marketing campaigns. Unlike affiliate marketers, these results don’t have to be monetary. Performance marketers often aim to get:
- Leads
- App downloads
- Sales
- Registrations for events
Performance marketers carefully measure the effectiveness of each part of their campaign funnel and tune it to get the best results.
Contrary to affiliates, performance marketers usually work in teams clustered in in-house marketing departments or agencies. By dividing tasks, performance marketers can handle multiple communication channels and perform in-depth data analysis to outperform competition.
What do you need for this career path?
Performance marketers are usually marketing graduates, business analysts, SEO/SEM specialists, data scientists. In short, they are mostly people that are good with numbers.
How to start this career?
If you have ever used Google Analytics just to learn visit statistics on your site, you are halfway there. Google Analytics may not be the best solution – in fact, in many cases Voluum may be better than Google Analytics – but it is widely used and free for basic use.
If you have used this analytics solution or any other – and you liked it – you are already on the right path.
5 Web designer / developer
Although landing page builders allow just about anybody to create a beautiful site, they can get you only so far. Any more complex design or custom approach and you’ll have to find a person that will prepare such a site for you.
A good home page is not just a small addition to your company. It is one of the main ways people see your company. A new and unique page design builds an image of a modern and innovative company. It is the equivalent of a marble staircase in your company’s headquarters. Stairs made of concrete would work just as fine – they will just look less prestigious.
How does it work?
As a web designer, you might be focused more on the visual part of the task or on the backend part – the part that makes sure that everything works. You may work solo or in cooperation with a design team.
What do you need for this career path?
Think about your strong and weak sides. If you like numbers more, then focus on the back-end part. If you are a person that like to think about the visual side, than you should focus on the design side.
How to start this career?
Skills in web development are a must. But the good news is that such a degree can be obtained by various courses or schools. You don’t need a university degree for that.
As with most digital marketing jobs, this one can also be performed either as a freelander or as a part of a marketing department. Once you learn how to design and build beautiful and fast websites, you will find work with ease.
Digital Marketing is Traditional Marketing on Steroids
I purposefully omitted many digital marketing jobs that may rise in popularity in coming years, such as Virtual Reality experience designer, for example. The point of this article was to present job opportunities that are present here and allow you to quickly join the digital marketing train.
The future is bright for online marketing and new jobs and new professions will appear constantly. Considering that the number of people connected to the Internet is growing as well, it is clear that it is not, and never will be, too late to get a new skill and get interested in digital marketing jobs.
Once you do so, you will realize quickly that almost all aspects of online marketing require a good tracking solution. Being proficient in data gathering & analysis will pay off at each position.
Discover Voluum now!
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