How can I become a digital marketer?
If you have this question in your mind, then this article will answer your question.
As you know, In this fast-moving digital world, every business must be present online.
And they are considering digital marketing as an integral part of their marketing to reach more prospects and get more leads and sales.
So, they are looking for digital marketers who can design, implement and manage digital marketing strategies to promote their brand, products & services online.
If you learn digital marketing skills, you can get a lot of career opportunities.
You can join a marketing agency or a business or company and work as a digital marketer.
You can start your own consulting and freelance business. You can create your blog and make money.
So how can I become a digital marketer? To become a digital marketer, you must learn
- Basics Principles of marketing?
- Digital Marketing VS traditional marketing
- Skills needed to become a digital marketer
- Is there a future for digital marketing?
- How to become a digital marketer?
Let’s begin.
1. Basic Principles of Marketing
To become a digital marketer, you must understand the basic principle of marketing?
To understand this, we will go through one example.
How do food delivery Apps come into existence?
Tell me in the olden days what we would do if we got hungry and don’t have time or mood to prepare food at home.
We go to the hotel or restaurant and order the food.
Until the food is prepared, we will wait there.
After receiving the order, they prepare the food and hand it over to us.
Then we bring it home.
It is a time taking process.
The food delivery apps identified this problem and came up with a solution. Now they are delivering the food from the selected restaurant whenever we want.
That makes our life easier.
Is it correct or not?
Now tell me, where is the marketing concept in this entire process?
To understand this, you must know the definition of marketing.
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services. (Wikipedia).
After reading this, go to our example and read it once again.
Then you may find that Marketing is involved in every stage of the product life cycle.
- Identifying the problem. (food delivery)
- Giving Solution (Creating an APP)
- Promotion (Reaching you)
- Sales (Getting orders from you)
But, what do we think?
Marketing is nothing but advertising and sales.
But it is partially correct.
Marketing is a broad term and involves every stage of the product life cycle.
i.e Identifying the problem, finding a solution, promoting, and sales.
Digital marketers focus on marketing and advertising.
But to build and develop marketing strategies to promote your products and services, we must understand the basic principle of marketing.
Now we will see the 5 basic principles of marketing and how useful for digital marketers. There are 5 Ps in principles of digital marketing.
1. Product
The first P in the principles of marketing is the product. It may be a physical product or maybe a digital product or service.
To create a marketing strategy, you must be familiar with all the features and specifications of the product and service.
What problem it can solve, how the customer will use the product, etc
Then only you can create better marketing strategies.
2. Price
The second principle in marketing is “Price”. Price is one of the most important factors in any business. It is a very difficult task to set the product price. It needs some research.
As a marketer, you may not be involved in the process of price fixation. But you must understand the pricing patterns, how much profit it will make, and the pricing of competitor products.
It helps you in designing the marketing strategy.
3. Promotion
The 3rd P in the basic principle of marketing is Promotion. It includes all the tactics and strategies used to reach customers and get sales.
These days, marketers have many channels to promote their products and services.
As digital marketers, we must learn about the different digital channels and how to use them properly to promote products and services.
4. Place
The 4th P in the principles of marketing is “Place”. It refers to the location or store where your product is available. While launching the product, you must decide whether you sell the product online or in a local store. So your customers can find and purchase your product.
These days, there are different inbound marketing strategies to bring customers to your store (or your website).
5. People
Marketers have debated for years whether People should be included as the fifth P of marketing or not. Without people, there is no marketing. Discovering the ideal customers for your product is the most crucial thing for any business.
Because marketing revolves around the wants, needs, and desires of people. Sometimes the need may be physical, psychological, or sociological.
Effective marketing should begin with an insightful understanding of the consumers.
Like where they are living, what is their income level, how they are spending, what are their characteristics etc. Then only, you can design the best marketing strategies.
That’s it about the principles of Marketing.
So to become a successful digital marketer, you must have a basic understanding of all these marketing principles.
Now we will see about the different marketing channels used to promote products and services to reach targeted customers.
2. Traditional Marketing VS Digital Marketing
Marketing is divided into 2 categories.
- Traditional marketing
- Digital marketing
Now we will see each one in detail.
1. Traditional Marketing
There are different approaches to doing traditional marketing. For example
Outdoor Marketing Like Billboards, Posters on bus/taxis, Wall Posters)
Promoting through TV, Radio, etc
Advertising through Print Media like Magazines, Newspapers, Brochures, Pamphlets, etc
Telemarketing (Phone, text message)
These approaches are still popular. Small businesses to large companies use these traditional marketing approaches to promote their products and services.
But there are certain limitations to traditional marketing.
- It is a one-way communication only.
- We can not track the performance of the ad.
- Day by day, the cost of traditional marketing is increasing.
2. Digital Marketing:
In digital marketing, we have different methods to promote products and services online.
Some of the digital marketing methods are
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Pay-per-Click (PPC)
Social Media Marketing
Content Marketing
Email Marketing
Mobile Marketing
Affiliate Marketing.
To promote your product and services online, you can use any single method or combination of methods.
If you follow integrated digital marketing i.e mix of all these methods, you may reach more people.
Now we will see the advantages of Digital marketing:
Here are some advantages of digital marketing.
- It is two-way communication.
- You can track the performance of the ad.
- You can target specific audiences with digital marketing.
- You can alter the ad whenever you want.
- Most cost-effective when compared with TV commercials.
Now the big question comes into our mind. Which one to use?
To decide this, you must consider things like
What type of business are you doing?
What types of products are you selling?
Where are you selling (either online or local store)?
Who are your target customers? What are their characteristics?
What is the socio-economical situation of your target customers?.
For example, If you are running a small brick-and-mortar store in a small town, how do we promote that one.
Is it possible for you to use TV commercials and newspaper ads?
So we use pamphlets distribution to promote the business in that locality, which is cost-effective. We purely depend on traditional marketing.
If you are the owner of a showroom and want to promote it?
Then you can consider both traditional marketing and as well as digital marketing.
So you can reach more customers?
The economic conditions of the people also play a vital role in marketing.
For example, consider the pricing of Amazon Prime membership. In the US they are charging $14.99 per month (In Rs.1,140.95) and $139 (in Rs.10,579.85) per year.
But in India, they are charging Monthly: Rs 179, Quarterly: Rs 459, and Annual: Rs 1,499.
See the difference.
Why do they set prices like this?
The people of the two countries have different economic situations. So they set different prices.
So as a digital marketer, you must consider all these issues while designing the marketing strategy and selecting the marketing channels.
Sometimes we may use both channels, and sometimes we use either one to promote our products and services.
So which channel should we use? It depends on the product, price, place, and target customers.
Now we will see what to study to become a digital marketer?
3. Skills needed to become a digital marketer
To become a digital marketer, you must have technical and soft skills.
Here is the list of the technical skills you may need to learn to become a digital marketer.
-
- Website Creation.
- Content Creation
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing
- Pay-per-Click (PPC)
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Data Analytics
To become a digital marketer, you must know about all these skills.
Here are the soft skills you must have to become a digital marketer.
-
- Leadership
- Communication skills
- Curiosity
- Willingness to Listen and Learn
- Adaptability
- Ability to Multitask
- Empathy
- Self-awareness
To become a digital marketer, you must not be a master of all skills.
Become a master in one or two technical skills and have the ability to understand all the other technical skills.
The next big question that comes to our mind is, is there a future for digital marketing, and how long does it take to become a digital marketer?
4. Is there a future for digital marketing?
Do you imagine that the world will survive without businesses? If your answer is no, there is a demand for digital marketing.
Let me explain.
Consider the following numbers.
Around the world, 4.95 billion people used the internet in January 2022 – equivalent to 62.5% of the world’s total population.
This number is still growing too. Internet users are currently growing at an annual rate of 4.0%, equating to an average of more than half a million new users each day.
Most internet users (92.1%) use mobile devices to go online.
Roughly two-thirds of internet users go online via laptops and desktops for at least some of their activities.
There is growth in Social media usage also. The global users reached 4.62 billion in January 2022.
It is equal to 58.4% of all the people on Earth.
The number of social media users has increased by 10.1% over the past 12 months. (source)
Now tell me, do businesses will not use these channels to promote products and services.
Never.
So there is a demand for digital marketers in the future.
How long does it take to become a digital marketer?
The answer to this question depends on yourself. What are you learning, and how are you practicing?
Now we will see how to become a digital marketer.
5. How to become a digital marketer?
So you have decided to become a digital marketer!
But, how to start?
Let me explain.
1. Learn digital marketing skills
First, learn technical skills that are needed to become a digital marketer.
Here is the list of skills like
- Website Creation.
- Content Creation
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing
- Pay-per-Click (PPC)
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Mobile Marketing
- Video Marketing.
- Data Analytics
There are different online courses where you can learn all these skills. Remember that, You do not need to master every skill.
Become a master in one or two skills and must know other skills.
There are various digital marketing certifications available for a digital marketer.
Some popular digital marketing certifications are Google Analytics IQ Certification, Google Ads Certification, Hootsuite Social Marketing Certification, etc.
If you want to get a job in the corporate sector, earn one of these certifications.
Then it becomes easy for you to land your dream job.
If you want to become a digital marketer with no experience? Then follow the following steps.
2. Select your Niche and Start Blogging
Selecting a niche is very important to becoming a digital marketer on your own.
There are different broad niches like Education, Health, Realestate, Entertainment, and Fashion.
First, start with one specific sub-niche in one of these categories and build a website around that niche.
Later on, you can add other sub-niches to that website.
After building a website, you must post content related to your niche on that website.
After that, promote your content through PPC ads, social media, etc.
It creates awareness among the people whom you are targeting.
Then start communication with the customers and build trust among them.
For that, you can use email marketing or webinars.
In this way, you can build trust among your customers.
When they need your service or product, they come to you and do business.
To succeed in your digital marketing business, do not depend on a single channel to promote your business.
You must follow an integrated digital marketing approach. That means you must use Seo, PPC, Email, and social media marketing.
3. Build a Personal Brand
Building a personal brand is very important for any digital marketer who wants to start a digital marketing business.
It helps you to reach your customers effectively.
Also Read: Is Tatsumeeko getting into blockchain gaming on discord?
How Can I Become a Digital Marketer? Conclusion
To become a successful digital marketer, you need time and effort. You can not become a digital marketer over the night.
So first, learn and improve your skills, then definitely you will become a good digital marketer.
That’s it about “how can I become a digital marketer?”
I think you like this article.
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