How to Start a Career in Digital Marketing: Follow this 6-Step Guide!

Are you dreaming of becoming a successful digital marketer? Are you passionate about expanding one's online marketplace and building an eCommerce brand? Do you love to create engaging social media posts, and do the increasing post shares and reactions excite you?

Congratulations! You are all set to pursue a career in digital marketing, and it is a great choice! We promise you will have an exciting journey, and the best part is that you can start anytime without prior knowledge or skill!

Is Digital Marketing a Good Career Option?

The short answer is 'Yes'. Digital marketing can be an excellent career option for anyone who is excited to adapt to changes and stay updated with dynamic market trends and search engine algorithms. You can serve diverse clients with unique business requirements from the comfort of your home.

The good news is you don't need to come from a digital marketing background, although it would be an added advantage if you pursue a dedicated digital marketing course. You can get started any time, and numerous college and online courses cover various areas, like content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), paid campaigns (PPC ads), and website designing, and the list is endless.

6 Steps to Start a Successful Career as a Digital Marketer

Following these six core steps, you can grow and develop as a profitable digital marketer.

Know the Basics

If you are a beginner in digital marketing, the first step would be to learn and acquire thorough knowledge about its key components. Digital marketing is a broad umbrella term that encompasses diverse areas, including −

• Search engine marketing (SEM) − It includes two areas - organic SEO and paid advertising (PPC campaigns).

• Website building and optimization − It helps to promote your website and create your digital marketing brand.

• Content creation and marketing − Focus on creating diverse content using targeted keywords to boost your search engine rankings and audience engagement.

• Social media marketing − Help your clients to be highly active on social media to engage with their audience by creating amazing posts and gaining customer reviews and ratings.

• Email marketing − It is the art of promoting one's products and services through emails.

• Affiliate marketing − This is a highly effective approach that works by growing another brand's sales by promoting their products on one's own portal and earning commissions.

• Mobile marketing − It involves marketing on different mobile app stores, like Apple Store and Google Play.

• Video marketing − Since videos get a higher attention span and traffic, you must master the art of video marketing on platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

An ideal digital marketer should have a combination of all these skills to master the online marketing game. But don't stress; take it one in a day. It will take some time to acquire the skills and knowledge of such diverse topics. However, make sure to implement and practice throughout the learning process to get a better understanding of these channels.

Also, you may need help managing such diverse tasks while handling real clients. You may need a dedicated team for each channel to maintain high-quality deliverables and get things done faster with higher efficiency. But gaining skills about each channel is essential to look at a complete picture.

Build Your Own Website

Now that you have acquired the necessary digital marketing skills, it's time to put them to practice. Besides, having your own successful website determines your credibility as a digital marketing agency, and your clients will want to know more about your practices.

Since digital marketing is a practical and measurable concept rather than a theoretical approach, having your own website helps potential clients to learn that your methods and strategies are actually working! Apart from implementing good SEO techniques, set up an informative blog to help clients know the right practices and boost your rankings.

Become an SEO Expert

Digital marketing is meaningless with SEO (search engine optimization), and you cannot build a profitable digital marketing business without a solid knowledge of SEO. With SEO, you can serve your clients efficiently and identify their concerns and goals with higher visibility.

By acquiring SEO skills, you can build credible websites that both your visitors and search engines would find attractive. You can apply these concepts to manage and boost Google Ads and Facebook campaigns.

Get a Google Ads Certification

The best and quickest way to acquire the required digital marketing skills is by getting a Google Ads certificate. Using Google Ads like a pro is necessary to become a successful and responsible digital marketing agent. Besides, getting a certification is a way to prove to your potential clients or employers your value and credibility as a digital marketer.

Know Your Digital Marketing Tools

To become a successful digital marketing professional, you need to track how well your campaigns and tactics are performing. As you climb up the ladder, you need to evaluate your progress and how well a particular strategy is working for your clients.

While this task may seem easy, and you may even try to track your progress manually, it becomes challenging when your client base increases and you have multiple projects to deal with. This is when digital marketing tools can come to your rescue by managing and assessing multiple projects.

Multiple SEO tools are available today, which you can integrate with your SEO projects and campaigns to determine their performance. Some popular tools, like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Google Analytics, Moz, etc., can help you identify market trends, customer behavior, demographics, and popular search terms. This way, you can make informed marketing decisions to stay on the right track.

For instance, Google Analytics helps you identify customer needs and buying purchases and track your campaigns' performance. Google Analytics is a powerful tool every digital marketer should master.

Stay Updated On the Latest Trends

Search engine algorithms and eCommerce trends change all the time. Thousands of online brands and their digital marketing teams are struggling to keep pace with this fast-changing industry. So, develop a habit of growing and adapting to these changes daily!

To keep up with this speed, you need to stay informed and updated constantly about the latest trends. Some of the popular ones include the employment of artificial intelligence and machine learning, creating trending YouTube shorts, optimizing your keywords for voice search, programmatic advertising, influencer marketing, and personalization. Good luck!

Conclusion

To conclude, starting a career in digital marketing is a great choice, and can offer multiple creative and exploration opportunities. Even if you don't have prior digital marketing experience or background, you can master this skill anytime and be a marketer every client would want to hire. You can either start your career as a freelancer, join an employer's digital marketing team, or build your own agency.