Digital Marketing as a Career
Do you aspire to join the digital marketing world? Want to become an expert and flurish your career in digital marketing and make the most of the upcoming opportunities in modern marketing techniques? Learn here a few of the things that will help you become a digital marketer.
The world of digital marketing
Digital marketing is the in-thing these days. No more are companies and enterprises restricting themselves to conventional marketing techniques. Billboards and the other popular mediums like television, radio, print media are passé today. Ever since the internet and popular devices like smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers flooded the market, digital marketing concepts started taking roots. These days most of the companies are trying to make the best use of the many aspects of digital marketing. To survive and to fight off the intense competition companies today have to adapt to new technology and take to digital marketing in a big way. In this competitive world, one cannot simply survive on means that were till recent times a novelty in themselves. Since it is an upcoming field, before discussing how to become a digital marketing expert, it would do a world of good, if we could first discuss what exactly digital marketing is.What is meant by digital marketing
The term digital marketing itself signifies what exactly it means. The idea is to connect to your customers and market your products and services through digital means, namely, the internet, mobile phones, tablets and other digital mediums. As more and more people are getting connected to the internet and spending more time online, it makes economic sense to reach to your customers, present and prospective, through emails, social media, websites, search engines and so on. A digital marketer strives to rank the content high in search engines so that the products and services he/she wants to promote could share the limelight. Through digital marketing, a customer is more likely to respond to ads that are placed on the digital mediums. In absolutely no time a business can get its clients to visit its website and get to know the services it wants to offer. The same can't be said of traditional marketing, where it is too far-fetched to expect a customer to respond to an ad that he or she has seen on a billboard or even TV.
Some of the digital marketing methods that are revolutionizing the way companies are marketing these days are content writing, email marketing, mobile marketing, online brochures, social media marketing, pay per click, affiliate marketing, YouTube marketing, digital display advertising and much more.Digital marketing as a career
From the above discussion it is quite apparent that the future belongs to this new age marketing methods. Compared to its future possibilities, digital marketing is still in its infancy. In the years to come, it will grow by leaps and bounds and provide our educated youth with wide career opportunities. Digital marketing is a big field and has numerous aspects associated with it. Depending upon one's area of interest and specialization one can establish in one or more of these fields. In the succeeding paragraphs, we will learn how to build upon these aspects to take them as a career. Even though digital marketing is taking the world by storm, it is not as simple as it sounds. One needs to know the inside-out of digital marketing and that comes only from knowledge and experience. That's often the reason digital marking experts have sought the world over.What does a digital marketer do
A digital marketing professional will be working for a company or a brand. Say as a manager, you will be leading a team of people who are into executing projects in the digital realm. It will be the endeavour of the team to research and integrate the various components of digital marketing and bring into spotlight the goods and services of your company or enterprise. You can also work of your own as a freelance digital marketer and offer your services to whoever pays you the best. How to become a digital marketer
By two ways you can become a digital marketer. You can either be a self-made digital marketer or can take the help of experts in coaching you with the necessary skills. Digital marketing can be self-learned. It doesn't require any specialized qualification to enter this field. Even without a marketing MBA you can hope to become a digital marketer. All that is required is a passion for the digital field and a certain business acumen that goes a long way in helping you learn the tricks of the trade. Having said so let me add that it helps if you are from the marketing field. It's true that self-learning requires a lot of effort and motivation on your part to sustain the initial momentum to learn the concepts which are new for a first-timer. But once you are through with the fundamentals and have a few successful projects under your belt, you can pick up the skills fast enough to establish yourself as a digital marketing expert in the professional world. The online world provides you with great help in becoming an expert of your own.
If you are looking for digital marketing training, check out well established institutes like Digital Skill Master, managed by Tony John, one of the first professional bloggers from India.The self-learning way of becoming a digital marketing expert
Many experts feel that you don't require any formal training for becoming a digital marketing professional. What you require is application, practice and a deep interest. One doesn't need to invest much. All you require is a computer and an internet connection. You can start with having your own blog, which can be owned cheap. Write interesting articles on your blog that are of great help to the people. Explore a bit of SEO (Search engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Marketing), keywords, AdWords and the like. Put more and more content on your blog and do some research about how to bring in more traffic. Promote your blog by say, opening a facebook page dedicated to your blog. Promote your facebook page too through email marketing and the like and get more of email subscribers. Once you have sufficient traffic for your blog, go for monetization through Google AdSense. Monitor the traffic through Google analytics and do your best to improve the traffic. This is your first steps towards becoming a digital marketer.
With experience, you will come to know a lot about digital marketing and get to understand the various concepts such as SEO, pay per click (PPC), content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing(SEM), mobile marketing, web analytics and so on. Once you are through with all these concepts, you can scale up and improve upon your expertise. It is true that many digital marketing experts are self-learned and haven't undergone any formal training.Formal training towards becoming a digital marketing expert
And in case you feel that self-learning is not your cup of tea and you need professional guidance to see you through the initial learning phase, then there are a number of courses that will help you realize your objective. There are online websites as well as formal institutes that you can seek for the necessary training in the area of your choice. Some of these popular websites, institutes and centres are listed below. The courses may last anywhere from 4 to 6 months and they may cost you anywhere from Indian Rs 35,000/- to 50,000/- before taxes.
Here's some of the top digital marketing trainers in India:Digital Vidya
Set up in 2009, Digital Vidya is one of the best known companies in the field of digital marketing training. Some of the top companies including Google India have tied up with the company in this respect. Other than their flagship course on Certified Digital Marketing Master Course (CDMM) there are certification programs on a range of topics such as SEO, SEM, SMM and etcetera.Digital Academy
Another leading training company in the country, Digital Academy provides for online learning for digital marketing. Among host of other programs, Certification program in Digital Marketing is their flagship training program. NIIT Digital Marketing
NIIT is one of the well known companies in the field of computer training. In recent years it has also launched its own digital marketing training program. In this respect it has partnered with Digital Marketing Institute from Ireland to offer its courses. The courses ae all classroom programs.SimpliLearn.com
A Bangalore based digital marketing training company, SimpliLearn.com provides for both online as well as offline programs.
A few others in this field are:
Most of these companies and websites provide you with online means, whereas there are a few like NIIT, which are totally based on classroom learning. They provide you with a range of courses, some of which are comprehensive one and cover all the important aspects of digital marketing. Then there are individual courses on say SEO, SEM, SMM, email marketing, web analytics, growth hacking, etcetera that can be availed of depending upon one's interest.Concluding note
It can be very well concluded that the future belongs to digital marketing. None of the companies or industries can stay aloof of it. It can suit every company in every industry; the methods may differ a bit. So it would not be a wrong decision if you take up digital marketing as a career. It's upon you whether you will like to seek a trainer to train you in this field or you can otherwise be a self-learned digital marketing expert. Both ways, it's you who will gain.
In case you are interested in learning about other possible careers that may suit your interests and qualification, you may refer this page to Career guidance. You will find a wealth of information here.
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Agreed. Digital Marketing is an emerging field, which has a wide scope. I have recently completed my digital marketing training course.