The digital industry is grow quarter on quarter, showing no sign of slowing down, and it can be difficult to navigate for newcomers or those looking to find their niche.
This opens a big question - how do you set yourself apart from the competition to grow and succeed?
Here is our take on 7 key skills to keep you relevant in the ever-changing digital world.
Hone your Persuasive side
A successful digital marketer will not only have great people skills; but they’ll also be able to combine analytical thinking with creative-problem solving to help teams come up with innovative campaign ideas to drive businesses forward.
A big part of this is being persuasive. Can you convince someone else to purchase? What about convincing other team leaders that your idea is the best?
Being Tech Savvy is part of the game
The digital industry is naturally tech driven, therefore having a decent grip on technology as well as the ability to learn it quickly is crucial to success at scale.
Generally, if you understand the basics of web coding, as well as having a clear idea of how to use the basic Content Management systems (CMS) like Wordpress and Wix, you’re likely well on your way to landing that dream job or improving marketing within your business.
Data/Analytics
No matter what area of digital marketing you are going into, Google Analytics will probably be central to your strategy. Monitoring and reporting via such tools is pretty straightforward, but the tricky part is how to gather and use that information to help you learn more about consumer behaviour and apply it to new solutions that boost traffic and conversions.
All businesses have large volumes of data that they can and should track, and great digital marketers need to understand how to gather and use this to their advantage. Most companies will be looking for people who to only know how to “read” this data but not necessarily someone who knows exactly which data to improve business strategy in the future.
To be in the elite of digital marketing you’ll need to show that you can do this in innovative ways and that the way you do it ends with important results.
Live & Breathe Design-Based Thinking & Planning
Design Thinking is a term that refers to a way of approaching problems from a user-centric view. This approach encourages us to think and design in a way that will benefits users, increasing the UX and can assist in solving large-scale complex problems.
There are 5 key stages to this process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. The reason why this works so well in digital marketing is that so much of it is centred on the user experience.
Modern designers and developers are likely to use an approach like this so it’s a good idea to at least have a solid understanding of it and apply it when feasible.
SEO & SEM: Digital Marketers Bread & Butter
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is key to all levels of digital marketing so if you're either thinking about moving into a career in marketing or you’re trying to market your business, you must have at least a basic handle on it. You can certainly leave the highly technical, back-end stuff to the more technically-oriented people but having a solid understanding of best practices and how to optimise all forms of content is crucial for running a successful digital marketing campaign.
Both SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) inform your entire digital strategy on both a data and content level and you need to be able to communicate to others so you just won’t get far if you don’t make a point of learning the basics.
Content is King
Content marketing is at the core of digital marketing and will continue to be a crucial part of the game no matter what happens. Content marketing is a huge undertaking and will take time to set up and continue to develop so you have to be able to understand how to not only create high quality, SEO-friendly content but you also have to understand how to effectively get audiences to engage.
Content can take many forms and is dependent on who your audience is, these include video, emails, blogs, e-books, videos, whitepapers, podcasts, etc. This can be amplified by using social media therefore having a firm grasp on social media marketing will only help you. You’ll need to be able to strategise based on a given client’s overarching business goals, develop a campaign that involves an effective strategy, and monitor analytics as well.
Video is now
Video is taking the internet by storm and this isn’t about to stop. Videos have the potential to hold customer’s attention on retail sites for two minutes longer than average (which is really like a lifetime in the digital world) and a well-optimised video can boost your chances of being in a top Google ranking position by at least 50%. In addition to that, more than 80% of customers are more likely to purchase a product after seeing it detailed in a video or a video review.
So what makes this media so engaging? The simple answer, it’s personal. When people can see your face, they are more likely to trust your entire business. Social channels are the best place to drive traffic from video content because they’re is so much content on social channel these days a video breaks up the noice of your feed and instantly demands your attention.
Production doesn’t need to be professional but knowing how to create a quick intro video from your laptop is a good place to start. And if you have some training in this area and you love it, your skills and talents will not be wasted as video will continue to be in demand.
