Digital Marketing Jobs: 7 Skills You Need in 2018

Digital marketing jobs are not only the new cool, in Nigeria and across the world, but also the magic wand that have been differentiating future-oriented companies from the ones who are stuck with how things have been done since day one.

It is just natural that new roles are emerging which create digital marketing jobs across different areas of specialization in Tech, Education, Media, even Manufacturing plus Oil & Gas.

Digital channels have disrupted how businesses get done!

For you who need job in 2018, maybe you want to start side hustle or your current job now feels boring, digital marketing has enough space for us all.

Yeah, I left routine debiting and crediting job in Nigeria’s best bank for 7 years in a row in 2016 to do digital marketing full-time. Trust me, it is a once-in-a-lifetime decision and I have no regret so far.

BUT BEWARE: there are digital marketing jobs and there are digital marketing jobs!

In order to prepare you for the best digital marketing jobs, I have highlighted very important skills you need below.

You must prepare yourself with the right training, knowledge along with some ‘digital technicalities’ to get really good digital marketing jobs.

Technicalities? Yes dear!

Search Engine Optimization, Web Analytics and Pay per Click have some jargon you need to romance, if you intend to have a successful relationship with digital marketing. Lol.

Don’t get scared thou. You can learn as fast as you set your mind to do so.

Before I offload my arsenal of required skills for interesting digital marketing jobs, the world’s leading training school in digital marketing has some tips that can prepare you for a great career as a digital marketing professional.

Tips to be successful at digital marketing jobs:

Be willing to learn: digital marketing field is evolving, evolving fast actually. You must be willing to learn fast, put new things you learn into work for better results, in order to succeed on digital marketing jobs.

Evolve with trends: much as you need to learn fast as things change, you must evolve as a digital marketing professional. Identify digital marketing blogs, influencers on social media, among other authoritative industry news sources to keep you up to date on your digital marketing job.

Hook up with like minds: people you work/relate with on your digital marketing job will go a long way to influence how successful you will become. You cannot imagine how much support you can get from a network of fellow vibrant digital marketing professional colleagues, especially when it comes to problem solving.

Side hustle: above all, digital marketing gives you that life-enriching free space to explore ideas on your own. Grab that uncommon opportunity with both hands by embarking on your own personal projects. You will learn better and increase your confidence level with your side hustle.

Read up more on 10 Tips on How To Kick-Start Your Digital Marketing Career.

Digital marketing jobs: what skills do you need?

Regardless of position, roles or job descriptions you will find for digital marketing jobs, some of the key skills you will need include:

1. Email Marketing
2. Web Analytics
3. Social Media Marketing
4. Mobile Marketing
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
6. Pay per Click advertising
7. Digital strategy

Digital marketing jobs: Email Marketing

Email marketing seems to the easiest job in digital marketing profession but that is not true.

If you want to be able to plan, execute, measure and reiterate email marketing campaigns that function well as part of an elaborate marketing strategy or as a stand-alone campaign that brings ROI, you must learn how it is done.

For successful Email Marketing job, you must learn to:

1. construct and deliver an effective email marketing campaign
2. capture data of leads/customers
3. segment/clean subscriber list periodically
4. design engaging email template that you can tweak and re-use
5. write effective email copy that is concise and not boring
6. measure, report outcome of emails and campaigns
7. split test different aspects of email campaign
8. identify success metrics and keep an eye on them
9. choose suitable Email Service Providers (ESP) and software tools
10. execute intelligent email automation to engage audience

Digital marketing jobs: Web Analytics

Web (Data) Analytics helps you know what is working versus what should be thrown out of the window.

As you will learn to initiate, iterate and integrate in digital marketing, you will appreciate the role of Web Analytics on any forward-thinking marketing team.  

For successful Web Analytics job, you must learn to:

1. measure, monitor and optimize digital marketing activities
2. understand technical insights to build effective reporting structure
3. use and combine various data analytics tools
4. interpret data in order to make meaningful business decisions
5. set up Google Analytics accounts, views and apply permissions at various levels
6. align data, KPI and business objectives to ensure overall success
7. develop detailed profile of target audience using location, demographics. interests, etc
8. understand technical performance and speed of a website
9. depict level of user engagement and monitor conversions from mere metrics
10. set relevant goals (mostly for ecommerce), alerts and create custom reports

Digital marketing jobs: Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing job is beyond scheduling posts and reporting tweets, comments and page likes at the end of the month. It is for brand advocacy.

Since a businesses cannot control what people, competitors and influencers say about them online, it is compulsory to put up a human character on all relevant social networks which listen to, participate in conversations related to the businesses.

For successful Social Media Marketing job, you must learn to:

1. understand key concepts of social media marketing
2. master content planning, posting and scheduling
3. set measurable social media goals, KPIs and targets
4. choose best social media ad objectives and formats
5. set up and prepare paid social media marketing campaigns
6. measure social media success metrics and relate them to business objectives
7. respond to customers’ enquiries and complaints fast
8. identify relevant trends, innovative ideas for great conversations
9. identify suitable communication style for different platforms and campaigns
10. Identify suitable social media platforms based on business objectives and available resources

Digital marketing jobs: Mobile Marketing

Some businesses get as much as 80% of their total traffic, engagement, content consumption from mobile devices. For such  companies, neglecting mobile optimization for every digital marketing activity is suicidal!

Yes, it is like shooting oneself in the foot with a borrowed gun. You wonder how the borrowed weapon will be returned, right?

Back to Mobile Marketing.

It is personalized and mostly permission-based. Mobile Marketing will expose you to tools and outreach techniques that will help you deliver your marketing message to people in their most private zone.

That is the beauty of mobile marketing, it sneaks into private parts where social media and other channels may be too loud to reach.  

For successful Mobile Marketing job, you must learn to:

1. create and deliver effective mobile marketing campaign
2. capitalise on immediacy, mobility and personalization for campaign success
3. understand basic components of a mobile-optimized website
4. understand important attributes of a successful app and how to create one
5. explore uniqueness of mobile search compared to desktop search
6. appreciate the role of Google AdWords in mobile search
7. identify opportunities to convert ‘always on’ target audience
8. relate with different audiences based on context and their locations
9. do mobile advertising using SMS, NFC, Bluetooth, QR coding, etc
10. understand market validation using trials, reviews and iteration

Digital marketing jobs: Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) basically helps a business to get found online. It enriches you with know-how required to tweak a website and its content for audience who search for related terms online to find you.

SEO is technical. SEO is a black box. SEO is what it is.

I have heard a whole lot of different wrong remarks on how SEO works. But, the truth is that SEO is interesting. It works based on some fundamental principles you must understand and follow.

For instance, do not skip Technical SEO on any project. Why?

Noindex tag alone can ruin a campaign worth millions of dollars for you, if not resolved.

As Search Engine Optimization experts, there will always be few of us compared to multitude of opportunities available as more new businesses storm the Internet thereby creating a more competitive online market in which every business wants to get found by their target audiences.

For successful Search Engine Optimization job, you must learn to:

1. understand how search works
2. do keyword research and select suitable keywords for website
3. use keyword-based meta-tags throughout website
4. create, optimize and distribute effective content for content marketing
5. know how websites are viewed and evaluated by search engine algorithms
6. use SEO tools to help common search engines find, view and rank websites
7. do off-page optimization to build relationships/links with other websites
8. set baseline and know how to measure progress against set SEO target
9. know key terminology and technical insights necessary to cultivate effective SEO strategy
10. leverage key SEO techniques to improve website’s organic ranking on search engine results pages

Digital marketing jobs: Pay per Click Advertising

Pay per Click advertising is an online advertising model whereby you pay search engines to drive traffic and leads to your website. It helps you rank in search results for keywords you have not earned top organic position for.

Pay per Click provides quick fixes for getting your business in front of search engine users as they look to know about, buy things or go to places of their interests.  

For successful Pay per Click Advertising job, you must learn to:

1. use paid search to effectively drive quality traffic to your website
2. understand Pay per Click terminologies and technical skills
3. set up a Google AdWords account and develop an AdWords campaign
4. do effective keyword research and write good ad copy
5. set up landing page that converts visitors and leads to paying customers
6. understand, tweak AdWords account settings and campaign management
7. use specialised PPC tools for effective campaign that optimizes ad spend
8. analyze search marketing trend and tailor campaigns accordingly
9. recognize the features of effective, optimized ads
10. set and manage budgets for AdWords campaigns and measure results

Digital marketing jobs: Digital Strategy

Digital Strategy is required to coordinate all relevant online channels for an overall successful campaign.

As a Digital Strategist, you are saddled with the responsibility of  integrating SEO, email, Social Media, PPC, Digital Display ad and Mobile marketing in order to achieve the business objectives at hand.  

Talk of creating digital marketing blueprint or actionable digital plan for all other specialists to follow on your way to delivering great results within reasonable time frame.

Please note: results and time are critical for a Digital Strategist who knows his/her onions.

For successful Digital Strategy job, you must learn to:

1. create a formal digital marketing plan for in-house team or digital agencies
2. do thorough situation analysis on which strategy will be built
3. do effective intelligence gathering
4. measure ongoing success and iterate
5. define target audience and develop appropriate profile
6. develop clear, meaningful objectives for the digital marketing plan
7. set out clearcut action plan to bring the digital marketing strategy to live
8. set budget for the campaign, follow up with all parties on deliverables
9. understand how the iterative cycle of monitoring, analysis and adjustment works
10. lay out coherent project structure that outlines milestones, deliverable and resources