The term marketer derives from marketing, which includes a broad spectrum of responsibilities: from creating and keeping the customer, to ensuring that they are satisfied with the product/service.

A digital marketer plays a crucial role in making the buyer’s journey smooth.

From making a website more visible to a target audience, to coordinating with the other members of the marketing team, a digital marketer lies at the intersection of design, functionality and sales within marketing.

 

To execute all these aspects of the digital marketing profession smoothly, you need a certain level of expertise to deliver results. Here is a list of skills that can help you rock a career in digital marketing:

1. SEO

SEO (search engine optimisation) practices are constantly changing and becoming more refined as time passes.

Various brands are beginning to realise the importance of white hat marketing techniques, such as guest blogging and content marketing. Organic search results are as crucial as ever, if not more so, and organic traffic speaks volumes about your brand. 70% of the links search users click on are organic.

SEO skills are therefore vital to a career in digital marketing.

And even if your plan doesn’t include becoming a dedicated SEO expert, learning some basic SEO skills won’t hurt.

2. Email marketing

Email marketing is often underestimated as a marketing tool and can actually be your strongest marketing weapon if you know how to optimise it.

And no, email marketing isn’t just about writing emails that convert. As a digital marketer, you must monitor the whole process, from writing an email, to scheduling it, to analysing the email metrics, and this takes a good level of expertise.

Mastering this skill can get you great results with minimal effort as it can eliminate the need to work hard to get more and more clients.

Email marketing has some powerful trade-offs when it comes to nurturing relationships with customers. While social media is a great way to target your audience, email creates a personal space for brand-consumer communication.

If you want to bridge the gap between a company and its customers, adding this skill to your resume can help you to stand out.

3. Social media expertise

Your career as a digital marketer is incomplete without social media knowledge as social platforms are becoming increasingly popular places for marketing both products and services.

However, many companies face challenges while trying to market themselves through social platforms because each and every platform works on different principles (even if they deliver the same information). So, as a digital marketer, this skill can make you an invaluable asset to the team.

A good social presence can you give your company a strong social identity. Social platforms allow brands to put forward a human image of themselves and you have a key role in designing and promulgating that image.

4. Visual marketing

The biggest challenge that brands face with their content is producing something that is engaging, and this challenge outnumbers other obstacles that are encountered in the marketing process.

This makes visual marketing very important because visual is synonymous with engagement.

Around 93% of the most engaging posts on Facebook include an image.

Also, the power of visual marketing isn’t just limited to social platforms like Facebook or Twitter, but goes beyond that. For instance, including an image with your article on your website can give you around 94% more views.

As a digital marketer, it is crucial that you understand the intricacies of visual marketing and capitalise on it. In addition, having some basic video creation and editing skills can go a long way.

5. Analytics

It is crucial for any marketer to understand whether his or her efforts are translating into results. Only then can they optimize strategies more effectively.

So a key responsibility you have is to test your campaigns, track results and analyze them to overcome the pitfalls in your marketing plan.

From studying pricing strategies to analysing marketing ROI, analytics is useful as it provides invaluable insights into your marketing results.

This skill is also favoured by companies because they know they are working with someone who has the knowledge of planning, execution and monitoring (that’s 3 in one).

6. An understanding of WordPress or other CMS

Wordpress runs around 30% of the entire Internet. And it keeps updating its list of plugins to speed the process of content creation.

As a marketer, it is crucial for you to be able to get around a content management system. This knowledge can help you in better creation and management of your website. And that is something that dictates a website’s success to a large extent.

Additionally, one good thing about CMS is that once you have decoded how to use one kind of CMS, it is not very difficult to navigate a different one.

7. PPC

The ultimate goal of PPC marketing is to place the company on the first page of Google search results. And brands are in dire need of PPC experts to give them more online visibility.

If you have the know-how of bringing targeted traffic by creating a well knit PPC campaign, companies will rely on you for many more years to come.

And remember, it is one of the highest paying jobs in today’s market.

8. Mobile marketing

Over 30% of all online purchases in 2016 happened on a mobile device.

Not having a mobile ready website can hamper your brand’s marketing goals. Unfortunately, the shift towards mobile has caught many digital marketers unprepared, so it is a crucial time to capitalize on this and develop skills in mobile marketing.

Do not forget to learn how to use QR codes effectively. The QR code or quick response code is a form of two-dimensional bar code which can be used for an almost unlimited number of applications. One of the most common applications is in marketing to link to a business’s website so that consumers do not need to type a business’s website into their computer or phone. For more information, consider using this free QR code generator.

It is more important than ever to design marketing campaigns with a mobile mindset because user behavior and response can vary across the different mediums.

A good digital marketer knows this and works on delivering the best customer experiences from all possible angles.

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Conclusion

With changing times, the reliance on digital marketing is increasing. And companies are looking for digital marketing agencies and experts who have a wide variety of skills to meet the dynamic changes in the constantly evolving digital world.

While some basic marketing knowledge can help you stay afloat in your digital marketing career, to climb up the success ladder you need to invest in yourself and develop these skills.

Keep your skills checklist updated and get ready to rock your career.

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