Working in the digital marketing field has become a dream and goal of almost everyone, especially after the industry got recognised as one of the most promising fields that has a place for literally everyone.
Even if you are an absolute beginner with no prior knowledge and experience in the digital marketing field, the industry is going to welcome you with open arms, provided you are open to learning and experimenting without the fear of failure.
Are you ready to step into the digital marketing world? Because we are all set to guide you through the journey! Let’s go, shall we?
Why Should You Work in Digital Marketing?
Before discussing what you need to work in digital marketing, let’s first see why you should consider having a career in digital marketing. This is for people who are still not sure and need a little more convincing.
High Paced Industry
Digital marketing is a high-paced industry. While it may seem a little challenging to some of you, one should consider it a never-ending learning experience. With changing and improving techniques and algorithms, a professional working in the digital marketing industry is always up on their toes achieving their goals and changing their strategies to do even better. Success is not stagnant in digital marketing. In fact, nothing at all is going to feel stagnant.
In Demand
Do we really have to tell you that digital marketing is in demand?
Literally, any and every industry that you can think of, which is operating online, is dependent on digital marketing. Digital marketing has become an integral part of the sales and marketing of every business and has completely taken over traditional marketing techniques.
Now, the growth of every business, small or large, is dependent on digital marketing and hence they are open to hiring the best people without even considering their budget.
“Yeah, but I am a beginner, definitely not the best.”
For now, right? You can be the best in the future. You are open to learning, experimenting, and improving, you are already on your way to being the best.
Easy and Intriguing
Yes, digital marketing is easy. Of course, the technicalities require you to strategise, analyse, and execute things in a way that brings immediate results but isn’t that achievable? It is. And trust us when we say this, working in the digital marketing world is very easy. Mostly because it is an intriguing field. Working in digital marketing, in any project, doesn’t really feel like work. These are more like little experiments where you mix a few strategies to get the best possible results.
Promising
One of the most promising fields where the sky shall be the limit for learning, growth, income, and adventure. In digital marketing, especially if you are working as a freelancer, you are not bound to work for a single organisation or on a single project. You can work for as many clients as you want, deliver results and get paid.
When you have made an image of a great digital marketer or professional in a specific department within digital marketing, people are going to pay you anything you ask. You just have to prove your expertise, which you can do by gaining skills and experience.
Skills You Need to Work in Digital Marketing
Yes, before stepping into the digital marketing field, you will need to have a few skills. Don’t worry, you don’t have to master these skills, just the basic knowledge and hands-on experience will do. And by hands-on experience we don’t necessarily mean working for someone else, you can gain this experience by experimenting on your own website and social media accounts as well.
Writing Skills
You saw this coming, didn’t you? Writing plays such an important role in digital marketing that having decent writing skills becomes a necessity. You don’t have to be a Shakespeare in writing and you definitely don’t need to excel in the vocabulary game like Shashi Tharoor (we hope you know what we are talking about). Simple, grammatically correct English that even a class 8th student can understand is the level you need to achieve in writing skills.
Data Analysis
Data analysis helps you analyse if your marketing strategies are working or not. A business that is hiring you as a digital marketing professional will need you to prove if you are getting them business and this is something you can do with the help of data analysis.
Digital marketing has this benefit over traditional marketing strategies. In digital marketing, you can actually analyse how many people are consuming your content and how many of them take action that is in favour of your business. This helps you not only quantify your success but also change and improve your strategies accordingly.
Search Engine Optimisation Skills
With writing skills, you also need to learn search engine optimisation skills. Nothing fancy, nothing difficult, all you need to do is optimise the content you write or create according to the search engines like Google and Youtube so that when someone searches for content relevant to what you have created, your content shows up.
Keyword Research
Keyword insertion is one of the ways in which you can optimise your content according to search engines. So, as a digital marketing professional, you will have to know how you can research keywords that are relevant to the business or content you are creating and also searched by your target audience.
To make it simpler for you, understand that you first do keyword research, plan your content around those keywords, and then write your content by using a few target keywords. After this, while posting your content you take care of the meta description, meta title, images, alt texts, keywords again, and internal and external links. There you go, you have used three of your skills already and created SEO-friendly content.
Content Marketing
Content marketing involves more than creating SEO-friendly content. Content marketing skills will help you research, plan, and market content according to the market. You will also learn how to research and analyse your competitors’ content and create your own content accordingly.
The research and planning sound simple when we say it but when you are working with a client that has a business in a very specific or niched industry, these skills become necessary. Without content marketing skills you may not be able to create and plan content that is going to promise good, long-lasting results immediately.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a part of digital marketing. Digital marketing includes every online marketing platform that you can think of- Google, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are the most popular platforms.
Social media marketing skills will help you market the business around different social media platforms according to the algorithm of the said platforms. What may work well on Instagram may not do as good on other platforms and this is where you need social media marketing skills. To understand, research, and analyse what works out for a particular social media platform.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is the dinosaur of marketing. It is a pillar of marketing that no new or old marketing strategy has been able to move. That strong, eh? Well, yeah. Very effective but also tricky, so you have got to learn email marketing before you decide to go out and tell people that you are ready to work in the digital marketing field.
Email marketing alone is one of the most promising marketing strategies. So, if you tell us that instead of focusing on digital marketing, you plan to work only on email marketing, we will not suggest otherwise.
Strategising
Finally, you will need strategising skills. As aforementioned, digital marketing is a high-paced industry. Things that are working today may not work next month or even next week. As someone working in the digital marketing field, you will have to strategise content keeping this in mind. While it is important to follow the trends, it is equally important to create evergreen content as well. And it is only possible with decent strategising skills to find a balance between different types of content and marketing techniques.
A Friendly Reminder…
We feel the need to mention this. We understand that the skills we have mentioned above are usually required by experts in the field and you may not need them right in the beginning especially if you plan to work as an employee. But even as a beginner, having these skills is not going to hurt you.
In addition to that, we are nowhere asking you to master these skills. That is not an achievable goal in a short span of time and stepping into the digital marketing industry should not take more than a month for you.
All you have to do is make yourself familiar with the basics of digital marketing and have a basic, introductory knowledge of all the aforementioned skills.
We hope it doesn’t sound daunting or extremely hard now.
Start Your Own Digital Marketing Agency From Scratch
Can you start your own digital marketing agency with no prior experience in digital marketing?
Yes, you can. And no, it won’t be a failure.
See, your success does not depend on your experience but on your mindset. If you are willing to be successful and ready to put in the effort it requires without doubting your abilities, there is no way you will fail.
So, before diving into the following steps, consider taking a few minutes to make up your mind.
Learn Digital Marketing and Acquire Skills
As already mentioned, you will need to acquire skills and knowledge regarding different techniques and types of digital marketing. Having basic knowledge and skill set would work for someone looking forward to joining an organisation in the digital marketing department but for you, you will need much more than just the basics.
When you are starting your own business, you need to have a proper understanding of the subject because you will be reaching out to clients and proving to them how you are better than your competitors.
So… learn as much as you can!
Watch online videos, take free and paid courses on digital marketing, read blogs, see how people in the digital marketing industry are working, and take notes of everything.
Practice Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is not theoretical. Just like you can’t learn horse riding sitting on your couch, you can’t call yourself an expert until you have implemented the strategies you’ve learnt in digital marketing and achieved noticeable results.
You can simply practice on your own website and social media accounts but at least have some kind of hands-on experience to make sure what you have learnt so far is working in your favour.
It is easy for us to tell you that one particular strategy can get you, say, 10,000 followers on Instagram in a month but only after you actually use that strategy is when you can confirm that it works for real.
Start Your Website
You don’t need to be perfect to enter the market. Perfection is an unachievable goal as there is nothing that can perfectly meet the idea of perfection. So, whenever you feel you have decent knowledge and skills and you are ready to enter the market, start your website, because how else do you plan to start your digital marketing business?
Now, this is the platform where you will be practising again. Create a website and optimise it according to the search engines. Your clients are going to judge your work through your website and you need to give them your best work so that they consider hiring you.
Meet Legal Requirements
If you intend to start your business with an office setup and everything that speaks “business” to you, you will have to fulfil all the legal requirements of starting a business. Make sure you do everything right in this department because no one wants legal repercussions.
Register your business, get all the licences and permits you need, reach out to a lawyer in your area and ask them what all you will need to start your business even if it is online so that you can start on the right foot.
Hire Professionals
Please don’t try to run your digital marketing business alone. When you are an agency, it means you have a team of experts and honestly that is what is going to work better for you than you alone handling everything.
We are not saying that you can’t be an expert in everything you do or you can’t handle your business alone but after a certain point, it is going to be exhausting. Moreover, when you will have more and more clients, handling everything alone will become an issue for you.
It is better to start with a team so that you don’t have to later train them individually when you will also have clients to deal with.
Reach Out to Beta Clients for Testimonials
Now is the time to take your practice to a different level. Reach out to beta clients so that you can practice and get testimonials from them. You can choose to work for free or give them discounts however suits you but get a few genuine testimonials so that your potential clients know you are not a scam.
You can work with beta clients in a specific industry to show your expertise or choose beta clients from different industries to prove that you are open to working in any industry.
Read more: Wish To Start Your Own Digital Marketing Agency? This Is Everything You Need To Know
Parting Words
And that’s all. With that, you are prepared for your potential clients as a digital marketing agency.
Impressive, isn’t it?
Well, this is all it takes to start a business.
No, not really. One important thing that we decided to keep for the ending is that you will need business skills. Of course, running a business in itself is a job and you will definitely have to learn it.
We have a program that can prepare you for your digital marketing agency better than this post. So, if you are sure about starting your own business and would like to know more about how to start and grow an online business, we highly recommend taking the Hustlepost Academy course. It covers everything you need to make your business a big-time success!
