What is Digital Marketing?

Digital Marketers typically help a company grow via channels like social media, mobile apps, email, search engines, web apps, or websites. 70% of all digital marketing spending in 2017 was on mobile ads, and this booming market is on track to make $129 billion in 2021. Digital Marketers combine tech and analytical skills in combination with a solid understanding of marketing to help companies advertise on online platforms. 

How to Become a Digital Marketer

You can become a digital marketer in one of three ways. There are 2-4 year college programs that offer robust marketing classes covering advertising, tech tools, and writing. But there is also the shorter, more affordable bootcamp option! There are plenty of resources online to learn from but you’ll need to be self-disciplined and ready to experiment. Self-taught digital marketers typically take longer to make the same salary as bootcamp graduates too. And if the university association is important to you, there are also University Digital Marketing Bootcamps like Columbia University and University of California at Berkeley.

Digital marketing bootcamps will teach you the skills you need quickly and efficiently so that you can go out and get a job. Some bootcamps specialize in specific types of digital marketing like growth marketing. You’ll leave bootcamp with a sharp resume, portfolio, and LinkedIn Profile. Most digital marketing bootcamps offer career counseling or services and some even offer mentorship. Digital marketing bootcamps can last anywhere from 5-24 weeks and cost from free to $14,000. You might also consider getting relevant certifications, too, such as Google AdWords and Google Analytics. 

Digital Marketing Jobs

The opportunities are nearly endless for digital marketers. Many types of companies need someone with these skills and positions aren’t limited to the tech industry! Digital Marketers can work in-house for a company, work for an advertising agency or marketing firm, or they can work freelance. Most digital marketing jobs don’t require students to have a degree or certification but some prefer it. 

Digital marketing bootcamp graduates can expect to secure job titles like: 

• Digital Marker
• Digital Marketing Manager
• Social Media Marketer
• Email Marketer
• Growth Hacker
• Growth Marketer
• SEO Specialist
• Content Marketer
• Inbound Marketer
• Demand Generator
• Search Engine Marketer

Digital Marketer Job Description

The Digital Marketer is in charge of developing and completing marketing projects according to their organization or a client’s goals and values. They are expected to create and launch efficient, effective advertising strategies and materials for digital spaces to promote products or services. Digital Marketers may focus on increasing sales, brand loyalty, awareness, and traffic. Digital marketers are required to understand e-commerce and the digital marketplace as well as standards and regulations of the digital platforms they are advertising through. Technical abilities such as SEO, SMM, SEM, and digital design are necessary to be successful as a Digital Marketer.

What Does a Digital Marketer Do?

Digital Marketers work with email, social media, video, and search engine optimization (SEO) to promote brands across the digital sphere. They use technologies, strategies, and concepts that can be learned at digital marketing bootcamp. Day-to-day tasks vary depending on the role and company, but Digital Marketers can expect to be working on a team, producing content, buying ads, and generating growth. 

For example, Amy is a Digital Content Strategist for an education technology nonprofit (and graduated from Springboard). Today, she says: “I manage a team of five. I’m currently doing content strategy. I think about what the user needs and how and when we deliver content.”

Adam works as a Marketing Associate in Paid Acquisition at Udemy after graduating from Tradecraft’s 12-week growth marketing bootcamp. He says, “For the first three months, I was working in a pretty standard growth marketing role. I had a budget and channels and I acquired users. I later stepped up to A/B testing on the site. My role has since shifted to product engineering and design to build A/B tests for experiments to run on the site.”

Digital Marketing Salaries

Digital Marketing Skills

There are a lot of areas that Digital Marketers can specialize in, but an all-around good marketer should master creativity, analytics, and technical tools. From there, they might go on to project management, account management, strategy, or client interactions. Digital Marketers also have the option of specializing in something like SEO, PPC, copywriting, or design. “The best Digital Marketer is creative but also cares enough about the analytics and the data behind that creativity,” explains Dave Boscom, VP of Marketing and Mentor at Springboard. 

Here are some of the technical tools and concepts Marketers need to know: 

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - SEO is the optimization of online content in order to rank higher (or highest) on a search engine list.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - SEM uses paid and unpaid marketing strategies to gain more traffic from search engines. 
• Pay Per Click (PPC) - PPC is a model of internet marketing which pays for individual visits to an advertisers site by paying for each click on an ad. 
• Social Media Marketing (SMM) - SMM is the use of social media platforms to promote a product or service. This can be done through copywriting on a post or paid advertisements through the platform itself. This includes platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Hootsuite, Buffer, etc.
• Email Marketing - Email marketing uses various types of content sent via email to generate website traffic, leads, or product signups for an advertiser. Tools used for email marketing include Hubspot, Mailchimp, Customer.io, and Constant Contact.
• Display Advertising - Display advertising is the most popular advertising format. Display advertising uses rich media like social ads on mobile apps like Instagram as well as videos. 
• Cross Channel Advertising - Cross channel advertising sends paid messages to prospects across multiple devices and on a variety of channels to usher consumers into buying a product or service. 
• Soft Skills 
• Communication
• Interpersonal Skills
• Creativity
• Analytical Thinking
• Quick Learning
• Multitasking
• Concepts
• Brand strategy and planning
• Content marketing
• Performance marketing
• Analytics and reporting

Email Marketing vs Content Marketing vs Growth Marketing

Email Marketing is the use of email to promote products or services. The goal of email marketing is to develop relationships with potential customers or clients and drive traffic. It can be personalized to the specific client with mailmerge. It’s a cost-effective, accessible way to market and it’s more likely to be seen than social media. 

Content Marketing is the creation and sharing of online material (such as blogs, videos, or social media posts) which subtly, not explicitly, promote the advertiser’s brand or product. Materials might include collaborative posts with a social media user, blogger, or vlogger or evergreen content on a brand’s own blog or social media. Common goals of content marketing are sparking interest in a company’s products or services; to attract, retain, or expand a company’s audience; or to drive sales. Content marketing can be extremely affordable or very expensive depending on the blog, social media, or video maker a company wants to work with. 

Growth Marketing is sometimes called Growth Hacking. Growth marketing is a data-driven marketing strategy used to optimize demand generation. Growth Marketers design and execute experiments to improve the results of a target area. Growth Marketers are constantly strategizing and analyzing data to get their clients or company the best results. Growth marketing is most concerned with brand or product awareness, lead acquisition, consumer activation, revenue, retention, and referrals. 

Content and growth marketing are on the rise because they utilize one of the general public’s favorite things – social media. Social media advertising is already a $27 billion dollar industry, and that only includes paid advertisements put out through a social media platform’s ad campaign function and does not include money spent through content marketing, $119 billion in 2020! Don’t worry, Email Marketers, your techniques are still useful! Although its fad years have passed, email marketing is actually 40 times more effective than social media marketing.