Career Track
Digital Marketing
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.
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 Job | Average Salary |
| Digital Marketer | $61,757 |
| Marketing Manager | $69,402 |
| SEO Manager | $70,189 |
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 it’s fad years have passed, email marketing is actually 40 times more effective than social media marketing.
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.
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Featured Schools
The 79 Best Digital Marketing Bootcamps
Singapore1 Course
ALPHA Camp offers full-time, 12-week courses and part-time, 8-week courses in full stack, front end, iOS development, product design, and digital marketing in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, China. ALPHA Camp’s mission is to bring startup talent into the rapidly...
Read our Full Review of ALPHA Camp
CEI Escuela de Diseño, a 7-month full stack JavaScript programming bootcamp with campuses in Madrid, Seville, Spain, and Lisbon, Portugal. The coding bootcamp covers HTML5, CSS3, jQuery and PHP7 languages designed for web development and classes are taught in Spanish....
Read our Full Review of CEI Escuela de DiseñoOnline1 Course
School16 is a 8-week, live online Technology Career Acceleration bootcamp. Students will gain an understanding of the four core roles in tech: marketing, sales, operations, and product. In the first two weeks, students learn the systems and tools required to be...
Read our Full Review of School16
Talent Garden Innovation School offers European bootcamps in coding, digital marketing and UX design. Talent Garden's goal is to advocate and support innovation culture around Europe through education. In addition to full-time bootcamps, Talent Garden Innovation School...
Read our Full Review of Talent Garden Innovation SchoolOnline, Taichung City, Hong Kong2 Courses
Growth Marketer Academy offers a 12-week, growth marketing bootcamp with campuses in Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, and Hong Kong. Growth Marketer bootcamps can be completed part-time with an average total time commitment of 100 hours. Bootcamp students...
Read our Full Review of Growth Marketer AcademyMiami3 Courses
University of Miami Digital Skills Bootcamp offers part-time digital marketing and cybersecurity tracks through the Division of Continuing and International Education at the University of Miami in Miami, Florida. Each bootcamp includes career planning services, such as...
Read our Full Review of University of Miami Digital Skills BootcampPlaya del Carmen1 Course
Coding Experiences offers a 10-week full stack coding bootcamp in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. The Coding Experiences mission is to continuously find the best ways to train the next generation of developers and to transform the way tech education is delivered. Students...
Read our Full Review of Coding ExperiencesOnline1 Course
IIM SKILLS is a 12-week, online Digital Marketing bootcamp based in India and Saudi Arabia. The Digital Marketing bootcamp includes more than 60 hours of live online training and 120 hours of assignments and industry case studies. Weekday and weekend bootcamp options...
Read our Full Review of IIM SKILLSOnline1 Course
CourseCareers is an online, self-paced technology sales bootcamp. Students will acquire foundational knowledge such as sales terminology and organizational structure as well as higher-level skills such as sales engagement and using CRM software. The technology sales...
Read our Full Review of CourseCareersProvo1 Course
Startup Ignition is a 13-week entrepreneur bootcamp located in Provo, Utah. The bootcamp is part-time "after hours," offered in the evening 2 nights per week. The course is divided into 4 weeks of in-class instruction, followed by 8 weeks of real-world application, and...
Read our Full Review of Startup Ignition
