This article is second of my upcoming series “Become a Digital Marketer – Career Path for Promising Digital Marketing Career”. Stay tuned for new articles in the series. Read the previous article on Become a Digital Marketer – Take Advantage of the 2020’s “Next Big Thing”.
In our first post we saw some of the mind-blowing statistics and numbers related to the Internet.
I also showed you a story of an 8-year-old kid earning $26 million on YouTube.
I hope you remember it, because one of the awesome benefit of pursuing a digital marketing career, closely relates to that amazing story!
Now, you must be thinking is Digital Marketing Career still good for employees too?
Let’s find out why it is and what benefits you have in becoming a digital marketer!
You can learn and start your digital marketing career for free and train at your own pace
This has got to be the best part of a career in digital marketing.
If you look at the career graph in traditional marketing sector like advertising, you’ll first need to enroll yourself in a reputed university with top companies on placement board. Then you’ll have to sit for lectures, pass the exams every 3-4 months and obtain a certain level of score to get the degree. After that you’ll have to wait for the placement drive or a coveted internship to open up so that you can start getting some real work experience.
That is not the case with learning digital marketing.
You can start learning about various modules in digital marketing from the comfort of your own home. There are a host of online courses and tutorials, blogs and websites and individual marketers out there, who can help you kickstart your digital marketing career.
And by the way, most of them are free!
And the rest charge a very nominal fee.
In fact, here’s the comparison between the learning digital marketing and learning other reputed graduation and post-graduation courses:
Would you like to know what is even more cool?
Google gives you a free access to Academy for Ads. Where you can learn everything you need to learn about Google Ads. You also get the certification for free.
For SEO, Moz has a free guide.
Facebook Blueprint gives you all the information to set up your Facebook campaigns effectively, both organic and paid campaigns. And it has amazing case studies of real brands and companies showing you how they have successfully implemented Facebook marketing.
You can learn it all without giving a penny.
And these digital marketing skills you’ll learn from the comfort of your own home, can be applied to any business that exists under this open wide blue sky.
Digital marketing career offers versatility and an outstanding number of career options
With number of Internet consumers surging and as digitization of businesses across the industry becomes a necessity, even the Sharma’s Ji’s lazy girl, who continually takes selfie to upload status, can benefit from the career choices that digital marketing offers.
Every company, from start-ups to established corporate is constantly seeking digital marketing professionals who knows how to use the power of Internet to get the attention of the prospective customers, drawing them in and engaging with them on social media and other digital means to finally turn them into loyal customers.
With such a wide variety of opportunities available, you as a digital marketer can be picky about the company you’d like to work for.
These exciting opportunities of a career in digital marketing space comes with many fancy name roles, job descriptions and projects.
You’ll find your professional identity going wild with being a digital content producer, web developer or a social media manager.
If you are an introvert with fine-tooth combing skills, you can become a user experience tester or a CRM analyst or a keyword research expert.
If you are more of a go getter, go for the position of Conversion Optimization specialist or an e-Commerce executive or paid advertising expert.
For each of these skills, you’ll need to attain a particular set of knowledge and skills. But it’s relatively easy to switch if you decide to a content producer to an e-commerce executive within a company or even outside it.
It means you can learn new skills building on your existing skills, and increase your value to the company or find a lucrative position giving you more money elsewhere.
Which swiftly brings us to another of the remarkable benefit of digital marketing career…
Digital marketers get paid more and enjoy more job security than their peers in other departments
Because when it comes to job availability and security, the future looks bright for digital marketers.
According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), “With Internet-based advertising becoming more important, advertising managers who can navigate the digital world should have the best prospects. Advertising and promotions managers are expected to see employment growth in other industries in which they will be needed to manage digital media campaigns that often target customers through the use of websites, social media, or live chats.”
The BLS also cites that, since marketing departments brings in all the revenue for most businesses, marketing employees are less likely to be laid off.
And smart people like you, don’t need me to tell you from where most of the revenue is going to come for these companies…
It’s the Internet and the digital media!
But the fascinating finding is that even though marketing skills are in high demand, the right talent is hard to find!
A study conducted by Fractl with Moz to identify the current state of digital marketing careers, found that the demand for digital marketing professionals is exceeding its supply.
With the fast-emerging technologies and marketing platforms, marketing industry is continuously evolving. In this case, marketers are expected to broaden their knowledge and pick up new skills set quickly than ever before.
And this rapid rate of change is causing a digital skills gap.
Guess what… Not everyone is able to learn digital marketing or are willing to work or it!
Which tells us that, in this year, there will be shortage of digital marketers for all the company’s out there.
Companies will face difficulty in finding right candidates who have the creative brand-building experience, with technical know-how and business proficiency needed to succeed in digital age.
What it means for you as a digital marketer?
There are more jobs for you and ton of more coming in the year 2020, but not enough digital marketing professionals to fill them.
It will give you a unique competitive advantage!
Because when you’re working in an industry with a large skills shortage you can have a big leverage – to choose the type of company you would want to work for and to negotiate your salary accordingly.
According to a combined study of CII & KPMG, over 20 Lacs jobs are expected to be created in Digital Marketing field in India by the year 2020.
On LinkedIn alone, there are 21,712 jobs in digital marketing in India.
Whereas, Naukri.com has a total of 18,496 jobs for digital marketing.
With such a humongous number of jobs available, a graduate with no work experience can expect a monthly salary of Rs 15- 20K and a Head of Digital Marketing in a large brand or agency can earn Rs. 2.5- 3 Lacs per month
There is now a huge competition for skilled digital marketing talent regardless of the industry and now it’s time you take this advantage.
You can virtually guarantee your job security and negotiate for higher and higher salaries if you continuously learn various digital marketing skills that matter to every sector and business.
Get to Be Creative (and Experiment) even with your office dress-code
Before going any further, let’s take a sneak peek inside Googleplex…
That’s an entrance with a chandelier…
With themed meeting rooms with decorations in the corridor
And an Android Statue Park for fun…
And these gBikes to go from one building to another…
Having a beach volleyball ground to play…
With free food services…
And 3 gourmet meals a day… for FREE…
These multicolored loungers to relax…
Having more of a feel of playround than office…
And yes, that’s a slide inside of a MNC’s headquarters…
And look these are Google’s Founders inside a driverless car…
Why am I showing you this..?
Because most of the digital marketing agencies worldwide follow Google’s example and have a much relaxing casual culture inside their offices.
Which means, you can dress as you like so say bye-bye to the boring formals.
And in the actual work, “creativity” is more of a necessity in the land of digital marketing than the should-have quality!
In such a dynamic and ever-changing field, there is always a need for new and better ways of marketing products, conducting A/B tests, engaging your audiences and improving overall customer experience of your brand.
In addition, the speed at which digital marketing landscape is changing, paves a way for experimentation, as companies want creative ways to capitalize on cutting-edge trends working in the businesses, as long as a new trend hits the market.
Any job position here offers enough flexibility to try and experiment with various techniques and tools to see what can get positive results for the brand and what cannot. You’ll always be having to think of new ways to market products, solve problems, and engage audiences.
So, you can see, not only is there a plenty of opportunity to showcase your creatives in writing, design and video, but there’s also plenty of room on a day-to-day basis to practice creativity and experimentation in general.
Digital Marketing Career is Feeding Entrepreneurial Spirit and Start-Ups
This was already explained in the previous section…
With an example of an 8-year-old Ryan Kaji.
Wouldn’t you consider him to be an entrepreneur? With his $26 million ad revenue from videos, and 23 million subscribers for his YouTube channel, he is clearly a very good entrepreneur.
While there is a low chance that anyone reading this will succeed in running an airlines business, for example, but the digital field welcomes many young and passionate entrepreneurs.
And most of them do not have a world-changing ideas like Elon Musk has.
Which kid would not love opening the boxes of new toys? But Ryan Kaji was able to turn that love into a profitable business.
Similarly there are people teaching other people how to play a guitar or how to stay fit and eat healthy food, there are still others teaching mindful practices and success principles.
But most of the entrepreneurs this digital world has created are freelancers. Doing digital marketing for companies worldwide, no matter where they are. And they are not generating $26 million, but there are earning decent amounts of money to live as they wish.
Most likely at the start of your career, you would choose to work for a well-known company or a digital marketing agency.
Digital marketing also has many freelancers working from their own home with a WiFi connection and a laptop and serving multiple companies.
However, many marketers, after acquiring an experience of a few years, board their own ships.
They often expand into businesses, establishing their own digital marketing agency or they get enough expertise in a certain niche skill and they earn by teaching that skill to others.
And starting a business in digital landscape doesn’t require a large overhead expense, like any other industries!
That’s why digital marketing is one of the career choices which enables larger room for growth and successful self-employment.
Concluding Thoughts on Benefits of Digital Marketing Career
Whether you want to start your own enterprise or work as a freelancer in your own schedule or just be comfortable with a secure, high-paying job position; digital marketing has potential for all of these choices.
Now, Government of India has even started “Digital India” campaign under which government is encouraging every business to opt for digital presence and practices.
So, you can’t be wrong when choosing to become a digital marketer.
And in the nest post, we’ll be looking at various job roles and positions available within the digital marketing landscape. It will help you to choose the one which best suits for you and you enjoy the most.
This article is second of my upcoming series “Become a Digital Marketer – Career Path for Promising Digital Marketing Career”. Stay tuned for new articles in the series. Read the previous article on Become a Digital Marketer – Take Advantage of the 2020’s “Next Big Thing”.