As more people turn to the internet every day for things such as entertainment, education, and communication, more businesses are also going online and trying to win their target audience over.
However, today, it takes more than just a simple call-to-action to make your customer pay for your product or service. This makes digital marketing skills more in demand than ever.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing refers to any type of marketing created, published, and consumed online. Basically, any content meant to advertise or promote a product or brand on the internet through any electronic device is considered digital marketing.
4 Types of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is wide in scope and is usually categorized into four main types.
1. Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing (SEM), as the name suggests, is a type of digital marketing that focuses on promoting businesses through paid ads so that they appear on top of search engine results.
Search engine marketing begins with an ad auction. Basically, during an ad auction, a brand bids on a keyword or several keywords that they want to show up for.
Cost also varies and is usually determined during the bidding process when you decide how much you are willing to pay for every click you get.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing is a popular form of digital marketing that uses valuable, curated, and relevant content to attract, engage, and retain customers.
These different types of content involved in content marketing include the following:
Blogs
Blogs are web pages that provide information or educational content relevant to the business. They are one of the most popular sources of organic or unpaid traffic.
Videos
Videos in content marketing refers to video content that promotes a brand and its products and services. These are usually published on a business website or popular video-based social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram (Reels).
Infographics
Infographics are images or illustrations that simplify complex information, concepts, or data. High-quality infographics are effective in digital marketing because they are shareable assets that promote your business faster.
Newsletters
Newsletters are another form of powerful written content that can be distributed straight to potential or existing customers’ inbox on a regular basis. They are targeted emails that promote a business and brand while building a strong customer relationship.
Social media content
Content distributed in social media platforms can vary from videos, photos, audio, and even text. They are generally meant to inform, engage, entertain, and promote.
Ebooks
Ebooks are also a popular form of content used for brand awareness or promotion. They are a great way to capture leads and position a business as an expert in the industry.
White papers
Like ebooks, white papers create the opportunity to position a business as an industry leader. However, white papers are specifically written not to directly promote a business but to educate or offer information about a specific topic, the problems related to it and their corresponding solutions.
Unlike traditional marketing strategies, content marketing targets more than just generating more sales. Besides conversions and profit, content marketing also values and fosters the relationship between your business and your target audience through trust, relevance, and value.
3. Social Media Marketing
Social media is one of the fastest and most popular ways of getting in front of your target audience. Social media marketing makes use of social media as a tool, and takes advantage of the traffic coming from these social media platforms.
4. Search Engine Optimization
Unlike Search engine marketing (SEM), Search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on getting traffic from organic search alone.
Instead of getting to the top of the search results through paid ads, SEO uses free strategies like keyword research, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO to rank higher on search engine results.
What are the 5 Characteristics of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing continues to be on the rise for a good reason. It introduced better, more personalized ways to approach and reach the business’ target audience.
Here are some of the characteristics of digital marketing that make it superior in the 21st century,
1. Broad reach
To date, there are over 5 billion internet users all throughout the world. This means going online where your audience is the best way to reach them fast.
With no geographical barriers, it’s relatively easier to send customers a message no matter where you are.
2. Focused targeting
Digital marketing also allows audience targeting. This means you get to see and decide which demographic you want to show your content to.
With proper analytics, you are able to see customers’ online behavior, which types of people have consumed and interacted with your posts and which ones have checked out and made a purchase.
3. Trackable results
With digital marketing, you don’t have to rely solely on sales to measure your results. There are a variety of digital marketing tools that help you monitor your results and see how well your business is doing over a selected period of time.
4. Data-driven decisions
With data onhand and proper interpretation of results, managing your business and making big decisions become a lot safer.
5. Real-time feedback
Digital marketing has made performance management and development faster with real-time feedback. As soon as a customer completes their purchase, dropping a review is as easy as making a few clicks.
These quick reviews make it easier and faster to evaluate business performance and take necessary actions.
What Digital Marketing Skills are In-demand?
Digital marketing is broad in scope and requires more than just posting about your business online. It also needs planned marketing strategies that lead towards brand awareness, lead generation, and business growth.
Here are some of the most in-demand digital marketing skills today:
Copywriting
Copywriting is the art of persuasive writing. This often refers to the written content on advertisements or promotional materials for a brand or business. In digital marketing, this could be the text appearing on your website, emails, or social media posts.
Basically, copywriting is the language used to gain your audience’s attention and persuade them to try or engage with your brand.
Search Engine Optimization
According to studies, only 25% of users go to the second page of the search results. This makes the first page of search results a prize for many businesses, making Search Engine Optimization or SEO more important than ever.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a popular in-demand digital marketing skill because of search engines’ ever-changing algorithms. It is the process of optimizing web content and technical configuration so search engines like Google can rank you higher in search results and increase your visibility and organic traffic.
Social Media Marketing
Whether you’re selling a product or a service, your audience is most likely on the internet. Currently, there are over 4 billion internet users in the world, averaging about 3 hours on social media every day. This quickly makes social media marketing one of the most in-demand digital marketing skills.
Social media marketing is easily one of the best ways to stay relevant and connected to your customers. It’s also one of the easiest methods to learn more about your consumers’ behavior.
However, an effective social media marketer understands that good social media marketing goes beyond a nice photo and hashtag. If you know how to run a successful marketing campaign on social media and understand how it works, you are one step ahead of your competitors.
Marketing Automation and Technology
As digital marketing continues to progress, we also see an advancement in terms of tools and technology, from online scheduling to customer management, that make marketing a lot easier for business owners and marketers. However, not everyone knows how to use these tools to optimize reach and conversions.
This is where someone skilled in marketing automation and technology comes in.
Effective use of these marketing tools can significantly boost a business’ digital marketing efforts, making this an in-demand skill today.
Audience Building
Understanding your target audience is your first step to success. It determines how you are to approach them and how you want to introduce and promote your business.
The skill of audience building includes the following:
- Researching and understanding your [target] audience.
- Planning and creating content that is tailored to your audience’s preference.
- Engaging with the audience and building a loyal customer base.
Project Management
Digital marketing is a tedious task that requires more than just planning, creation, and publishing. Besides dealing with the creative and technical stuff, you also need proper coordination.
If you’re someone who’s good at project management or collaborating with people from the start of a project up to its completion, you can be an effective project manager.
Project management is basically ensuring that digital marketing campaigns meet the target quality and are completed and delivered according to plan. Basically, project managers provide structure to the project and the assigned team of marketers through defined workflows and processes.
Data Analysis
Data analysis is an important digital marketing skill because it allows you to effectively measure the results of your digital marketing efforts, from website traffic, engagement, reach, impressions, to conversions and more.
Data is key to effective business scaling.
Like most of the technical aspects of digital marketing, the ability to read and interpret data is a valuable skill that many businesses are going after.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Finally, your website may achieve a wider reach and greater engagement, but without conversions, you won’t make any profit.
Conversion rate optimization is the process of optimizing content to increase conversion rates. This includes choosing the right keywords, messaging, design, and even user experience that influence customer behavior.
How Can You Advance and Improve Your Digital Marketing Skills?
Before you learn new digital marketing skills, check what you know and work on improving them first.
Take note of your digital marketing strengths
Make a list of your current digital marketing skill set and work on improving them. If you’re good at SEO, try to refine your skills by consuming advanced SEO-related content and practicing what you’ve learned on your own business website.
Identify marketing roles that align with your goals
Are you looking to work on your SEO ranking, or do you want to improve your conversion rates? Think about what you want to achieve for your business and learn marketing roles or skills that specifically solve your marketing problems.
Make a list of required digital marketing skills
If you’re eyeing for a specific digital marketing role, look up a job description and take note of the required skills for the position. Use it as a guide to learn more about what they do and how to do it effectively.
Work on skills that need improvement
If you think you’re not that good at social media marketing, perhaps it’s time to work on that skill. Take up beginner courses or learn from experts in the social media marketing industry.
Study successful people in similar fields
The best way to learn a skill is to follow the path of those who have already gone before you. Choose an expert in a similar field and follow their journey, including any type of educational content they publish about their work.
Determine the learning strategy that works for you
Finally, plan how you are going to learn your target digital marketing skill. You can try taking an online course during the weekends or weekday evenings, and you can also try blocking out an entire day to learn the skill.
Depending on your availability and budget, determine what kind of learning strategy works best for you.
Building Your Digital Marketing Skills
There is so much you can do for your business with the right digital marketing skills. Since technology continues to advance, there is also always room to build on what you already know.
These in-demand digital marketing skills should help you navigate what kinds of digital marketing work are needed more than ever to stay ahead of the game.
While you can learn everything on your own, this may also take some time, effort, and even money. An experienced and skilled digital marketing team can be helpful when you want better results without sacrificing your time and resources.
LeadOrigin’s team of experienced digital marketers are equipped with all the skills needed to run and manage marketing campaigns that are tailored to your business goals.