Orji-Oko Uzor- Introduction
- Who is a digital marketing specialist?
- What skills are needed for digital marketing?
- How much does a digital marketing specialist make?
- Is Digital Marketing a good career?
- How do beginners learn digital marketing?
- The job description for digital marketing
- Conclusion
Introduction
What is a digital marketing specialist job description?
This article will not only explain a digital marketing specialist job description but will explain other things involved.
The time we live is a moment when people use the internet for everything. This includes paying for bills one, buying groceries for the weekend, shopping for a gift, planning a vacation and anything you can think of. People simply use their electronic device to carry out their business online everyday.
Nowadays, we are witnessing the growing popularity of the Internet. This has created an enormous opportunity for companies to expand their business influence into the world of cyber-space. The usual traditional brick-and-mortar store has been transitioned into the online storefront. Where anything can be bought with just a convenient click of a mouse button.
So, whether you are the owner of a new startup or the CEO of a successful business, you need digital marketing specialist to handle your advertising campaigns. Currently we are seeing companies relying on successful digital marketing campaigns. This will be handled by a digital marketing specialist to gain visibility and sales via their online portals.
Even when you think that digital marketing is not an essential part of your daily tasks, you will surprised to realise that it is. Each time you tweet, post, share or comment on social media, you are directly marketing yourself and building your own personal brand online. When you tweak the words of an email campaign, creatively amend the imagery for a banner campaign. Just know you are actively engaging in digital marketing.
When learning how to be a digital marketing specialist, ensure you’re delivering the message you intend to and seeing the desired results. To develop those skills will also help you better monitor the work you are putting out to be able to understand whether the campaigns are successful. As well as to identify areas of improvement.
What then is digital marketing specialist job description?
Who is a digital marketing specialist?
With the growing popularity of the internet, traditional advertising is no longer as effective as it used to be. Companies must provide meaningful content to customers constantly to be found quickly and easily online.
A digital marketing specialist is a person who works together with a company’s marketing team to perform the following:
- Ability to identify a target market.
- Create an image for the brand.
- Creating and maintaining a marketing campaign.
They help provide the needed assistance when ever the digital media manager design and assist to carry out a firm’s digital media plans.
Marketing specialists can decide to specialize in any of these areas:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Paid search (PPC)
- Display media
- Social media
- And shopping feeds.
However, they can have a more general digital marketing expertise and can still be referred to as a digital marketing specialist.
What does a digital marketing specialist do?
The role of a digital marketing specialist has the same objectives and goals of a marketing professional. This is to improve brand awareness, promote company products or services and to drive prospects to conversions. Instead of using the more traditional marketing channels, digital marketing specialist effectively communicate through appropriate technology platforms.
Digital marketing specialists work to start an effective marketing campaigns online, and to transform business goals into successful marketing campaigns. They are adept at analyzing the needs of the customer market. And they understand how and where to get the knowledge about customer trends and demands.
Digital marketing specialists are also responsible for developing the strategy used to market a company’s product online. This is achieved by putting together different online promotions and e-mailing campaigns to get the company’s message out.
What skills are needed for digital marketing?
Basic marketing principles might remain the same but the tools use in marketing are constantly evolving. So, making your digital marketing skills future-proof is a must!
Here are skills needed for your digital marketing.
Ability to analyze data and draw insights
The growth of digital marketing has created countless number of data. Now, digital marketers have more access on how campaigns are performing and customer’s behavior. To get the meaningof this big amount of data, digital marketers will need to master data analytics.
Digital marketing data analytics is more than just web analytics and website performance. For future digital marketers, they need to understand how data shapes and drives the customer experience across platforms and channels. They also need to master several tools including Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook Ads Managers, and various ad exchanges.
Organization and project management skills
Running different digital campaigns can get a bit complex quickly. However, building an omnichannel marketing plan which includes various technologies and different measurements. This will lead to a lot of moving parts to coordinate.
A digital marketing specialist needs to have the skills of a project manager to be able to bring together teams to move marketing ideas from concept to completion. These skills will used to lead and direct internal and external teams to manage projects and deliverables. They must be able to clearly communicate and motivate teams to create a seamless experience.
Knowledge and appreciation of automation
Marketing automation will streamline automate, and optimize marketing efforts. This allows businesses to target customers with sales and marketing messages using workflows. Online marketing efforts can be customized and this will be used to to send different messages to different prospects at various points in the customer purchasing journey.
This marketing automation has allowed more accurate messaging and it’s currently being adopted by nearly every marketing department. Research has shown that around 67% of marketing leaders currently use marketing automation platforms. Another equally has it that 21% say they plan to implement automation within the next two years.
Voice search SEO
By 2021, most searches will be done without a screen, according to research. With the introduction of in-home smart speakers and voice-enabled devices, SEO strategy is quitely shifting.
Voice search does more than just returning links to websites. It attempts to provide snippets of information that will answer the query directly. In the world of voice-search, it’s not just about keywords and backlinks. But your content must be crafted in a way that search engines see as higher-quality answers.
With voice search abilities being built into phones, speakers, appliances, vehicles, and just any other thing, expertise with voice search SEO will be a relevant skill in the future.
UX skills and an understanding of the customer experience
Marketing has passed the stage of just getting the customer buy. Presently, it includes the experiences that continue after the sale such as onboarding, communications, and even upsells. Because of this continuous effort to retain and upsell current customers. Digital marketing specialist must be able to understand the full customer experience and provide ways around the best UX and CX.
As a digital marketing specialist, you must understand the customer, their wants, needs and pain points. Then be able to build a full customer experience, from products or services growing awareness through the full customer lifespan.
Advanced social media knowledge
Digital marketing specialists need to research where their audiences are, and what type of creative will appeal mostly to them. Then, create content in various forms like images and videos and be able to cut that creative into different sizes to fit the various social feeds.
How much does a digital marketing specialist make?
Before considering how much digital marketing specialists make. Let’s first look at those factors that affect their salary.
Factors that affect digital marketing salaries
Years of experience
Don’t be surprise that experience plays an important role in the money you can make. But it is worthy to note that the years spent in working in the industry alone, can not guarantee a higher salary.
salary
Research has shown that the skills that can positively influence the salary of a digital marketing specialist are social media marketing, SEM, and email marketing.
This means that companies compensate professionals who can be able to do the full cycle of marketing and are not limited to a particular skills-set.
Reputation
This is where most experts get it wrong but when done right, it can make a big difference in the salary you make working in a company or as a freelancer.
Reputation in this context has to do with your personal brand as an expert. Known digital marketers that are respected in the industry can charge more for their services. Or even request a higher salary when working for a digital marketing agency.
Country
Though digital marketing job can be done do from anywhere in the World. However, your country of residence is a factor that can influence your salary or hourly rate (when you’re a freelancer).
From research, is observed that marketers in the US get paid more than their colleagues in other countries. To have an idea, the average salary of a digital marketer in the United States with 5 years of experience is around $70K.
Job Position
Any digital marketing specialist who heads a team gets paid more than a specialist who works alone.
Ability to deliver results
The big difference between traditional marketing and online marketing is that it is measurable. Meaning it’s much easy to figure out if a digital marketing campaign is profitable and the ROI.
Digital marketing specialist salary
Let’s look at the digital marketing specialist salary:
- $44K per year – 1 to 4 years of experience
- $55K per year – 5 to 9 years of experience
- $63K per year – 10 to 19 years of experience
It depends on the company structure, normally, a digital marketing specialist works under the direct supervision of a digital marketing manager. And heads a team of junior digital marketers.
To become an excellent digital marketing specialist and reach the peak of the pay scale. You must be able to know how to design and execute a digital marketing strategy, utilizing one or more digital marketing channels.
The basical day-to-day tasks of a digital marketing specialist include the following:
- To run advertising campaigns on Facebook, Google, and other PPC platforms.
- Collaborating with other members of the team (SEOs, Content marketing professionals, etc)
- Preparing project status reports (for clients and/or management)
- They will design and implement SEO campaigns
- They engage with clients to analyze their needs and how to use digital marketing to meet their business objectives.
- Always coordinating the work of junior digital marketing specialists
Is Digital Marketing a good career?
Well, the answer is very simple. Then, let’s consider the following:
Technology race
From all indications, digital marketing is one of the fastest growing industries. The rapid advancement of modern technology requires very bright minds to keep up with it. Many companies are turning their efforts to digital marketing in their search for new tools of expansion and customers’ acquisition.
Digital marketing is growing rapidly like as if there is no tomorrow. Nowadays, customers are becoming more tech savvy, pushing businesses to their digital marketing limits. As a result, digital marketing specialists are sought after and they are well paid professionals.
Rewards
Businesses are seeing the need to generate brand awareness through digital platforms so the overall confidence in digital is strong. As a result, the jobs are in high demand, meaning digital marketing specialists are most likely to receive above average salary increases.
Feeding start ups
Digital marketing is one of the career choices which always result in successful self employment. While it is not easy in running an aviation business, for instance, the digital marketing world welcomes many young entrepreneurs.
Most likely, you may decide to work for an advertising agency or a well-known brand for a period of years before boarding your own ship. However, many digital marketing specialist often expand into business developers, managing directors or business owners. The digital space enables larger space for growth than any other industry.
Outstanding career options
A career in digital marketing industry has many exciting opportunities. Digital marketing offers a huge variety of roles with much fancy names and exciting projects. Ranging from digital content producer to web developer, social media manager, digital CRM analyst, e-commerce executive and user experience specialist. In this industry, it’s very easy to let your professional imagination go wild.
Collaboration & leadership
Digital marketing is so much infused with perks and benefits. Digital marketers work together with Sales, Finance, IT, Production, and other departments. They equally get to attend great events both local and foreign, they collaborate with big industry celebrities. Thereby networking with interesting people or take control of the company’s marketing budget. It is very safe to say that digital marketing specialists manage many processes and people involved. They also take charge of highly exciting projects. The digital world is a very vast one which takes people out of cubicles and in front of the business.
How do beginners learn digital marketing
Study
Get the necessary knowledge to become a successful digital marketing specialist by reading free guides online. This include everything from blog posts to eBooks and course materials created and designed by experienced marketers, marketing agencies and universities.
Practice, practice, practice
The best kind of education is actively putting everything you’ve learnt into practice. You achieve this by creating test campaigns, monitor the results, optimise the campaigns and then learn from your mistakes. Be sure to follow the instructions provided by the study materials you’re using. Certainly, there won’t be risk involved as you are not dealing with digital advertising budgets for real businesses.
Get certified and qualified
Now you’re very confident that with the study materials. Then move and take the associated certifications and qualifications to test your knowledge.
Start your own digital marketing blog
Having your own digital marketing blog will certainly help you practice what you’ve learnt and demonstrated your expertise. It will equally help you assist to make the right connections in the industry as you seek out guest writers. Then invite opinions on your posts and offer to write for other publications.
Seek out training and support from experienced digital marketers
This time is a period you put those new contacts you’ve made into good use. To progress as a digital marketer, there is a space for support and guidance from experienced professionals who will lead you in the right direction.
Keep learning and improving
Digital marketing is both a changing and evolving field that requires its practitioners to be constantly evolving with the industry. Don’t be tired to seek out new learning materials and opportunities to improve your skills.
The job description for digital marketing
Digital marketing specialists are responsible for planning, developing, implementing and managing the overall digital marketing strategy. In addition, they are in charge of managing, guiding and training digital marketers and other marketing positions in the team.
Every digital marketing specialist job description always start with an interesting, eye-catching introduction.
Here is an idea of how this introduction to digital marketing specialist job description may look like:
We are currently looking for an experienced and result-driven digital marketing specialist to join our awesome marketing team!
As a digital marketing specialist at our company. You will have the responsible of setting up, implementing and managing the company’s digital marketing strategy.
Digital marketing strategies are extremely important to our company’s success. So, your role will play a crucial role in achieving our business goals and objectives.
We are expecting you to have experience and a big passion for digital technologies and various digital marketing channels.
Digital marketing specialist job description should contain the following duties and job responsibilities:
- Build, plan and implement the overall digital marketing strategy
- Manage the strategy
- Manage and train the rest of the team
- Stay up to date with the latest technology and best practices
- Manage and oversee various digital marketing channels
- Measure ROI and KPIs
- Prepare and manage the digital marketing budget
- Oversee all the company’s social media accounts
- Suggest activities for improving the quality of online content
- Track and measure SEO and Google Analytics metrics and provide reports
- Build an inbound marketing plan
- Research and forecast future sales and performance trends
- Lead, supervise and motivate members of the digital marketing team
- Research competitors and provide suggestions for improvement
- Keep abreast with industry and market trends and best practices
Conclusion
Like many marketing jobs, digital marketing specialist job description will always include a tertiary qualification in marketing or communications. Though they may also have qualifications in IT and specifically website development and design. For established marketers who look forward to specialise in the digital space.
There are many schools and universities that offer a digital marketing certificate course. As the digital landscape is evolving speedily, digital marketing specialists are expected to stay up to date with all new digital trends and technologies. And always understand what to see that can be implemented into the business.