Thinking about pursuing a career in digital marketing – or wondering how you can be even more successful in the role you’re already in?
Digital marketing is a fascinating career field. Not only is it constantly changing, but it attracts all kinds of interesting people. They come to digital marketing from design, IT, the world of entrepreneurship, and much more (some even went to school for marketing!)
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A well-run digital marketing team is dynamic and collaborative. All those different perspectives come together to create something that will serve customers in new and exciting ways. At the same time, you get to help define a brand’s voice and make its values crystal clear.
Each member of a team brings something to the table, so there’s no one right way to do it. That said, there are certain traits that smooth your way and help you contribute more.
Let’s look at them now:
Creativity is the name of the game when it comes to digital marketing. No matter what your product or industry, framing your message in a fresh and compelling way is essential. Creative marketers provide a “spark” that propels their message far above the noise of distractions.
The ever-changing world of technology influences digital marketing best practices every day. Even if you’re a specialist, focusing on just one area of digital marketing, you’ll still need to now the best tech tools for the job and understand how everything fits together.
Ultimately, marketing is about people. You need to delve into their thought process, needs, and worries to craft a message that resonates with them. Good marketing can bring your prospects relief, exhilarate them, or even fill them with dread – but you have to know them first.
Marketing is full of tried and true best practices. Most of the time, though, these only get you part of the way to your goal. Your willingness and ability to test various approaches to your target audience is what will ultimately uncover valuable insights specific to your business.
Passion isn’t everything – but it can help, especially as a marketer. When a marketer has a sense of awe and wonder for the topic at hand, it leads to more effective and fluid ideas. That brings an undeniable energy to any project and can really set a marketing campaign apart.
As a marketer, you’ll be looking at familiar problems from a new perspective on a regular basis. If you work for an agency, you may find yourself needing to learn an entire new company and product line in a matter of days, then use unfamiliar tools and technologies to execute a vision.
Very few people are capable of delivering an entire digital marketing campaign all on their own – and trying to do so is tremendously taxing in time and resources. Teammates help each other all the time with new suggestions, ideas, and, of course, coffee.
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Marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. To represent and speak for a marketing team, it’s good to have a taste for the underlying business drivers. Sales, product development, and other teams can all provide useful insight to marketers if they are eager to find out more.
In marketing, as in any creative endeavor, the end product is rarely exactly what you want it to be. You might find yourself executing someone else’s vision, and it might even be unsatisfying sometimes – but you should bring your best to the plate on every single occassion.
Life-long learning is the key when it comes to digital marketing. It’s one of the first modern fields where results, not credentials, are what matters most. To get those results, you need to be ready and willing to integrate new information, develop new skills, and act on your learning.
It’s said that you don’t really understand something until you can explain it to someone else. As a digital marketer, you may find yourself challenged to communicate the underlying logic of a process, project, or even a complete campaign to others – like your client or your boss’s boss.
Many digital marketing agencies base their project management on Agile, which includes clear deliverables and fast-paced “sprints.” Marketing campaigns are usually aligned with activities all throughout the rest of the enterprise, so it’s absolutely vital to bring work in on time.
While the Agile mindset does help teams prioritize and delineate who’s in charge of what, things can still turn on a dime. The digital marketing landscape is fluid, so it’s critical to hone a keen sense for what’s most important at any given time and dive in.
In the coming years, digital marketing will be synonymous with mobile. With its dominance in search and email, mobile has already taken a huge piece of the pie – and voice search will widen its slice considerably. Digital marketers must learn to love mobile devices.
As a digital marketer, you won’t have a lot of direct responsibility for IT security. Still, everyone who interacts with digital resources needs to keep their eyes peeled for shady behavior. Virtually all major hacking incidents today are targeted at teams outside of the IT department.
Every team should have a Big Data impresario who can derive real lessons from raw analytics info. Even if you’re not that person, however, it’s still helpful to be able to review analytics reports and make some basic inferences. You might catch something that others missed.
Again – most teams have a designated designer. Respecting this person’s work is fundamental to a good relationship ... but that doesn’t mean you can’t have ideas! Being able to scan a landing page and see where you might be able to punch it up can only help as a digital marketer.
As a digital marketer, you’ll hear once every three months or so that “SEO is dead.” There are about 4.5 million individual results for this phrase on Google, and yet you’ll still have people telling you that your entire industry is about to disappear into thin air. Don’t fall for it.
Even B2B enterprises are finding ways to add some flair and color to their Web content these days. If you have the ability to look at things in a unique way and find a little bit of whimsy, cherish that. You never know when it might come in handy.
Digital marketers of all kinds need the ability to stick to work and see it through. Even when things get boring, confusing, or frustrating, your whole team – and often, your whole company – depends on your efforts. If you’ve made it all the way to #20, you’re off to a good start.
What’s been the most crucial trait in YOUR marketing experience? Let us know below!