How to Prepare for a Digital Marketing Career

There are many career preparation classes out there today, but their focus is commonly on resume prep and presentation skills. While these may be important lessons, they don’t prepare people to do work-related tasks. Here is some advice on how anyone can prepare for a career in digital marketing.

Instill the Habit of Constant Learning

Sign up for newsletters, earn certifications, and review articles about current events. Unless digital marketers want to get left in the dust of the next Google algorithm change, it is imperative to stay up-to-date with what is happening in the industry. Search engines are ever-changing and to be a success in digital marketing, you must stay current, be adaptable, and keep an open mind.

Earn Industry Certifications

Because of the pace at which technology changes, certifications are extremely valuable. They are also significantly cheaper than a professional course or textbook.

Certifications provide the most up-to-date information in the industry and give you something useful to put on your resume. Other benefits include:

1. Proving value to a prospective employer.
2. Preparing you to use the most relevant skills on day one of a new job.

Certification recommendations include:

• Google Ads Academy
• Google Analytics
• Microsoft Advertising
• HubSpot Inbound Marketing

Understand the Importance of Analytics

Analytics are a marketer’s best friend. Analytics allow you to see how users are actually interacting with your brand and make improving your campaigns significantly easier. What’s the point of running a campaign if you can’t make it better the next time around, or while it’s still running? This is a fundamental concept for successful marketing.

Get yourself onto the Google Analytics platform, learn about key performance indicators (KPIs), and become familiar with tracking tags or heatmaps. A Google Analytics certification looks great on an application and will lead to employers taking you much more seriously.

Become Familiar with Website Design

Hands-on learning gives experience that translates to job skills. Early on in my career I took a course outlining the fundamental steps for creating a website. Some of the requirements were to include a blog, a video, and to actually purchase a domain for a certain amount of time. Whether you are in a specific course or not, instituting this type of project gives you hands-on experience that can be used as a work-example in job interviews.

You can take this to the next level by employing a website builder like WordPress and teaching yourself how to connect it to Google Analytics, create ads on various platforms, and optimize pages for SEO. In a job interview, anyone who can demonstrate that they already know how to use critical digital marketing platforms will stand out from the rest.

Stop Ignoring Technical Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is commonly advertised as getting people to see your brand through strategic keyword planning and link-building. But it’s rarely mentioned how technical an SEO career can get. You should understand HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, as well as how sites are indexed and tagged.

For example: SEO is typically seen as a marketing function, so it is not surprising that people interested in computer science or computer information systems rarely hear about SEO careers. If there is more collaboration between those two fields, a brand new career path opens up.

Learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

A basic understanding of HTML is necessary for your success as a digital marketer.

The idea of programming intimidates a lot of people. However, the reality is that you don’t have to be a coding genius to figure out basic HTML. HTML is simply a language that allows you to put content onto a webpage. CSS is then used for styling and JavaScript is what helps craft user interactions (e.g., sliding carousels or form validation).

CSS and JavaScript are more complex, but knowing how to find a meta tag, simple steps for editing small sections of HTML code, and some other basic concepts are extremely useful. You can become much more competitive for jobs with that knowledge. You will also be more prepared if/when you need to learn more about these frameworks.

Think About Design

Designing content or being creative may not be for everyone, but having a basic understanding of the design principles behind powerful content is critical for every marketer. Marketers need to present their ideas in ways that grab people’s attention. Not everything can be presented in PowerPoint.

Graphic design skills can range anywhere from creating infographics to Photoshop fundamentals. Infographics are an effective way to quickly give people interesting and easily consumable content. There are a variety of free tools, such as Google Looker Studio, available to create infographics and assist in your learning.

Enhance Your Prospects

With these additions to your skillset, you give yourself the best possible chance for success in digital marketing. It is significantly easier to land a job and succeed in your career when you have the tools and training needed in the “real world” of digital marketing.