Ten skills in demand for Digital Marketing

In a world where consumers spend most of their day using smart devices which encompass almost all spheres of their lives – from the social to the professional, digital marketing has become indispensable. That is nothing new.. What was once an option is now indispensable. What is new is the change of the digital platform (e.g. social media), and how the average consumers have changed the way they have been using the platform since the past 2 years.

In view of that, let us take a look at the skills that are in demand for digital marketing.

1. Content Marketing: The skill we want to begin with is the content creation. The strongest magnet for marketing is content. Over the last two years, content publishing has been growing in volume thereby leading to saturation. Referral traffic from social media has been declining steadily since 2017, because of changes in social media (led by changes in the Facebook algorithm) and increased competition. Therefore, quality content wins the prize in the face of this increased competition. To create a quality content, one needs to target the audience’s pains, needs, and interests (PNIs). The ideal content is built by mapping your audience, title, keywords, tone, and topic.
2. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): It is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid results—often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results. SEO is crucial to the site’s visibility and SERP (Search Engine Results Page) performance. This practice can be perfected by placing relevant and attractive keywords in areas like titles, headers, website copy, meta-description, and image alt text. The objective is to make the website crawlable and indexable by search engines.

SEO may be: i) On-site – optimising keywords in the site/blog

ii) Off-site – increasing the site’s trust by getting votes from other sites.

3. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Pay Per Click (PPC): While SEO is the practice that aims to improve the rankings of the website in the search results (and thereby increase free traffic), SEM goes beyond and includes both free (SEO) and paid (paid search advertising) means.

As such, SEO is a subset of SEM. Targeting the free traffic, SEO is also referred to as an organic means.

While SEO is about trying to rank higher in the search results, PSA (paid search advertising) is paying to appear first in the search results. PSA advertising agencies (like Google AdWords) make a site appear on top in a Google search, while you pay for the number of clicks on the advertisement. Hence, the process is called Pay Per Click (PPC).

4.Analytics: Marketing analytics is about analysing the marketing performance in order to maximize the returns on investment (ROI). Web analytics, with data on referral traffic, bounce rates, unique visitors, merely provides insight into the performance of the website. It fails to provide an understanding of the efficiency of product advertisements and their conversion into buys.

Here’s where digital analytics steps in. It looks into the way the customers of online channels interact, and helps marketers get an understanding of revenue opportunities from various marketing campaigns. It converts customer behaviour data into actionable marketing data.

1. Inbound Marketing: Inbound marketing is a practice of attracting visitors and potential buyers, rather than outwardly advertising a brand, product or service. It aims to increase quality traffic and conversions, using owned media (owned by the business, e.g. social media page) and earned media (coverage gained in newspapers, magazines, TV, or other websites).
2. Social Media Management: Social media is arguably the most powerful tool for marketing, content distribution, brand awareness, and traffic acquisition. The ideal approach on social media is similar to content creation. Understanding the audience and mapping the PNIs (pains, needs, & interests) takes the pedestal. A skilled marketer will look to connect with the audience by tackling the pain points with social media posts providing actionable solutions.
3. Video marketing: A seven page long article is always less interesting than an expert speaking on a subject in a Youtube or Facebook live video while interacting with the audience through chat. Webinars are an engaging medium to promote your skills, advertise your product, and build your online authority/following.
4. Email Marketing: One of the oldest digital marketing tactics – it would be imprudent to underestimate the power of this medium even in today’s time. With the right strategy, even moderate waves of emails to your contacts can significantly raise traffic to your site/blog.
5. Digital Advertisements: With the right strategy and ROI, paid digital advertisements can generate immediate traffic. Google AdWords and Facebook Ads are two most popular platforms, with their highly targeted advertising. However, inefficient planning strategy might result in losing money on ads without any substantial gains.
6. Graphic Design: Presentation has always been the backbone of any advertising campaign. To attract a potential buyer and give one a better chance at convertibility, it is crucial to incorporate the best graphic designing compared to one’s competitors. Most visitors would find it unacceptable to wait for ten seconds, before their first impression of a site is created. Digital graphics should be designed accordingly, to ensure fast load times by optimizing image sizes and page structure. With more people accessing internet on their mobile devices, graphic design is going through a transition with more attention to create lucrative graphics suitable for a mobile site or a social media app.

Conclusion:

The dynamics of digital marketing are changing at a fast pace, with more competition and changing internet habits of people, their growing awareness and government regulations. As such, it is important to plan and strategize keeping in mind the current trends.

The most important skill in this field is versatility and adaptability. The quickest learner wins. So, to stay updated with these trends "stay tuned with Rms School": The skill provider.

A seasoned professional with 18 years background in Training & Development, Human Resources and Operations.He trains and develops the students of HR course through his experience and knowledge.