Looking to grab a piece of the digital marketing pie? This guide is for you.
I don’t have a degree in marketing—only one in psychology. Yet, I’ve been working in digital marketing for the past five years.
That’s the beauty of this industry. You don’t need to be certified to work as a digital marketer. There are no gatekeepers.
But you’ll need to acquire both digital marketing skills and practical experience.
That’s where this guide comes in. I’ll show you how to grow your knowledge, plus walk you through the different stages you might go through in your path to become a professional digital marketer.
Kickstart your career in digital marketing in these seven steps:
- Create your own website
- Choose one digital marketing channel to focus on
- Learn more about your chosen digital marketing channel
- Execute on what you’re learning
- Familiarize yourself with free digital marketing tools
- Apply for a job in marketing
- Furthering your career
1. Create your own website
While you may not need any certifications to get a job in digital marketing, it doesn’t mean companies will just hire you for a position right off the bat.
You’ll need to first:
- Build your skills in digital marketing;
- Demonstrate that you possess those skills.
- The best way to do this is to create your own website.
By building your own website, you’re creating a lab where you can test and learn different marketing strategies. All without worrying about hurting someone else’s site.
Not only that, what else can demonstrate your skills better than showing that you’ve actually grown something from scratch?
For example, when I first started out in digital marketing, my friends and I created a website about our hobby: breakdancing.
There’s no need to overthink this. The key is to just start and get practicing. Choose a niche you’re interested in and create a site using WordPress. Don’t fret about things like logos or monetization strategy.
If you’re not sure how to set up a WordPress website, just do a quick Google search. You’ll find tons of tutorials.
2. Choose one digital marketing channel to focus on
There are a lot of digital marketing channels. The book Traction lists 19 of them, including:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Social and display ads
Since you’re running your website alone, it would be impossible in terms of time, effort and resources to execute on every marketing channel. Instead, we recommend focusing on just one area of digital marketing.
But which channel should you choose? Let’s look at the pros and cons of three popular channels.
Online advertising
This involves buying ads on platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram. Generally speaking, this strategy is great for getting traffic to your site fast.
However, if you’re a complete beginner, this channel may be on the risky side. Managing online ads is not simply a matter of turning it on and letting the traffic flow. You’ll still need some knowledge and experience so you don’t end up losing all your money.
So if you’re able to set aside some budget to test and learn this channel, go ahead. Otherwise, it might not be the one for you.
Social media marketing
This involves building a following on social media and driving traffic from these platforms. You should be familiar with them. Plus, since it’s free to post content, experimentation is easy.
This could be an ideal channel to start with.
However, bear in mind that social media marketing is not just casually posting something on your Instagram every few days. Each platform is akin to its own country. To do well, you’ll have to understand the “culture”—what makes it tick, what users want to see, the types of content that perform, and so on.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is the practice of optimizing pages to rank high in search engines like Google.
The great thing is that once you’re ranking, you’ll be getting free, passive, and consistent traffic from search engines.
3. Learn more about your chosen digital marketing channel
To do this, search for “[your chosen area] beginner’s guide” on Google.
Look for a guide that’s detailed, explains things well, and was updated recently. The last part is particularly important because digital marketing is a fast-paced industry.
The guide will also serve as a jumping-off point for discovering more subtopics you can learn about.
4. Execute on what you’re learning
If you want to do a muscle-up, it doesn’t matter how many YouTube tutorials you watch. You still have to find a bar and practice.
The same goes for digital marketing.
Don’t just consume content. All that leads to is analysis paralysis—overthinking and yet not doing anything. Trust me, I’ve been there.
When you’ve learned something, you have to get down, dirty and execute. That’s why you created your own website. For SEO, that means focusing on the fundamentals like keyword research, creating content and building links. Those three things alone can move the needle for your site more than anything else.
5. Familiarize yourself with free digital marketing tools
Since you’re just starting out, it’ll be tough to pay for premium marketing tools.
Don’t worry though—there are plenty of free ones around. Here are some you should get acquainted with:
Google Analytics. See data like the number of people visiting your site, which pages they go to, how long they stay, and hundreds of other actionable metrics. Learn how to use it in this guide.
Google Search Console (GSC). See which pages are indexed in Google, the keywords your site ranks for, and the websites that link to you. This guide will teach you how to use GSC optimally.
What you’re looking for is an internship or entry-level position. This could be a role at a digital marketing agency or an in-house position. For example, I started as a marketing intern at a wearable tech startup. I later converted the opportunity into a full-time role.
However, even for these positions, competition is fierce. So, you’ll need a way to stand out from the crowd.
Here are some ideas:
- Briefcase Technique
- Networking
- Work in public
- Marketing yourself
Briefcase Technique
This is a job interview tactic coined by Ramit Sethi, a New York Times bestselling author. Basically, you:
- Research the company you’re applying for;
- Find out their biggest digital marketing problems;
- Create solutions to fix them.
