Hello, and welcome back to yet another episode of my podcast. In today's episode, we'll talk about digital marketing as a career option. And I'll answer four key questions to help you understand how you can begin and grow your digital marketing career. Also, towards the end of the episode, I'll share some gyaan, if you would like to call it that.
So, without any further ado, it's time to have a word with me. Rajive Dhavan. See you on the other side of the intro. music.
Welcome back. So, what are these four key questions that we'll talk about in this podcast? Let's go through these quickly. The first one is, what makes digital marketing a good career option? The second – how does one start a career in digital marketing? Third, why should you focus on some skills to have an edge in the digital world?
Fourth, what's the roadmap for a rewarding digital marketing career? And as promised, towards the end, I'll share some pointers that'll help you a great deal, irrespective of your experience level in digital marketing as a career. So, let's start with the first question. What makes digital marketing a good career option?
If I have to describe digital marketing in one sentence or, rather, one word, I would say it's omnipresent. It's something that's all around us. Digital marketing is not just about mapping our online journey as a user or a customer. Today, Digital marketing is also mapping what we do beyond our screens and beyond our phones in the real world.
So digital marketing is omnipresent. In fact, the kind of targeting that the brands have been doing all these years is nothing compared to what we will see in the next few years. We will witness a never-seen-before kind of personalization with time to come. With so much happening, you can be this assured that digital marketing is here to stay, and that is the single most important.
That defines a great career option. So, if you're planning to start a career in digital marketing, or if you're at an intermediate level and you wish to grow, then I would say that this is the best time to do that. Now let's move to our next question, which is equally important. How does one start a career in digital marketing?
I have met a lot of people who are extremely excited about the idea of digital marketing, especially the younger generation, which is wanting to create a lot of content. They are wanting to get into digital marketing. However, they are unable to chalk a plan on how they can do this. So let me share a few ideas that will help you kickstart your digital marketing career.
The first step is to understand if one really likes digital marketing. Now until we experience it, we will not know, but one can certainly have an idea beforehand. So if you're somebody who's into creating content and posting stuff on digital channels, I am sure you can give digital marketing a shot. But you need to also keep in mind that digital marketing has a lot of tedious technical and statistical work that goes behind the scenes as well.
So, it's not just all rosy; it's a lot of technical hard work as well. Even if you're a content creator, you'll need to be okay with the idea of doing the behind-the-scenes tedious work. Most companies are looking for experienced digital marketers because, obviously, they want to save money in training fresh hires.
That doesn't mean that there's no opportunity for those who are wanting to get into digital. The best way to get an inroad into a company is through an internship. So even if you're looking to join in as a content creator, try knocking on a company's door for an internship, and that is the best way to kickstart your digital marketing career.
A lot of people also want to know what differentiates a good digital marketer from a great one. That brings us to our next. Why should you focus on some skills to have an edge in the digital world, and what are these skills? So, I think. Passion, curiosity and perseverance are the big skills that you will need.
As cliche as it may sound, these are the founding pillars of any good digital marketer, so it's an essential requirement. The next step is to dive deeper, and here one needs to focus on understanding the client's business. And build strategies to improve the return on ad spend, which is R O A S. This is the single most critical metric for the client.
Unfortunately, people focus more on other things like setting up ads, for instance. But in a world that is being dominated by AI and ml, do you really think that just setting up ads will take you ahead in your digital marketing? Well, personally, I don't think so. Today there are a million websites across the internet that will give you a step-by-step guide to set up the ads on any platform of your choice.
So as a digital marketer, you need to question yourself and figure out what is it that you bring to the table beyond just setting up ads. The fourth question is, what's the roadmap for a rewarding digital marketing career? Well, start simple. Start with the basics. Don't worry about joining the biggest company.
Focus on joining companies where your Reporting Manager can teach you stuff. This learning is priceless. This is one of the best investments that you'll. And this investment will give you returns for the rest of your life in the beginning. Don't worry about money, either. I know that money is important, and I don't advocate working for free.
Look for decent money, but focus more on who you'll be working with. If someone has already had some success in the paths you're taking, you should grab the opportunity with both hands. Then try to understand how the client makes money and learn to think from the client's customer's point of view.
Because digital marketing, when you're working in an agency, is a lot to do with B2B, B2C, which is business to business to customer. Ultimately, we are all human beings, and there is H2H conversation, which is a human-to-human conversation that's happening. But it's important that you understand your client's customer's point of view.
Ultimately, the client's customer is the one who pays you, so you'll have a great edge over others. If you know decent digital marketing and understand how to solve some business problems of your client, next, don't stop learning. In fact, the learning should be deeper and wider as you progress in your career.
Deeper in terms of the core digital marketing subject and wider in terms of understanding related fields like copywriting and design. Ultimately digital marketers will need to communicate with a customer, so the more they understand copy and design, the better it'll be for them to get results. If you just focus on these three points for a few years, you'll be beyond everyone you know, and I guarantee that.
Finally, the bonus part, the gyaan that I was talking about. Well, in the last few weeks, you've been hearing a lot about artificial intelligence and machine learning taking over the world. We are also discovering a ton of AI tools. So, the point here is it's important that you start using AI tools to automate various aspects of your job and help the client, which is your internal and external client, by automating various aspects of your job, explore and experiment. If you can save time on various aspects of your job, you'll have more time to focus on other important things like strategy optimization. Upskilling on copy and design and a lot more. So don't be scared of AI tools.
Instead, learn to use them to your advantage and make your job easier. With this, we come to the end of this episode, but before we sign off, I want to thank you for your time and listenership. I hope you like this piece of content, and if you did, please share and spread the word. I am sure you will positively impact someone until next.
Thank you.