How to Become a Digital Marketing Specialist

Digital marketing is very well done in-house and cannot be referred to a digital marketing agency for a variety of practical reasons. This is the reason why digital marketing professionals are in demand around the world right now and the demand for those candidates will increase in the future.

If you have a marketing background and want to become a digital marketing expert; you may be wondering what is the best way to do it. There are several digital marketing courses offered such as workshops, online courses and training programs offered individually.

There are also MBA programs that specialize in digital marketing such as: NYU Stern MBA Digital Marketing. There are certification tests such as the HubSpot Inbound Marketing program certification and the Google Adwords certificate. But attending all these courses and getting all the certificates doesn't make you specialist. It can help you learn the basics and other advanced concepts in digital marketing but does not qualify you for a position as a Digital Marketing manager. Digital marketing technology comes with digital marketing experience.

The best way to become a digital marketing professional is to start doing digital marketing from today. The great thing about digital marketing is that you can start doing it on a very small scale. All you need is a computer, an internet connection and some money to play with. You can learn digital marketing by applying concepts to your mini-project. 

Applying Digital Marketing on a Small Scale

• Choose a topic you like and start a blog about it. Cost: About $ 50 per year for domain and hosting.
• Learn a little about SEO and write articles made with SEO on your blog.
• Enter the Google Analytics tracking code and see if you get some traffic to your blog. Check out Google Analytics.
• Create an Adwords account and do keyword research to see what people are looking for on Google to find information about your blog post.
• Write more articles and publish them on your blog.
• Open a Facebook page dedicated to your blog (excluding your personal page) and share articles on your Facebook page.
• Promoting Facebook Page is also a good option. The promotion budget is less than $10.
• Use Facebook as a box for your blog.
• Embed social sharing buttons on your blog posts. You can do this using WordPress plugins and it's free.
• Embed email subscription forms on your blog and collect subscribers. They are not subscribed via email whenever you publish something on your blog.
• Promoting Facebook page through email marketing and get more email subscribers to your Facebook page easily.

After doing all of the above steps you would have gained a little bit of hands-on experience in the following areas that summarize well in the following major Digital Marketing items:

Components of Digital Marketing

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Content marketing
• Paid Search (PPC)
• Email marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Digital Display Marketing (Ad Ops)
• Web Analytics and Reporting

An 30 hours of experience does not make you an expert in Digital Marketing but you will be a much better qualified digital marketing professional than most of the people out there on the market. 

Job of a Digital Marketing Manager

As a digital marketing manager you will have a spearhead that directs the entire digital marketing department of the company. It is also possible to manage a group of people who will be ready to perform certain digital advertising actions. Digital marketing is most effective when all the components of digital marketing are used in such a way that they are compatible. This is also called Integrated Digital Integration. If the company is large enough, the job title could be a Digital Marketing VP where several managers report to the VP. Such activities are fast approaching and can be very rewarding.

If you are not interested in full-time work as I just said, you can still use your digital marketing technology to consult, speak at conferences and universities and grow your online projects.