A lot of businesses rely on digital marketing to interact with different client segments, advertise goods and services, and boost sales. Building brand awareness and creating successful campaigns require a solid digital marketing plan. Consider working in digital marketing if you’re interested in a career that blends data analytics, customer involvement, and communication management.

The not-so-old belief that these figures will not be reached until 2020 has been disproved by the fact that over four billion people are presently online. With an average growth rate of more than 1000% during the last 18 years, this translates to more than 55% of the global population using the internet. When we consider that the World Wide Web only started to gain popularity and reliance in 1990, this increase is particularly astonishing.

The digital movement is directly influencing advertising and marketing. Digital marketing, for example, has supplanted traditional marketing. Related tactics, industry spending, and its growing influence are all shown.

According to Reuters, spending on digital marketing increased by 44% in the US and UK in 2017 and reached $52 billion. Global spending on digital marketing is predicted to be close to $100 billion. Digital marketing will continue to rule this industry as it becomes more digital and data-driven, and strategists will be in charge of laying the foundation.

• What Is a Digital Marketing Strategist?
• How to Become a Digital Marketing Strategist
• How to be Become a Digital Marketing Strategist?
• What is a Digital Marketing Strategist Responsible For?
• What to Study to Become a Strategist?
• What Skills do you Need to be a Digital Marketing Specialist?

What Is a Digital Marketing Strategist?

An expert who counsels their business on creating and launching marketing initiatives is known as a digital marketing strategist. In order to raise brand awareness for the companies they work with and improve campaign efficacy, strategists frequently employ creative and technological methods.

Read Also: What are the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing?

To assist their businesses in achieving their goals and attracting wider audiences of customers, many strategists concentrate on popular mass communication techniques, trending strategies, and digital insights. Numerous data experts that specialize in digital strategy use data from business and marketing analytics to pinpoint flaws and improve the effectiveness of upcoming efforts.

You’re an expert at developing online marketing strategies that can raise sales potential and optimize brand exposure. You often work for a marketing company or an advertising agency in this line of work. You are aware of the essential elements needed for an effective online marketing campaign, such as search engine optimization (SEO). Finding marketing possibilities, creating a solid marketing strategy, and putting the plan into action are all parts of your work.

How to Become a Digital Marketing Strategist

Marketing campaign execution is planned and advised by digital marketing strategists. They are a diverse group of creative, tech-savvy, and imaginative people who can spot trends before they become popular and utilize those insights to influence global marketing strategies and campaigns for the brands they support.

From SEO to paid media to content, a digital strategist combines all the pertinent marketing platforms and channels into one workable plan that is then used to launch the promotion of a good or service.

Digital marketing strategist needs to be good with numbers so they can analyze the results of their own campaigns and those of their rivals to come up with conclusions and ideas for future marketing initiatives. Chief Digital Officer at Harvard University Perry Hewitt describes the interdisciplinary position thus: “Digital is part technology, half content strategy, part marketing art – and science. On a high-performing digital team, those who really strongly identify with just one aspect of the equation may struggle.

However, becoming a digital marketing strategist involves more than just utilizing these resources to promote the goods and services offered by your business. Marketing is now more about the tales you tell than the things you make, as author Seth Godin phrased it.

For instance, in a major company, strategists may oversee complete marketing procedures that depend on customer interactions, data analytics, and sales linkages. In other companies, a strategist could oversee just the planning, budgeting, and performance evaluation phases of a campaign. However, marketing strategists typically share the following important duties across most industries:

• Evaluating and testing suitable digital marketing strategies, including social media, pay-per-click, SEO and email tools
• Monitoring marketing analytics and creating segments for distributing digital media
• Performing competitive market analysis and applying strategies to improve campaign success
• Finding opportunities to improve marketing strategies and approaches with digital technology
• Using search engine optimization (SEO) best practices to improve digital marketing strategies
• Developing strategies for website content that drive organic traffic from popular search engines
• Managing inbound and outbound digital marketing networks and tools
• Building and maintaining brand awareness through digital platforms and by engaging customer segments

How to be Become a Digital Marketing Strategist?

For guidance on beginning a career in digital marketing strategy, use the steps below:

1. Complete a bachelor’s degree

To acquire the education required for the position, many digital marketing strategists complete their undergraduate degrees in marketing, communications, public relations, or even journalism. A job in digital marketing can also be supported by a bachelor’s degree in a related discipline, such as business management or analytics.

Be sure to look for coursework that will aid in the development of your abilities and expertise in global marketing, marketing ethics, advertising, analytics, and strategic planning while selecting your educational path.

2. Gain professional experience

Gaining experience in a real-world context is extremely beneficial for honing particular abilities and moving up the ladder in your profession. For instance, performing a marketing internship while pursuing your education can assist you in putting the ideas you learn in class into practice. The development of crucial job skills can also be facilitated by entry-level specialist positions.

3. Earn a professional certification

Professionals in digital marketing can choose from a wide variety of credentials in various areas. For instance, gaining certificates in particular SEO foundations and strategy might be advantageous for strategists who work with SEO techniques. You can also get certification in analytics or advertising to boost your job.

4. Pursue a graduate degree

A master’s degree can improve both your earning potential and professional possibilities, while it is not necessary to pursue a career in digital marketing strategy. Your graduate degree could have an emphasis in a variety of disciplines, including public relations, business, marketing, and mass communications. For instance, a master’s degree in marketing analytics can help you progress your profession in campaign management and strategy formulation.

Beginning with a bachelor’s degree in marketing, advertising, business, or a similar profession, candidates seeking a job as a digital marketing strategist should meet the minimum requirements. A master’s degree in marketing may be preferred by some employers. You should learn about social media, SEO, and website creation during your educational experience.

Having familiarity with Google AdWords and other digital marketing tools is also advantageous. Creativity, great communication abilities, and the capacity to spot a marketing opportunity are requirements for a successful marketing strategist.

What is a Digital Marketing Strategist Responsible For?

It’s challenging to pinpoint exactly what a digital strategist’s job entails because it greatly varies depending on the organization that hires you. However, if digital marketing strategy is going to be your main focus every day, you may anticipate having a lot of duties.

These will rely on the size of your organization, the size of your marketing team, and the requirements of your middle management. As a Jack of all Trades, you would typically be expected to perform numerous tasks, but in organizations with larger marketing teams, you might choose to specialize in a single set.

A digital strategist’s main duties include having an impact in the following three areas:

Digital marketing strategy

• Set online marketing strategies that utilize all tools and channels, including emails, analytics, social media and paid media
• Investigate the campaigns of competitors and understand best practices to inform online marketing benchmarks
• Identify opportunities to use digital technology to enhance the overall marketing strategy

SEO

• Analyse web traffic and identify opportunities for improved SEO
• Drive more traffic to your website and impact your online business presence by assisting with creating SEO-optimised content
• Manage inbound marketing, PPC, AdWords, and SEO strategies

Brand management

• Implement various frameworks available for building brand equity and value
• Continually assess the alignment of a brand to the organization’s strategic objectives
• Recognize which digital marketing communication tools will be most effective in portraying a unique value proposition for your brand

What to Study to Become a Strategist?

A strategist can operate in a variety of industries and play a variety of jobs, but generally speaking, they improve organization, manage goal-setting, and carry out the planning necessary to attain those goals. In this job, you create strategic plans based on your study and data collection.

Many jobs demand you to first analyze a company in order to comprehend its goals and how to more effectively attain them. Keeping up with shifting trends in your client’s sector, brainstorming with other team members and management, spotting issues, and presenting results to clients and higher-ups within the business are some of your other responsibilities.

You normally require a bachelor’s degree in business or a closely related subject to work as a strategist. Focusing on credentials and abilities relevant to a certain business may be advantageous for strategists because they can work in many different areas. Although it’s a common practice for Strategists to complete internships, it’s not a prerequisite for employment.

Typically, you’ll begin your career as an entry-level Strategist where you’ll develop your abilities and gather essential experience to position yourself for success. Critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, and teamwork are crucial abilities to cultivate. Depending on the workplace, you might need to obtain a master’s degree or other certifications as you advance in your profession.

Successful strategists are able to simplify complex problems so that they can be resolved through study and original thought. It is essential that you have strong listening and communication skills because this function frequently calls for group brainstorming and presenting your research findings.

Juggling many projects requires excellent time management skills, but more significantly, you must be able to perform correct research and come up with answers for issues that have long plagued firms. It’s beneficial to have knowledge of a range of financial-related subjects, including financial modeling, organizational planning, and market research.

The person who establishes marketing objectives and creates plans to attain them is known as a strategist in advertising (or a marketing strategist). In this line of work, you forecast market trends for the future and look for fresh chances to boost sales. Qualifications have begun to place greater importance on experience creating plans for digital marketing campaigns as advertising relies more and more on digital channels.

Your duties include making sure the brand is appropriately portrayed across all platforms and keeping up with consumer feedback to make sure the company is offering a high-quality service. Any experience in web design, search engine marketing, or any other digital channels will significantly increase your work chances. Analytical skills and team management abilities are also advantageous.

What Skills do you Need to be a Digital Marketing Specialist?

Make a career transition, quit your desk job to work remotely while traveling, or develop your abilities at your current position if you want to get a new job as a digital marketer or want to become an expert in the field this year.

The kinds of abilities required for the position are beginning to become more clear to us. Let’s now list the top skills that are a must-have!

1. Writing & Editing

This may be the most crucial skill set for a digital marketer to possess. Due to the significance of content marketing, understanding what constitutes a great blog post, how to find and create great content, and how to transform a terrible piece of content into a good one will help you advance quickly in your digital marketing career. Additionally, you should be able to use copywriting tools like the AP Styleguide.

2. SEO

In a profession in digital marketing, it is IMPERATIVE to comprehend and implement search engine optimization (SEO), as organic search results are approximately 8.5x more likely to be clicked than paid search results. Material marketing, guest blogging, and link development using social media and high-quality content are examples of modern “white hat” SEO techniques. However, you should also be familiar with technical SEO strategies like altering title tags, H1 and H2 tags, and adding keywords.

Speaking of keywords, it is crucial for a digital marketer to understand how to do keyword research for use in website copy, blogs, and PPC campaigns in order to generate results for the companies they represent.

3. Design 

Modern internet marketing is heavily reliant on images. When outstanding photographs are used with content, it performs better across all social media platforms. You must be proficient in image creation and editing if you want to succeed as a digital marketer.

If you are proficient in Photoshop and can quickly put together a banner ad, email banner, or social media image, it eliminates one step from the launch of your digital campaign as well as the need for your client or business to pay another individual. If you lack the necessary expertise to use Photoshop or another Adobe program, there are many other programs like Canva that can be used to your advantage.

4. Social Paid Advertising

Social networking is no longer “free” as it once was. Using social sponsored advertising is the most effective approach to contact people nowadays on social media platforms and guarantee that your content is shared.

In order to succeed in your job, it is imperative that you understand the length and variety of material as well as the best practices for using images on each website. Understanding how to keep an eye on and adjust bids to maximize your ads and knowing when to seek assistance if you don’t have the time to devote to it every day can also be helpful.

5. Top-Notch Personal Branding

If you work in digital marketing, you’ll probably represent a company’s face on social media, through content marketing, or at conferences. It’s crucial to have a strong online presence that demonstrates your professionalism and level of activity. Additionally, by using popular content websites like Medium to develop your personal brand, you’ll eventually gain a better understanding of them and learn how to use them to the benefit of the brands you work for.

6. WordPress

WordPress is currently the most widely used content management system (CMS), powering 25% of all websites on the internet and 50–60% of the worldwide CMS market. WordPress is used by a wide range of organizations, including The New York Post, TED, Thought Catalog, USA Today, CNN, Fortune.com, TIME.com, Spotify, TechCrunch, CBS Local, and NBC. It is not only a platform that small businesses use to throw together a website because they lack a developer.

WordPress will probably be used by the brands you work for, or they will need to make the conversion. Your ability to comprehend WordPress and all of its functions and plugins will be extremely valuable in the digital marketing industry. You can even use it to build up a blog and website for your own company.

7. Excel 

Every CV for the past ten years or more has included Word applications. However, with the proliferation of data and the significance of data analytics, it is now more crucial than ever to be skilled in Excel, understand how to quickly manipulate data, and be able to construct tables and graphs from the data you’re looking at.

Do you actually know Excel, or are you just listing it? Ensure that it is the latter.

8. Social Media Marketing

Currently, almost one-third of people utilize social media platforms, and social marketing is used by 97 percent of businesses worldwide. Because of this, social media marketing is a crucial skill set in a toolkit for digital marketing.

Social media marketing involves much more than just updating Facebook. You should be able to copywrite, develop advertising, create images, measure reach and engagement, and generate user involvement across all platforms. Additionally, you must be aware of all the frequent updates to each platform and know when to use particular platforms for particular internal business objectives.

9. Email Marketing & Newsletters

Is email marketing dead? is a common question in online articles. It’s not, I’m here to tell you. Emails are still read by everyone. It remains a highly efficient method of reaching clients. Any brand you work for will want to share content, and email newsletters are a wonderful method to do so by reaching out to a larger audience of email users.

10. Google Adwords & PPC

Through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, many firms are able to significantly increase their market reach, produce significant money, and raise consumer awareness of their brands. You’ll land some of the highest-paying jobs in digital marketing if you can do this for companies. You must be able to think strategically and logically in order to build, optimize, and effectively report on campaigns utilizing Google Adwords and Google Analytics in tandem.

11. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Driving traffic to a website and turning that traffic into consumers ought to be the goal of digital marketing. Testing various internet pages, text, and calls-to-action (CTAs) to discover which converts best is known as conversion rate optimization (CRO). It integrates the creative disciplines of user experience, copywriting, and website design. You should be knowledgeable with A/B testing as a digital marketer and have experience using tools like Optimizely to facilitate your study.

12. Marketing Automation

The art of marketing automation involves developing automatic duties for website users to help marketers save time. Understanding how to set up forms, design landing pages, and launch drip campaigns is crucial for nurturing website visitors into paying clients. It’s a crucial tool for assisting your sales team in locating leads from online visitors that are sales-qualified.

Read Also: How Much is Digital Marketing Course?

It’s crucial to have a marketing automation technology that supports your company’s objectives. Try BenchmarkONE for free to see how our marketing automation and CRM software can assist you in generating leads from your website and nurturing them via the use of powerful email marketing in order to close a sale.

Speaking of sales-qualified leads, if you can rank website visitors according to their importance to a marketing or sales team, you’ll be one step ahead of many other digital marketers.

13. Influencer Marketing

By collaborating with internet influencers to disseminate content or co-create it, brands may reap major benefits. A crucial digital marketing skill is the ability to communicate with influencers and convert them from detractors to supporters. You’ll be one step ahead of the competition and save time if you know how to locate and track online influencers using a service like Traackr.