People are more likely to create websites, social media profiles, or adverts for their enterprises in order to reach a wider audience of potential clients as the marketing landscape becomes more digital. Running a business thus requires the practice of digital marketing, which is the use of digital technologies to promote one’s goods and services.

Jobs in digital marketing are therefore becoming more and more in demand. Those who are interested in careers in digital marketing might not know where to begin, though.

1. Social Media Coordinator

• Requirements: Bachelor’s degree and/or experience in Marketing or related fields, great writing and communication skills, thorough understanding of social media tools and platforms, basic understanding of SEO, proficiency in graphic design applications
• Average earnings: $43,006/year

A social media coordinator or manager is in charge of managing the company’s social media accounts and developing a robust social media presence for the company. Coordinators plan out an editorial calendar and produce content for different social platforms.

Working together with marketing and sales departments, the coordinator promotes the company’s products and services through various social channels following the organization’s marketing strategy.

Social media coordinators are also responsible for researching marketing and social media trends, ensuring the company stays relevant and on-trend. They look out for key trends or opportunities on social media for marketing the brand better.

In addition, a social media coordinator is in charge of encouraging engagement by responding to followers’ comments and posts. The coordinator monitors and reports on content efficacy and arranges social campaigns or collaborations with influencers.

To sum up, a coordinator develops the brand’s overall reach and people’s trust in the brand through social media – all for driving more traffic to the online store or website and increasing sales.

2. Graphic Designer

• Requirements: Formal education on and/or experience in graphic design or related fields, strong sense of visual design and color composition, proficiency in graphic design applications, comprehensive graphic design portfolio
• Average earnings: $49,361/year

Graphic designers create and combine graphical and textual elements for various content produced by a company or brand. These include flyers, posters, social media posts, banners, logos, emails, physical product packaging, and pictures used in selling digital products.

A graphic designer must maintain a unified and consistent brand image while providing variety through all the graphics created.

They must also make sure all graphics follow the company’s design templates and guidelines, including fonts and colors. This is important, as people usually associate specific color schemes and typography with certain brands.

As with designers in general, graphic designers must have a strong sense of layout and color composition to produce visually attractive and high-quality graphics. Communication is also of paramount importance, as the designer has to understand the client’s or company’s creative vision.

3. UI/UX Designer

• Requirements: Formal education on and/or experience in UI/UX design or related fields, proficiency in graphic design applications, proficiency in web development applications and languages, understanding of user research and testing methodologies, comprehensive UI/UX design portfolio
• Average earnings: $93,653/year

As the name implies, a UI/UX designer’s responsibilities consist of user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design tasks. User experience designers create and improve users’ interaction with a digital or physical product or service.

They focus on making the experience of using a product or service as easy, effective, and pleasant as possible. The products or services are diverse and encompass many different industries. They may design websites, cars, vending machines, mobile phones, and more.

Some of their responsibilities may include conducting research on user behavior and demographics, analyzing competitors, generating user flow wireframes, creating product prototypes, and testing products on users.

Meanwhile, user interface design is closely related to user experience design. Often, it is even considered as its subcategory.

Whereas user experience design may concern physical or digital products, user interface design is only related to digital products. Specifically, it deals with the means through which users control or interact with the products. Think of the user interface of a mobile application or a website.

User interface designers’ work includes typography, imagery, icons, buttons, colors, and responsive design. The designers aim to produce not only an intuitive and interactive interface but also a visually attractive one.

A user interface designer may also be responsible for conducting competitor design research to find app or website design inspiration, analyzing users, creating user interface prototypes, testing user interface, and adapting visual design to various screen sizes.

In the end, both UI and UX designers work using a human-first approach, putting the user’s needs first.

4. SEO Specialist

• Requirements: Bachelor’s degree and/or experience in Marketing, IT, or related fields, deep understanding of SEO and marketing analytics best practices, platforms, and tools
• Average earnings: $46,848/year

A search engine optimization (SEO) specialist researches, analyzes, and implements the best SEO practices for the company’s websites. SEO is a crucial aspect of digital marketing, helping to maximize brand visibility and customer reach.

SEO specialists focus on developing ideal strategies for on-page, off-page, and technical optimization. They must also be familiar with many SEO strategies and tricks compatible with various content management systems.

For example, some SEO tips and tricks for WordPress websites include keyword research, adjusting Permalink structure, and installing a WordPress SEO plugin. Other SEO specialists’ tasks include conversion rate optimization, link building, website traffic monitoring, as well as tracking industry trends and search engine results page rankings.

They also often work closely with the web development and content teams to develop SEO-friendly site design, architecture, and content. For example, search engines prefer websites with responsive design and content containing relevant keywords and header tags.

In short, SEO specialists help optimize the company website’s design and content so search engines can crawl, interpret, and index them effectively. Doing so will result in the company’s website and web pages ranking higher on search engine results pages, allowing more people to see and click on them.

5. Data Analyst

• Requirements: Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Marketing, or related fields, deep understanding of data mining, warehousing, and visualization, proficiency in advanced Microsoft Excel, programming languages, SQL databases, and database querying languages
• Average earnings: $68,447/year

A data analyst’s job is to collect, clean, process, and analyze data to solve problems and answer questions. The analyst translates raw marketing analytics into easy-to-understand data visualization dashboards, which will then be transformed into executable actions for the company’s decision-makers.

Read Also: 10 Highest Paying Digital Marketing Skills

Data analysts use computer programs and statistical tools to perform their tasks, such as gathering and cleaning data, maintaining databases, highlighting trends, patterns, and correlations in data sets, creating reports, and visualizing data.

They perform market research, identify key trends and patterns, interpret the data, and communicate findings to the marketing team to develop new and improved marketing strategies. For example, data analysts can create a pie chart to explain the demographics of the brand’s customers. To gather customer data, they may use analytical tools such as Google Analytics.

By analyzing key trends and visualizing data, data analysts show what works and what does not, helping the company adjust and improve strategic planning for better marketing results.

6. Web Developer

• Requirements: Experience and proficiency in the required programming languages and applications, deep understanding of code libraries and database systems, comprehensive web development portfolio
• Average earnings: $69,660/year

Web developers design and build websites via coding. Although having formal education in Computer Science or related fields is great, experience in programming and web development is more important, especially since anyone can learn coding online for free.

There are three main types of web developers: front-end, back-end, and full-stack.

Front-end web developers are in charge of client-side web development, creating the user-facing part of websites. These developers are more focused on user experience, creating elements site visitors interact with, such as navigation menus and contact forms.

Back-end web developers focus on server-side web development and are responsible for building the technology powering the front-end. They aid the communication between the website’s server, application, and database by coding components such as web services and APIs.

Full-stack developers are web developers who are capable of performing both front-end and back-end web development.

Although similar, front-end and back-end development often require different skill sets. The skill sets needed for one web developer position to another may also vary depending on the company. For example, front-end developers must be fluent in three main programming languages: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. They also must be proficient in using frameworks such as Bootstrap and AngularJS.

On the other hand, back-end developers have to be fluent in server-side programming languages such as PHP, Python, and Ruby. They must also operate back-end database systems such as MySQL and are often required to be familiar with PHP frameworks and version control systems.

In addition, full-time web developers are often also in charge of website maintenance. This includes maintaining site speed and security as well as researching and testing any site elements before implementing them on the live website.

7. Email Marketing Specialist

• Requirements: Bachelor’s degree in and/or experience in Marketing or related fields, solid grasp of email marketing and A/B testing best practices, skills in copywriting, proficiency in email automation software and analytical tools
• Average earnings: $64,913/year

An email marketing specialist markets the company or brand by deploying emails to customers who have signed up for the company’s newsletter. The emails contain digital marketing campaigns notifying the customers of offers, promotions, and updates from the company.

In email marketing, the digital marketing specialist uses email automation software to send out email blasts or newsletters to increase brand awareness and nurture leads. This process is similar to the basic email marketing services offered by the WordPress newsletter plugins.

Besides sending emails, they are also often responsible for crafting the content of the email marketing campaign. They write the ad copy, work closely with graphic designers to create a visually pleasing campaign, and proofread content before sending it.

In addition, they perform market research to understand customers’ needs better and monitor the performance of various email campaigns. Taking note of the effectiveness of each campaign, the specialists use this data to craft better future campaigns.

Other marketing tasks they may also perform include compiling, storing, and purging email lists, following up on emails, and even interacting directly with customers via email.

8. Product Marketing Specialist

• Requirements: Bachelor’s degree in Marketing or related fields, product management and marketing experience, skills in writing, proofreading and product storytelling, familiarity with competitive analysis, user research, and product data analytics
• Average earnings: $69,964/year

A product marketing specialist is in charge of marketing one specific product or a category of products. Product marketing specialists focus on conducting market research and competitive analysis to develop effective go-to-market strategies, such as cross-selling, upselling, and market penetration.

They use research data containing variables such as pricing, distribution, and customer segmentation to create better campaigns for new product launches. The specialists also track industry trends to ensure products and marketing materials stay relevant.

Together with product management and PR teams, they craft appropriate narratives and alter the product roadmap with product management and PR teams. They brainstorm on the most effective way to communicate the product’s best qualities to its target audience.

Besides marketing new products, product marketing specialists are often tasked with creating campaigns for existing products to ensure customers continue using the products.

They also collaborate with other marketing departments to maintain a consistent brand voice in different marketing campaigns, such as product launch and promotional events, paid online advertisements, and product promotions and offers sent to the customers via email.

9. Paid Marketing Specialist

• Requirements: Bachelor’s degree and/or experience in Marketing or related fields, familiarity with search engine marketing and social media advertising programs, skills in budget management, good knowledge of Google Analytics, proficiency in Microsoft Excel
• Average earnings: $70,739/year

Paid marketing specialists create, manage, and optimize a company or brand’s paid digital marketing campaigns. These specialists utilize numerous paid online marketing channels in their line of work.

They display advertisements on search engine results pages. These paid ads usually fall under the category of pay-per-click ads, meaning the company only has to pay whenever someone clicks on the displayed ad.

Another method is purchasing paid social ads, showcasing advertisements on third-party social platforms, such as Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads. In addition, they pay for display ads through programs such as Google Ads to show advertisements on the spaces surrounding the main content on various websites working with programs such as Google AdSense.

Some companies also want their paid marketing specialists to start using affiliate marketing, a partnership system in which chosen individuals or organizations receive commission fees to promote the company’s products or services.

Specialists also focus on tracking the paid marketing campaign budget and performance analytics by monitoring factors such as return on investment, traffic, total reach, and clicking and conversion rates.

To stay ahead of the game, they also monitor and stay abreast of industry trends and fellow competitors in the market.

The marketing data collected from all the tracking and analysis is then reported to relevant stakeholders and used to decide on content planning, marketing strategy, and overall campaign optimization.

10. Content Writer

• Requirements: Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Communications, or related fields, experience in copywriting or digital content writing, solid grasp of SEO best practices, strong writing skills, basic CMS knowledge
• Average earnings: $47,561/year

A content writer creates content to increase brand or company awareness. This content comes in various forms, such as blog posts, articles, social media posts, and marketing copy displayed on the company’s website – all to attract potential customers.

Content writers research topics related to the industry and create content based on such data. After writing drafts, they work closely with editors in their content team to proofread and polish content. Together, they fix any spelling and grammatical errors and increase readability.

Besides ensuring the text is typo-free, a content writer should also follow the content team’s guidelines that dictate the voice, tone, style, and language.

Another critical aspect of digital content writing is SEO. Writers have to understand basic SEO blogging techniques and implement them into their writing. Examples include keyword research, the proper use of headings, link building, title tags, and meta descriptions.

Companies typically also want media content to go with the text to attract people’s attention and prevent dull content. To fulfill this aspect, writers collaborate with graphic designers to provide the media content accompanying their writing.

Content writers who are in charge of creating blog posts or articles should also be familiar with popular content management systems (CMS), as these are the means through which website content is typically published.

Becoming a content writer gives you the leverage to start your own blog, which is one of the most profitable online side hustles. A lot of bloggers are even going full-time as there are plenty of opportunities to make money from blogging.

11. Digital Marketing Manager

• Requirements: Bachelor’s degree in and/or experience Marketing or related fields, working knowledge of SEO, copywriting, paid and unpaid marketing campaigns, social media, web analytics, and the programming languages HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
• Average earnings: $121,676/year

Compared to the previous jobs we have discussed, a digital marketing manager is a jack-of-all-trades. Depending on the company size, the marketing manager may be in charge of carrying out digital marketing tasks or overseeing the work of a digital marketing team.

The manager must be familiar with various digital marketing aspects, such as SEO, paid or unpaid campaigns, newsletters, blog posts, marketing copy, affiliate marketing, marketing performance data tracking and analysis, and online presence.

Smaller companies may expect a digital marketing manager to tackle all digital marketing responsibilities on a smaller and less thorough scale. The marketing manager may handle the planning, creation, and publishing of various marketing materials across different platforms.

Larger companies with many specialized divisions may require the marketing manager to monitor the progress of the digital marketing teams, ensuring all divisions work together seamlessly and effectively according to previously agreed-upon budget and timelines.

In short, regardless of the scale, digital marketing managers should understand and monitor all of the marketing tasks handled by most of the jobs we have discussed, from the responsibilities of a social media manager to the tasks of a digital content writer.

Once you’ve gained enough experience and learned all the necessary skills, it’s also possible to grow your own digital marketing agency.

Finally

The ongoing process of moving towards a more digital world and the increasingly popular flexible and remote work culture means digital marketing careers are likely to stay, at least in the foreseeable future.

There are plenty of ways to prepare yourself for a digital marketing career even without a university degree, such as the following:

• Sign up for digital marketing courses and boot camps
• Create your own website
• Take advantage of free digital marketing tools
• Find a digital marketing internship
• Try freelance work

Using these resources, people can learn the basic aspects of digital marketing, such as search engine optimization, email marketing, social media marketing, paid marketing, and data analytics.