There’s currently a talent gap in digital marketing and employers are on the look out to fill them…
The industry is currently experiencing a talent shortage in digital marketing. According to recent studies, 90% of marketers report suffering from a shortage of digital skills, and only 8% of surveyed companies feel strong in the area of digital marketing.
Here are seven of the most important skills that you need to make yourself a desirable job candidate in the digital age:
1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Of the companies looked at for the study, in which hundreds of job postings for digital talent were analysed, 14% cited SEO as a required skill.
To compete as a candidate for a digital marketing job, you must have technical SEO skills, including server-side settings, sitemaps and server response codes. Moreover, competitive candidates should have experience using various tools to identify customers’ search behaviours and the competitive landscape.
2. Pay-per-click: Seven percent of the companies that were looked at in the study listed search engine marketing (SEM) as a required skill for their organisations, and one of the most important and growing facets of SEM is pay-per-click (PPC). In order to demonstrate your abilities in this area, you need to show that you have the research and analytical skills required to create and execute a strong PPC plan that aligns with an overarching marketing strategy.
3. Mobile: To demonstrate value in this area, you need to understand how mobile marketing differs from desktop marketing and communicate why that matters to the rest of the business. Moreover, a digital marketer should have general familiarity with mobile development in order to best communicate with the design team and create a cohesive mobile marketing strategy that aligns with other online and offline efforts. Get familiar with its vocabulary, including things like SMS marketing and responsive design.
4. E-mail marketing: You need to be able to do more than send out regular communication. You must be able to optimise your e-mail marketing by crafting a compelling strategy, testing relentlessly and refining content based on what works best. It’s also essential that today’s marketers understand the best ways to develop distribution lists and use e-mail nurturing to create more business opportunities.
5. Social media: Ten percent of the businesses that were analysed in the study cited social media experience as a requirement for applicants, and that doesn’t just mean that they want someone with an active personal Twitter account. Digital marketers need to understand how to develop a strong social media presence to help bolster their brands and further their marketing goals.
6. Content management: SEO, e-mail marketing and social media skills are useless if you don’t back up your technical skills with excellent writing for multiple platforms. The ability to flow easily between writing e-mails, press releases, website copy, proposals, social posts and even code is key to success in today’s digital marketing field. Make sure that you demonstrate your ability to write across media, and to guide and polish the content of others on your team.
7. Analytics: In the study, a whopping 13% of businesses listed analytics experience as a required skill in their job descriptions. In order to be a truly great digital marketer, you’ll need to not only implement strong inbound and outbound digital strategies, but also analyse them regularly and use those insights to constantly improve. If you want to make it in a digital marketing job, it’s time to make ROI your middle name.
If you feel worthy of utilising all of these skills within a working environment, check out our latest Marketing role by following this link!
If you would like to learn more about Digital Marketing Strategies, there are many courses which you can enrol on to. Check out the Digital Marketing Course websites below!
Chartered Institue of Marketing
– Avi Levine
