5 Strategies to Move Your Career Forward as a Digital Marketer

A career in digital marketing is competitive, here are 5 Strategies to Help You Stand Out as a Digital Marketer and Move Your Career Forward

Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

 

The digital marketing industry is unrelentingly fast-paced and competitive. You have to be creative, ambitious, persuasive, and think on your feet. If you want to improve your current career path, take a look at these five strategies that might help you stand out from the crowd.

Fine-tune your skill set

The most recommended step to boost your career success is to review and revamp your skills. We know you’ve heard it a thousand times by now, but there’s really no getting around it. Generally speaking, you can categorize your skills into two broad groups: hard and soft.

As a digital marketer, your hard skills need to focus on demonstrating a good ROI to your stakeholders. This means making them understand the importance of quality marketing beyond the soonest bottom line.

This is mostly a matter of data analysis and data management. Stakeholders will want clear, quantifiable insights. They will also want them framed in several reasonable timelines: the current quarter, the coming year, and further long-term plans.

On the other hand, your soft skills have to grow into the mold of the global virtual society. While team management and inter-office relationships are always important, as a digital marketer you have to adapt to the unique dynamics of social media.

For instance, in Australia, the number of social media users increased by 950 thousand (+4.6%) between 2021 and 2022. They accounted for approximately 83% of the country’s total population. Similar growth was observed worldwide, so do your utmost to keep up with the new social context.

In addition, polish your innovation, creativity, and ability to influence. Each of those skills improves your chances of marketing success, as well as your personal reach among recruiters and fellow professionals.

Develop a good understanding of data

It’s common knowledge that data skills are the cornerstone of a successful IT career, but what do they mean to a digital marketer? As we mentioned above, they will go a long way in proving the ROI of your marketing efforts to your stakeholders.

Accurate metrics about your clients’ campaigns are essential to continued cooperation. In meetings, they need to see specifically how far they’ve come and which areas have improved the most, and which the least.

In the evaluation and report phase, you have to back up your choices (and possibly defend their consequences) with clear analytics. Your decisions in the modern-day market must always be data-driven, as opposed to intuitive.

Analytics are the cornerstone of every step you take in your digital marketing career. They let you understand your successes and failures, the factors that facilitated them, the factors that impeded or prevented them, and how to replicate or eliminate the same scenarios in the future.

Focus on the business side of things

To continue with the Aussie example, a digital marketer from the country would be smart to expand their skill set into the administrative and managerial spheres. The easiest way to do that is to choose the best MBA in Australia that fits your goals and resources and get a formal business education.

A step like that would dramatically boost your resume and increase your appeal to potential employers. It shows that you are ambitious, dedicated, and not afraid of hard work. You don’t have to give up any current employment to do so. Many programs offer remote or hybrid learning options to accommodate working students.

Pursuing an MBA is also a unique opportunity for networking. International courses especially offer a chance to connect with fellow aspiring professionals from around the globe. You will learn skills like giving and accepting feedback and navigating diversity in the workplace. You might even form new business partnerships!

Be ready to adapt

It’s not the most pleasant thing to hear, but you might face a time when digital marketing alone won’t be a viable option anymore. Be prepared to change course if necessary and adapt your career path to unfavorable circumstances.

Even if marketing remains your primary field, consider dipping your feet in some related areas that would increase your job security. Figure out how to apply your business administration degree in tech and IT to help tide you over or get out of a rut. It might even launch you into better positions!

In addition, be ready to drastically change your role at the drop of a hat. You might have to become an impromptu team leader in a time of crisis. You may already be in leadership but have to change your team management style.

The same holds true for your marketing campaigns, business methods in general, conflict navigation strategies, etc. Considering the rapid changes in the industry and the global market, you have to be able to hit the ground running under any circumstance.

Polish your personal brand

Building a strong personal brand is an essential aspect of establishing a solid online presence. You have to be able to do that for yourself, professionally and personally, as well as for your clients and stakeholders.

Choose one or two channels and focus on gathering a consistent following. Tailor your content to showcase your expertise and experience in digital marketing in an appealing and relatable way.  You want to gain the attention of fellow experts in addition to your general audience.

The point is to establish yourself as an expert. You can target your industry in general or carve a space for yourself in a specific niche. In either case, strive to post reliable, relevant information. Your goal should be to become the go-to person for most of your audience and their associated circles.

 

In summary, standing out as a digital marketer comes down to constant learning. That might sound a bit daunting, but in the current ever-accelerating world, you have to keep pace. Take the strategic approach and focus on developing transferable skills.

Focus on soft skills specifically aimed at social media spaces. Learn how to handle analytics and data, and utilize them in business communications and any strategies.

Optimize your skills and build your own brand. Focus on networking and resilience. More than anything, keep in mind that the market is constantly fluctuating and be ready to adapt to any new situation.