Decoding Digital Marketing

Given the ever-increasing growth of spend on digital media, there is a constant demand of skilled digital marketing professionals. There are two types of digital marketing skills one should look at:  Soft skills, which are related to aptitude and attitude of a person; Technical skills, which are related to specific aspects of digital marketing (eg: SEO).

Interestingly, for anyone who wants to be successful in digital marketing, there are no pre-requisites in terms of educational qualification and technology skills. Even if you are not a graduate or have no understanding of technology, you can successfully acquire digital marketing skills if you are committed and passionate about digital media.

Given the dynamic nature of digital media, one should have the following soft skills to be successful in leveraging digital marketing. While it is impossible to expect these skills in one person, the degree to which you have these skills is the degree to which you can expect success in digital marketing.

Communication Skills: On digital media, an organization communicates with its target audience through text, image, or video. The quality of this communication will naturally determine the outcome of any digital marketing campaign.

Creativity: Given the overload of information on digital media, marketers needs to be creative enough to ensure that their campaigns stand out among competition. Fortunately, one can acquire creativity skills through practice.

Analytical skills: One of the key advantages of digital marketing is the amount of real time data available to measure progress of any campaign. If you want to leverage this data to optimize a campaign for success, you should have strong analytical skills to analyze this data and make intelligent decisions to fulfill your campaign’s objectives.

Passion: While passion is not a trait specific to career in digital marketing, it is one of the fundamental reasons for one’s success in learning and leveraging digital marketing. As shared by various thought leaders, passion determines your success and happiness for anything you do in your life and digital marketing is not an exception.

Quick learner: Digital Marketing is one of the most dynamic fields. How quickly you can adapt to the changes in the digital medium will determine how well you can conceptualize and execute digital marketing campaigns.

Multitasker: There are multiple views about multitasking. One set of people is proponent of multitasking in today’s interconnected world while others oppose multitasking as it comes in the way of one’s productivity. Given the real-time nature of digital marketing and that too spread across multiple channels, multitasking is one of the important skills for any digital marketer.

Thirst for knowledge: Your ability to remain abreast with latest trends across various digital media will play a significant role in your success in leveraging this medium for your personal and organizational growth. If you can remain a student of this field for rest of your life (vs treating yourself as an expert who knows it all) you can differentiate yourself from others.

Social skills: Digital medium especially Social Media is all about engagement and collaboration. How well you connect with others will determine your ability to satisfy your customer’s needs on this medium. Moreover, your social skills will help you learn from others and take their support to improve the success of your digital marketing campaigns.

Willingness to experiment: There are no fixed rules about digital medium. Also, there are no boundaries for success on this medium. Your ability to constantly experiment along with your strong analytical skills will play a crucial role in successfully strategizing and executing digital marketing campaigns.

Comfort with technology: While you do not need to be a programmer or have strong technical skills, technology plays an important role in digital marketing. For example, you can multiply the efficiency of digital marketing campaigns or efficiently measure the performance through technology. Your comfort with technology will determine how well you embrace it and leverage other technical resources, who manage technology for the ultimate success of your digital marketing campaigns.

By Pradeep Chopra