Social media marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing, marketing automation… the list of digital marketing specializations goes on and on. Of course, they are all different. Yet when you do enough of them in your career, you start to identify certain skills that are fundamental to all of those specializations.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing, also called online marketing, is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication. This includes not only email, social media, and web-based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages as a marketing channel.

Digital Marketing Skills that You Can’t Ignore

Data Literacy

Digital marketers swim in a pool of data all of the time. Insights come from data, decisions are based on data, results are in the form of data, and your reports will be filled with data too. Stuffs like metrics, graphs, trends, and statistics, not to mention the more advanced stuff like predictive analytics.

Understand Different Marketing Channels

Even if you don’t specialize in a particular marketing channel, you still need to understand how all of them work and what to use them for. That’s because:

There is a high probability you will need to work on the intersection of various digital channels (e.g., in a startup or in a small team).
Your target audience will most likely hang out on different websites and platforms.
You can improve communication with other people on your team.
You will make a better decision on what to specialize in.

Copywriting

If you like writing, that’s great. This is because you will have a chance to get better at it, as there’s a lot of that in digital marketing. If you don’t like to write but are still serious about digital marketing, try some writing courses—maybe they’ll change your mind.

Essential Digital Marketing Tools

Marketing technology, or martech, is what makes the job of digital marketing possible in the first place.

Moreover, better tools can make you a more effective marketer. Some tools just allow you to work faster, share your work easier, and get better results.

Basic Design Skills

With design, you can show the user where to click. With design, you can convey what your brand is about. Also, having an eye for detail and a taste for this craft really helps. This is because, as a digital marketer, you’re going to decide on that stuff a lot.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking can be the very thing that saves you and your brand from bad marketing ideas. Experimentation is one thing, but some ideas are bad right off the gate, here’s where the critical thinking plays its part.

Social Intelligence

Once you understand how little you differ from other people, you’ll start to speak their language and get work done together more efficiently—without hating your workplace. Want to become a manager? Start with social intelligence skills. Want to work more efficiently with various contractors? Start with social intelligence skills.

Performing Experiments

This involves devising hypotheses and designing experiments to validate them. It’s important because, oftentimes, it’s the only way to get an objective answer. Experiments will come in all shapes and sizes.

Coding

Sooner or later, you will be exposed to some form of programming or markup language. How exposed? It really depends. Your job may require something basic like inserting a tracking tag or editing some lines in your WordPress template. Other times, it may require you to do data analysis for customer databases with SQL or Python.

Key Takeaways

Digital marketing is more of a craft than an art form. It’s about being able to discover what works and repeating it until it works. Though, you may often repeat someone else’s work (and that’s not very creative). However grim this may sound, don’t strive for creativity in digital marketing at all costs. Don’t make it your number one priority, as it can hinder your ability to perform effectively.

How Social Leap Can Help With Your Business

Starting your own business is both profitable and enjoyable. However, the journey is not as easy as ABC. You need to do the management, accounting, organic reach, and also digital marketing. The rest you can do it on your own however for digital marketing there are lots of aspects you need to look on and have specific strategies.

Rather than you hire your own Facebook Ads Specialist, Tiktok Ads Specialist, Google Ads Specialist, Creative Designer or even renting a space to place them, and the list goes on… which the spendings can reach up to RM20K monthly. With our help, you can cut it more than half of the costs as we provide all the digital marketing essentials.

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