Digital marketing is a way to promote products or services using digital technology. In the digital era, many consumers are looking for products or services online, so businesses must have expertise in digital marketing in order to reach their target market effectively.
Some of the skills that are important in digital marketing include SEO, SEM, PPC, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and web analytics.
SEO is a way to improve website ranking in search engines like Google. SEM involves paid advertising to increase website visibility in search engines. PPC is a type of paid advertising where advertisers pay every time a user clicks on their ads.
As a business owner, of course you want your business to grow and be well-known in the community. One way is by learning digital marketing skills. Digital marketing is not just uploading photos of products or places of business on social media. However, it also creates a strategy so that the content is more focused and achieves marketing goals.
So, if you want to learn about digital marketing skills for business, watch this article to the end, guaranteed to understand more and become an expert.
What is digital marketing in simple word?
Digital marketing is an online-based product or service marketing activity, using various online channels.
According to Investopedia, digital marketing can refer to marketing through websites, social media, email and search engines to reach more market share. A reliable digital marketer, mastering several technical skills and soft skills to support his work.
For example the ability to communicate, think creatively and analytically, copywriting, strategic content, data analysis, to design.
Technological developments have also become a factor in digital marketing, which is increasingly becoming a promotional choice. This is because it is considered more effective and can reach audiences on different platforms.
A must-have digital marketing expert skill
If you want to become a digital marketing expert, you can take formal education and attend non-formal training to increase your knowledge and hone your skills. Generally, reliable marketers have 2 types of skills, namely soft skills and hard skills. Both play the same role in supporting marketing activities.
Hard skills are more towards technical abilities, while soft skills refer to skills related to personality. For more details, consider the following explanation.
1. Digital marketing soft skills
Digital marketing soft skills are skills related to personality. Usually includes creative and critical thinking skills, leadership skills, and communication.
In contrast to technical skills, you can develop soft skills through social or organizational activities, not formal training.
A digital marketing requires soft skills, because in practice you cannot work alone and are often involved in collaboration with other divisions. Therefore, you can consider and hone these skills again, so you can become a digital marketing expert.
a. Communication
Almost all jobs require good communication skills. The reason is, the ability to communicate will make it easier for you to complete and delegate tasks. Communication skills include conveying persuasive messages, building relationships, and loyalty. You need to convey your message in a concise, engaging, and clear way.
A digital marketing person will be responsible for creating content and conveying ideas clearly, so that the team can easily understand them during meetings.
The following is an article on How to Improve Communication Skills in a Career that you can use as a reference to improve your communication skills.
b. Problem solving
Having problem solving skills can be an added value to marketing skills in CV. The reason is, it is not easy to have good problem solving skills. Even though you have made a strategy and careful planning, often the results of campaigns and promotions do not match expectations.
Or technical problems occur when promoting products or services. It is at moments like these that digital marketers are required to find solutions to these problems.
c. Creative thinking
One of the marketing skills that you must master is creative thinking. Almost all marketing activities involve the right brain to create strategies to execute ideas.
People who successfully adopt creative thinking are able to bring brilliant, innovative, fresh ideas and find unique and effective solutions. The ability to think creatively helps digital marketers see opportunities in market share and make your campaign stand out and be liked by the target audience.
d. Think analytically
As with creative thinking, analytical thinking is a skill that you need to hone continuously. The reason is, there are many advantages to having this soft skill. Often in solving problems, digital marketing reads reports or data related to campaigns that have been run. Is it successful or not.
Failures or obstacles during promotions, can be overcome with analytical thinking. Turning data into profitable information conclusions for business.
In carrying out digital marketing tasks, digital marketing soft skills are also needed, namely being able to adapt to changes that often arise.
e. Multitasking
Skills that include digital marketing are multitasking. Yep, a versatile marketer must be able to hold several responsibilities at once.
However, that does not mean that all work is delegated to digital marketing. What this means is that you can just research the content and execute the plan.
f. Curiosity
Digital marketing is a new science and is still developing today. Practice and theory still need to be perfected. Therefore, a marketer must have this digital marketing skill. Curiosity or a high sense of curiosity and wanting to keep learning will have a positive impact on business.
High curiosity encourages you to keep up to date with new technologies and theories that can be applied in business marketing.
2. Digital marketing hard skills
Soft skills are indeed important for a digital marketing. However, technical expertise or hard skills remain the top priority. Here are a row of skills that you should learn.
a. SEO and SEM
Understanding the basics and even mastering search engine optimization is a skill that you must learn. This is especially useful for running digital marketing. The opportunity for organic search results to be opened by the audience is greater than paid search. Therefore, taking advantage of SEO can be very helpful.
Optimization of the content on the blog includes setting several derived keywords and paying attention to the structure of the article. SEO and SEM will attract a large audience.
b. Write and edit
Examples of digital marketing hard skills are writing and editing. A digital marketer generally also has the skills to write and edit qualified content. Coupled with good storytelling skills.
You can convey a message through the 'storytelling' writing technique so that it seems closer to the audience. Writing is not only for websites or social media content, but also writing effective e-mails and newsletters to customers.
c. Design skills
The next digital marketing skill is mastering the basics of designing or editing visual content. This is because, in addition to planning a strategy, you are also responsible for providing suggestions or communicating what kind of content you want to present.
The visual design of attractive and persuasive content is able to encourage the audience to take actions such as following a business account or purchasing. An attractive design display will also reach many target audiences. Digital marketing tools for design such as Canva and Adobe Photoshop.
d. Social media marketing
Marketing is now mostly done through social media. This is because it makes it easier to reach consumers who are spread across various platforms.
Digital marketers need to know social media marketing, how to use the platform, activate paid ads, and find appropriate hashtags for content. The goal is to increase brand awareness to get sales. In addition, you are tasked with analyzing which campaigns were successful and failed to be used as evaluation material.
e. Copywriting
One way to encourage consumers to make purchases is to make persuasive advertisements. Besides writing, you need to master copywriting techniques. Every content in the form of writing and video requires a CTA alias call to action or an invitation for the audience to take an action.
For example, subscribing to a newsletter, reading other articles on the website, following a business account, registering, and buying products.
f. Content creation
Among the 6 marketing skills above, content creation is a marketer's skill that you should learn. Starting from researching, planning, and executing content ideas.
Creating marketing content on social media that is relevant and presented with attractive visuals is easier for consumers to understand.
The content that you create aims to be viral – even though it will affect the number of views, the main goal is so that the video can be seen by the audience even though it has been months, aka it is still relevant.
g. Data analyst
You must learn the skills of collecting and analyzing data to find out what trends are booming, read statistics, and report on marketing campaigns. Through analytical skills, digital marketing knows what steps need to be taken and helps plan marketing activities.
These data contain information on the amount of traffic and what content is successful or not. Based on the results of your analysis it is easier to create new strategies that have the potential to work. One way to analyze data is to use Google Analytics.
h. Content strategy
Planning a content strategy greatly influences a brand's ability to reach an audience and display a brand's image or reputation. Not all content trends can be applied to your business.
Therefore, it is necessary to analyze which trends are relevant to the target audience so that they can increase traffic. The content strategy also includes execution, where you will upload content to add persuasive captions.
i. Technology savvy
Digital marketing doesn't have to be good at coding, but you must understand the technology that you will use for marketing. Marketers can't be 'stupid' because all their activities and work are related to technology.
Fast development requires digital marketers to adapt and quickly understand the algorithms and how various platforms work, for example TikTok, Instagram and Youtube.
Conclusion
That's a row of digital marketing expert skills that you must have. Indeed, learning digital marketing takes time and is not easy. This is an explanation of digital marketing skills and how to learn them. With consistent practice, you can become a reliable digital marketer..!!