You don't have to be great to start but
you have to start to be great. And with an average salary of over $100,000 a
year here in Australia it might just be the perfect time for you to consider
starting a career in digital marketing this year. One of my most popular videos
on this channel has been my introduction to digital marketing, and this video is
my way of taking that one step further to talk to you about actually
considering a career in digital marketing and how to decide whether it's
the right step for you. Now I've been in digital marketing for over 4 years now
as an online freelancer as a strategist at a digital marketing agency and also
working as a specialist in-house and a more corporate role. So if you do enjoy
this video make sure to give it a like subscribe to the channel and hit that
bell so you get notified every single time a video goes live – where I'm going
to be diving into my best tips and tricks in the world of digital marketing.
So why digital marketing and why now? Well the most successful businesses in
this day and age and the most profitable ones aren't actually the best at what
they do.
The best selling books on Amazon aren't the best-written books on Amazon.
And the highest-earning YouTubers aren't necessarily the most talented. The best
often just means the best marketed. And in 2020 as the world has gone a little bit
crazy… everyone who has never really thought
about having a digital presence before has had to be flexible and adapt to the
needs of their customers and think about creatively using it for the success of
their business. So everyone from teachers to therapists has had to kind of adapt
and shift their business model online and people who have gotten by with decades
and decades of running their business purely through word of mouth have really
had to think about going to digital for help.
It's a no brainer then that Seek
have stated that the projected growth in the number of available jobs for a
digital marketing manager in the next five years is a crazy 21.7% also
according to ntegrity – 88% of companies are struggling to find digital talent
with 42% saying it's their biggest and major challenge
and these trends are reflected globally as well. So the trend is incredibly clear
both in terms of job prospects and in terms of marketing budgets for companies.
Digital advertising spend per year in Australia alone is about 8.5 billion
dollars. So not only is digital marketing a really hot skill to have this year but
it's going to keep getting hotter.
But is it the right skill for you? Let's find
out! There are some jobs out there in the online universe that lend themselves
better to the analytical logical thinkers and then there are some that
lend themselves a little bit better to those who have a more creative side and
that's the part of their brain that they really enjoy using and they excel at.
Digital marketing is kind of a blend of these two worlds. So if you're someone
who enjoys creating graphics and videos and maybe creative writing but then you
can also stare at really complicated graphs and charts and numbers and figure
out conversion rates of where things are going right and where things are going
wrong and that's something that really excites you as well then digital
marketing might be perfect for you! Can you succeed at digital marketing if
numbers aren't your thing? I would almost confidently say not so much…
Because just
creating the assets and maybe being able to build out a big strategy is one piece
of the puzzle. The other piece is being able to actually measure your success
and see where things are going right and amplify those efforts and see where
things are going wrong and be able to fix those little areas that need
improvement. So for example let's say you have a client who wants to get more
people into their email list and they task you with increasing the number of
visitors to their website but then you go and you analyze their numbers and you
realize they're actually getting a thousand people per day to their website
but only 10 of those people are converting into leads so then you would
basically propose the strategy to say you don't actually need more traffic to
your website your traffic numbers are good what you're struggling with is your
conversion of those visitors into leads and then the creative side of you would
be able to design a different lead magnet
to offer to those visitors to try and increase that conversion rate so you
might be designing an e-book or a training and the landing page that's
gonna allow people to actually sign up for that free offer.
So it's both creative and analytical almost every step of the way.
In addition
to the analytical and creative side of you… you also have to be a little bit
good at reading people as well, because marketing fundamentally is all
about knowing what people are going to want how they're gonna want information
presented to them and when you should be presenting that information to them. So
if that's something that you might already be doing in your day to day life
then digital marketing might just be the path to you. Let's now talk about how you
can actually build up your online portfolio… one of the most frequently
asked questions I get from my students is "How do I get clients without a
portfolio?" and "How do I create a portfolio without any client work? it's a
really really great question and it does have a pretty simple answer… these days
when I have time for roles whether it's with freelance clients or for full-time
or part-time roles it's pretty easy for anyone who's interviewing me to just
Google me to find my online courses and this YouTube channel my blog post and
everything in between to figure out whether we're a good fit for one another
but when I first started I didn't have any of that I just had a one page
website that had some samples of the skills I could provide to my client so I
had a screenshot of an Instagram caption that would allow my clients to get a
sense of my copywriting style I had a screenshot of a Facebook ad I
did some video samples and all of these sorts of things that were all for the
Living to Roam Facebook page or Instagram page or email marketing
platform…
Are you starting to see a pattern there?? I was basically my first client!
And this kind of had two roles in my life.. the first was that it took a lot of
the pressure off because if I screwed anything up I was just screwing it up on
my own account so my own trial and error was a lot less intimidating than if I
was doing it for a client and second – it also allowed me to create a portfolio of
samples to show off the clients, and as a bonus point it also meant that I was
building up an online presence that would allow
future potential clients to discover me through my tutorials and blog posts and
reach out for work I could do for them. I don't have the very first sight I
created anymore but I will link you to a second version that's up on livingtoroam.com to give you an idea of how you could set something like this up for
yourself. So I do recommend that if you are gonna want to start as a digital
marketing expert this year that you start by practicing on your own accounts
and building up your own online presence and creating a one-page portfolio site.
Make sure to check out my video on how to create your own one page portfolio
site in less than 30 minutes it's gonna give you a really great place to start…
and just remember you do not have to be an expert in order to work as a digital
marketer you just have to be better than your client! And in the wise words of Sir
Richard Branson if somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you're not
sure you can do it say yes and learn how to do it later.
Let's now talk about what
kind of qualifications you need in order to get started… I know there are some
amazing digital marketing degrees out there you can study but for me
personally having worked in so many different digital marketing environments
now not having a qualification of any kind has never been an issue because in
the digital marketing world the rule pretty much is if you know what you're
doing you're good to go. And I think that investing your time and energy into a
three or four-year university degree would be such a waste because by the
time you would graduate everything you've learned is probably out of date
because the digital marketing world moves so so quickly.
So my advice is for you
to take a few online courses to kind of introduce yourself into this world and
learn a few skills and then get practice by using those skills with
different clients and continue your learning as you go because that is the
beauty of digital marketing the brilliant minds at Facebook and Google
will never ever stop innovating and adapting to what's happening in the
world and because of that you also constantly have to keep learning and
keep being more and more innovative with your digital marketing approach. So what
areas do you actually need to focus on as a digital marketer in terms of your
skill set? I believe the digital marketing
the divides itself pretty neatly into these two overarching categories which
is strategy and implementation and in order to get really good at strategy you
need to first begin with implementation. The skills that you might need to
develop on the implementation side of things in terms of digital marketing
would be the likes of intent-based social networks like YouTube and
Pinterest where people go to look for answers to their questions or be
inspired, and engagement based social networks like Facebook Instagram
LinkedIn Twitter and TikTok where people go to be entertained and engage
with their favorite brands and businesses.
And in addition to
understanding organic or free methods of growing on these platforms you would
also need to understand paid advertising. Then you would need to understand the
fundamentals of conversion copywriting search engine optimization, search engine
marketing, content marketing, email marketing, landing page design, and a bit
of graphic design as well. Now you may never need to touch web development in
terms of having to code a website but it's a good idea to have basic knowledge
of the back-end of platforms like WordPress and Shopify as they're the two
most popular CMS tools for service-based and e-commerce businesses, and at the
larger enterprise levels you might also need to have some familiarity with CRM
systems such as Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, and HubSpot.
Then the strategy
side of it comes into play and that's the kind of fun bit where you get to
take all these little individual elements and piece them together in this
awesome marketing funnel that you create for your clients based on their
objectives. So depending on what your clients are looking to achieve in terms
of getting somebody to purchase their product or service or book a
consultation or something like that then you can take a look at how they might be
able to achieve that objective through these different methods and strategies.
Finally I do want to ease your mind by letting you know that you do not have to
be an expert in all of these different areas you will likely end up
specializing in one or two these skills that appeal to you the most.
For me, for
example, I much prefer doing Facebook ads over Google ads but I always knew that I
had to be the Google Ads world in case I was ever
working with a client that had a Google ad specialist so I would know how my own
marketing efforts would fit in with their existing model. So the key
difference between let's say a Facebook ad specialist and a digital marketer is
the fact that a digital marketer would be across everything that's happening
outside of that Facebook ad across the whole funnel whereas a Facebook ad
specialist might only focus on that one piece.
And the great news is that yes, of
course, companies do look for those hard skills that are gained through training…
they also really look for soft skills that you might already possess as well.
In fact the top seven characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills
which are the skills like being a good coach, communicating and listening,
possessing insights into others, having empathy, and being supportive of
co-workers, being a good critical thinker and problem solver, and being able to
make connections across complex ideas.
So if it's good enough for Google it's
definitely good enough for a lot of other companies out there. And if like me
you get really bored doing the same thing day in and day out and you like
the dynamic elements of what we talked about in this video and using different
parts of your brain then digital marketing might just be the career for
you. And I'm gonna link you guys to a really great free resource which is
digital garage by Google which is gonna give you a really solid first
introduction to the digital marketing world and I'm gonna link you to my free
resource which has all these amazing links to websites and podcasts and
everything to do with the digital marketing world that really helped me out
when I was first starting out. Thank you guys so much for watching I really hope
you found this video helpful let me know in the comments below if you have any
questions and make sure to subscribe to the channel and hit that notification
bell so you get a notification every single time a new video goes live! Thanks
so much for being here and as always keep creating the life you love <3