Stepping into the Digital Marketing World, What Do You Need?

An undeniable trend is that digital marketing is increasingly important in the advertising strategies of companies, no matter if it is large or small. Even traditional industries such as FMCG, retail, luxury have started to move slowly to this new playground. This shift is not only reflected in the fact that the funding for digital marketing will be higher in 2015 but can also be seen in the human resources market. Taking a look on the recruiting sites, we can see hundreds of digital marketing jobs being advertised by many different companies.

The demand for employment and job related to Digital Marketing is on the rise

Not just in terms of personnel, even the market is transforming with the emergence of more and more companies involved in digital marketing, many of which were formerly about traditional advertising. Most of them are companies specializing in events, events, TVC, billboard advertising, printing but now expanding into the field of digital marketing. This also leads to the shift of personnel from traditional marketing to digital marketing in recent times. More and more people who have previously worked on branding, event, or execution would like to learn more or move through digital marketing as they feel the development of this field and see it as an opportunity to expand their knowledge or a new career opportunity.

Whether you are one of the traditional marketers or a complete newcomer who wants to learn more about this Digital field, you should know what difficulties and how to resolve to do it better. Here are some of the questions that I encounter most frequently with my advices to these questions, which will be hopefully useful for you when stepping into Digital Marketing.

I do not know where to start?

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Digital Marketing is a very broad field with many different channels. For a newcomer, I suggest that you first get an overview of all the channels that Digital is having and what each channel is for, what is the purpose? You can read an overview article on Digital Marketing to refer. Once you have the overview, you can now choose a specific field to focus on first and then gradually expand to the relevant ones. For example you can start with SEO, then when you have sufficient background knowledge, you can continue to learn more about SEM, then moving through to Content Marketing then to Social Marketing, etc.

Should I focus on a specific field or know all?

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Of course you can focus on one channel and become an expert in that channel if you want but that should not be the reason for you to ignore learning other channels because:

Knowing more about other channels will help you better working on your channel, for example, if you have knowledge of Content Marketing, you can take advantage of this channel to create better content and better do the SEO.

Companies now need people who can handle many things at the same time, for example, you see a lot of work that requires you to know how to run AdWords or Facebook advertising and at the same time know how to optimize the website.

– Integrated marketing is an indispensable trend, you can do well in your advertising channel, but the next step is to integrate your advertising channels (eg. combining SEO and SEM) to enhance the efficiency.

Digital marketing requires a lot of technical?

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You do not need to know programming or coding to do Digital Marketing (however, if you do then it is an advantage) but make sure you learn and understand the technical basics and terms in the industry. If you do not know the CMS like WordPress, Magento, Joomla, or the terms like ad network, display ads, paid search, cpm, cpc, cpa, this means you still have a lot to learn. The time when you can turn a blind eye to the technology is coming to an end, let’s start the process of learning technology for ourselves.

Why digital marketing needs that much of analysis?

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Unlike traditional marketing, Digital Marketing has tools and ways to measure more closely the activities of the channels. And it’s certainly that a part of your time doing Digital Marketing will be about burying your head in numbers and drawing conclusions about the efficiency of campaigns running for each big campaign. Based on those conclusions, you will have to find ways to improve and optimize the efficiency of advertising. And like other advertising channels, when you use company’s money to advertise, you will have to account for the effectiveness and results of these channels. So begin to get used to analyzing and looking at the numbers. Read more about analysis tools and A / B testing.

Should I apply for a Digital Marketing course?

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Attending a course or not is your decision and I personally have never attended any courses so I can not comment on the quality or introduce any good one. However, I have this point of view about learning: self-learning is always the thing that will help you succeed. All the courses are simply a collection of all that is available online and arranged for you. If you have the ability to self-study, you will do it yourself without spending any money and self-study will ensure you remembering longer and more thoroughly. Today with Google you can find almost every document and information you need about something to read. If just reading one article and you still do not understand, you can a few to a dozen more until you do. If you do not have the patience to search or read until you understand the truth, whether yo join those courses or not,  the results will be the same.

Also, if you can self-educate, apart from what is in the books, you can learn practical knowledge. Why? For example, instead of spending a few million to learn a course on advertising on Facebook, use that money and set up a Facebook campaign for yourself (run for the shop at your mother’s house, or your kid’s website). and from there learned the extremely useful practical experience that the courses are hard for you to be.

The above is just a personal view on learning, does not mean school is bad. Just with Digital Marketing as well as everything else in life, if you can learn yourself, you will go far.

* Applications for learning Digital Marketing on mobile.

What tips for me to do well in Digital Marketing?

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Read, read and read first. If you have 2 or 3 hours every day to browse Facebook and read the news, you should spend some time reading. Make yourself a habit of reading about 30 minutes to 1 hour everyday and cover yourself with that information. Start by bookmarking sites on the subject of marketing, technology, follow Digital Marketing groups or blogs of industry veterans to read daily. This will help you keep track of industry trends, understand the changes that are taking place, and expand your knowledge at the same time.

Next, try build relationships, meet more people doing in the same industry. Besides what you can learn yourself, exchange experiences as well as learn from the people who are doing in Digital Marketing are very good ways to help you keep up with the general situation of the market and know what is new and taking place.

Always seek answers yourself first before asking questions. If you have questions about something, always search for it (on Google) to see if there are any posts or articles that mention it (99% there is) and read it first. If you do not understand the problem after reading it, then that’s when you ask someone.

Finally, be ready to learn and learn new things. Do not feel discouraged when faced with so many unknowns and do not feel confused because simply everyone feels the same at first. Be patient and learn on a regular basis, daily and non-stop. Always think that with whatever you are doing, you can still learn new things and draw experiences from them. Learning is never limited.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to ask questions at this article for answers.

If you have what it takes to learn and support Digital Marketing, contact the writer via email ([email protected]) or skype (tinhtu-iconic). Wish you find your future development direction.