Digital marketing demands a broad range of skills. An effective digital marketer needs to have a combination of hard skills for technical methods and soft skills to complement them.
We’ve narrowed the list down to eight essential digital marketing skills.
5 Must-Have Technical Skills for Digital Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Copywriting
- Marketing Analytics
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Skill # 1: SEO
Search engines are pretty much embedded in any customer journey. People use them to look for anything and everything—the closest Italian restaurant, comparison of two pairs of headphones, causes of specific medical symptoms, and more.
Search engine optimization (SEO) boosts a business’ visibility on relevant searches. What makes SEO complex is that it’s both technical and aesthetic. Effective digital marketers must be able to promote engaging content while also adhering to various SEO guidelines.
In SEO, the results won’t be as immediate as paid advertising but its benefits will last significantly longer and result in better leads. Similarly, it’s important to invest in a digital marketing assistant who has a solid understanding of the basics of SEO.
Skill # 2: Social Media Marketing
A digital marketing campaign is never at its best without social media. If a brand doesn’t exist on social media, it loses out a big audience, which can put it behind the competition. Some core skills involved in social media marketing include:
Digital marketers curate regular calendars, track contacts, manage ad budgets, and many more. They have to stay on top of all of them to effectively carry out their digital marketing campaigns.
Putting the “social” in social media, digital marketers must establish relationships with their brand’s customer base beyond the traditional customer support.
While social media generally looks cluttered, it takes strategic planning to execute effective social media marketing.
Skill # 3: Email Marketing
Even with the prevalence of social media apps and channels, email is still very much alive. As of 2020, there were over 4 million people email users, sending approximately 306 billion emails each day. With those numbers, it’s clear there’s untapped potential for digital marketers to reach their target audiences.
Email marketing is a popular digital marketing practice not just for its expansive reach, but also for its versatility. It can be used to engage dormant customers, reinforce brand identity, generate leads, and more.
Skill # 4: Copywriting
For the most part, digital marketers communicate with their audience through text—advertisements, taglines, landing pages, and more. Copywriting is one of the most common skills digital marketers utilize to do this. Its main goal is to increase brand awareness, sell a product, or incite a certain course of action for the consumers.
With more and more people turning to the internet, social media, and other channels, digital marketers need to leverage copywriting into their campaigns. Generally, good copywriting:
Good writing means different things in digital marketing compared to other media. Good copy must catch the attention of the reader and communicate what it needs to say while being concise.
On top of promoting a product or service, it should also convey your story. Adding your brand’s personality and overall human element to copy demonstrates expertise, and builds credibility for your business.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the copy is written for a business’s target audience. As a result, copy may fall flat or not connect with the audience. Digital marketers then must write with the reader in mind at all times.
The storytelling approach makes a brand relatable to its audience. It shows that it knows what problems they face and how it can solve them through authenticity and sincerity.
Skill # 5: Marketing Analytics
All these digital marketing tools and practices have given digital marketers more access to their campaign’s performance and consumer behavior. Being adept at SEO, social media, email, and more is one thing, but taking all the data and making something out of it is another. More than web analytics and website performance, digital marketers must understand what they all mean and how they can extract value from them.
Here are a few of the essential digital marketing metrics to look out for:
Shows the total website traffic and where they come from which will give an insight into your online presence.
Shows the percentage of customers and prospects at each step of a conversion process. It can also help pinpoint which channels will move leads further through the funnel.
Shows the percentage of visitors who left after viewing a page on your site. A low bounce rate means the user is spending more time on your website and is likely viewing their desired content.
Shows the percentage of people that clicked on your ad. Many people may see an ad online, but a smaller number of them will click on it.
3 Soft Skills for Digital Marketing
- Storytelling
- Visual Design
- Adaptability
Skill # 1: Storytelling
Marketing used to be about having constant exposure everywhere. People would see the same advertisements on billboards, social media ads, and other channels. But with today’s digital landscape becoming more and more saturated with content, digital marketers need to take a different approach.
Storytelling offers consumers unique experiences by connecting with their emotions. Like other art forms, storytelling requires skill to be executed well. Digital marketers need to adhere to their company’s brand guidelines while also conveying their key messages to the right audience. Whether it’s an Instagram caption or a thousand-word blog article, storytelling plays an important role in turning ideas into compelling content.
Skill # 2: Visual Design
Visual content is one of the main drivers of digital marketing today. Content accompanied by graphics, icons, and other visual aids perform better than those without. An effective digital marketer must then have a grasp of basic design, which includes text hierarchy, color theory, typography, user experience, and the like. Knowing how to create your own visual content using software like Adobe Creative Suite is also a huge advantage.
Skill # 3: Adaptability
Digital marketing demands flexibility. Novel solutions and new technology are constantly being developed to make the marketers’ and customers’ digital experiences seamless. Digital marketers also need to be prepared for unexpected developments in the platforms they use.
For example, Google had announced that they would be releasing a broad core update for the month of May to improve Search. Although not explicitly announced, SEO specialists were expecting Google to also update its SEO algorithm. Even with no certain outcome, digital marketers must be prepared to adapt to these kinds of changes.
Outsourcing work to on-demand digital marketing assistants can help you stay flexible. Magic digital marketing assistants possess the agility to adapt to new tools and methods. They are also well-versed in the different areas of digital marketing, anywhere from SEO to marketing analytics. When hiring a digital marketing assistant, just tell us what your marketing campaign needs are and we’ll find the right VA for you.
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