Digital marketing is booming and is at an all-time high. As a digital marketing manager, you are responsible for planning and executing all online marketing campaigns to create brand awareness, generate leads, drive traffic and acquire customers.
With small and large businesses across industries spending aggressively on digital channels, the demand for digital marketing managers is more than ever. While this is great news for all the budding digital marketers, it also makes this field a highly competitive one.
So, if you plan to explore it as a career, here are 6 key skills you must have to be a digital marketing manager –
Storytelling
At the crux of it, digital marketing is all about telling compelling stories to capture your customers’ attention and build a relation with them.
To be a digital marketing manager, you need to ace the art of storytelling, with words, images and videos. Moreover, with the plethora of platforms the digital world poses, it is incredibly important to understand the best way to use each of them to deliver your unique, brand story and break through the noise.
Given the growing competition and decreasing attention span – communicating your message in an 8-second video is no cakewalk. Is it?
Eye for Design
You don’t need to ace graphic designing to be a digital marketing manager, but you surely need to be creatively inclined and have an eye for design. Why, you ask?
Today, content marketing is centered around visuals because people process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. This means that for your content to be effective and engaging, it needs to incorporate visuals.
So, while your graphic designer can do the work for you, you should be able to objectively give your point of view on the visuals which comes from an understanding of design.
Social Media Marketing
Social media forms an integral part of digital marketing so much that no marketing plan is complete without it. Be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube or Snapchat – you need to understand their features, and user behaviours on each of these platforms.
As a digital marketing manager, you need to know how to maximize their potential and use them to their strengths to deliver your message. The idea is to not use a blanket approach but to personalize your communication as per the platform.
So, boost your social media marketing skills and the easiest way to do so is to be on it as a user and be vigilant.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has become the fastest growing customer acquisition method which makes it a must-have skill to possess.
While you need to ensure you stay updated on the influencers that would be relevant to your line of work, influencer marketing is predominantly about relationship building. You need to have the innate ability to connect with influencers, choose the right ones and execute campaigns that are mutually-beneficial. Remember, more than maximizing mentions – it is about securing quality ones.
Search Engine Optimization
Every business wants to make it to the first page of Google and improve their SEO rankings because better the traffic, greater the conversion. Being an important business goal, brands expect digital marketing managers to have experience in search engine optimization and search engine marketing.
While large companies have a separate role for SEO specialists, if you are applying to a small or mid-sized company, chances are it will fall under the responsibility of a digital marketing manager.
Data Analytics
Apart from being creative and well-versed with the technical skills, it is extremely important to be an analytical thinker in this field because digital marketing is highly data-driven and how else will you analyze campaign performances if you don’t have a liking for numbers?
Every campaign needs to end with analysis because it helps you grow and improve your marketing efforts. So, to be a digital marketing manager, make sure you have the ability to make sense of data and use it effectively to make decisions.
The digital space is ever-evolving with something new emerging almost every day. Hence, apart from the above skills, one must also get into the habit of reading regularly and stay up to date with the latest innovations. Be observant and always keep an eye on what other brands are doing – there is a lot of wonderful work you can learn from and get inspired by.
Author: Adela Belin
Adela Belin is a Social Media expert and a writer at Writers Per Hour. She creates content surrounding marketing with a focus on social media and digital marketing. Feel free to contact Adela on G+.
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