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12 Tips to start a career in digital marketing without joining any online courses/ training centre

Digital Marketing is at its boom in this era. The rise in technology has opened many ways of taking your business to the top. Many platforms have been developed which help get you your prospective customers. For example, Social Media Sites, Business Listing Sites, Social Media Influencers, Search Engines and there are countless numbers to a method to get to your right customers, only limited by your imagination. Digital Marketing is nothing but creating new ways, methods, and strategies to get your customers to know you or buy your product or whatever your objective may be. Almost 60-65% of marketing these days are done digitally using various methods. Let us now deep dive in and know what really is digital marketing and how can you start a career in digital marketing without joining any institute.

Digital Marketing is a method of marketing your product using different digital techniques, using mobile or laptop/desktop devices connected to the internet; to bring in traffic to your websites using various methods, like paid advertisements or to rank first in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). The objective of digital marketing may vary depending upon what kind of services your providing or products you are selling. Some websites objective will be selling products, e-commerce websites, some websites want you to subscribe to their newsletter or daily/weekly/monthly updates so that you keep visiting their website, some websites may want you to download a PDF file. Each of these actions is called a conversion. Hence we can say “Digital Marketing is a method to bring people or users to your end goal or conversion using various digital technologies which are connected to the internet.”

There are many ways or methods to do so. Though many of them think that Digital Marketing is all about the paid advertisement, truth to be said, NO, It’s not only that. Paid Advertisements is just a part of Digital Marketing. Some of them are as follows:

1) Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
2) Search Engine Marketing – Google Ads, Bing Ads, etc.
3) Search Engine Optimization
4) Social Media Optimization

The digital economy is growing fast, and this is can be the best time to get into digital marketing. This career path will keep you on your toes and every day is a challenge. It is a dynamic industry, where strategies and methods keep on changing now and then. The rate through which technology is advancing, many ways come up and integrate with the marketing industry. So, learning by joining a digital marketing institute doesn’t make any sense, and once you know about it, about the industry and keep on upgrading yourself according to it, you will be the best candidate a company can hire.

Here are some of the steps which can get you started on digital marketing without joining any institute.

1) Start your own blog – Blogging is the best way to showcase your talent and expertise, and it will also help you learn while you develop your blog site. Blogging is the best way to showcase your commitment and skills to the potential employers too. This will also help you learn how one optimizes his/her website for the best user experience and also helps you learn about SEO. This can help you during your job interview if the interviewer asks whether you have any blog or a website or not and if you do, what is the monthly site traffic you receive? Here, you can be very active and show the interviewer your blog/website and the optimized article you have written using keyword and competitor analysis. Starting a blog will help you more learn about the tools we use in Digital Marketing for a different purpose. Tools like SEMrush, Ahref, Moz and Buzzsumo, etc. This will give a better idea on how does a website works, how google indexes a page of a website and what criteria does it follow to do the same, and what are the ways you can follow to help your website rank on the top 3 results on the SERP for your relevant keyword.

2) Create a Social Presence – Social media has become a significant part of digital marketing, and you need to learn how to use it the best way. A company which doesn’t have a social media account, people tend to distrust them. You need to understand how social media can truly affect your website or blog in an organic manner. Learn how you can use these channels to build your brand reputation and relationship with your targeted customers. There are many different social media platforms. Some of them which are most used by marketers are as follows:

a) Facebook
b) Instagram
c) Twitter
d) LinkedIn
e) Pinterest
f) Reddit
g) Quora (Q&A)
h) Commenting Forums

Use these platforms to learn how you can promote your brand organically. You can learn about other forms of marketing which can be done using social media like Public Relation, Influencer marketing, Brand Reputation Management, Customer Relationship Management. Paid ads on social media are one of the options which we will talk about later.

3) Google Academy – Google Academy is the best place to find and learn about different paid advertisement methods. Here Google will teach you how you can advertise your product/service/company using Google Platforms, and it’s better you start from this academy itself because 70-80% of online advertising all around the world is done using Google platform. Here Google will teach you about Search Network and Display Network Advertising, Shopping ads, Video Ads, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Google Analytics and Tag Manager are two of the three supporting platforms which help gather data about the particular website it is linked with.

4) Facebook Blueprint – Like Google Academy, Facebook too has an academy called Facebook Blueprint. Here you will learn about Facebook Advertisements and how it can be optimized using various Facebook Business Audience Insights. And like Google Ads, Facebook Ads to take up the majority of social media ads in around the world. Since Facebook has two platforms where you can advertise, Facebook itself and Instagram, it attracts a lot of companies to advertise on their website.

5) Build Your LinkedIn Profile – As mentioned earlier, LinkedIn is a social media platform, but here we don’t make friends, here we make connections. It is a platform where recruiters meet candidates. Create your profile, and if you already have one optimize it to the fullest. Update your profile and mention all your achievements and certificates you have earned. Like they say “It’s not what you know, it about WHO you know.” LinkedIn gives you a platform to know people, people who are working in Digital Marketing itself. You can make connections with HRs and recruiters and start a conversation with them. Apply for jobs through LinkedIn. It’s a place where you can learn too from the experts, and stay up-to-date to the latest trends in digital marketing. An updated profile will also let the recruiters know that you have relevant knowledge on a specific field which will help you land up with a good job.

6) Learn terminology and acronyms used in Digital Marketing – We as digital marketers need to be comfortable with acronyms and terminologies used in these fields. Abbreviations such as PPC, CPC, eCPC, vCPM. Terminologies such as Metrics, Keyword Cannibalism, Display Network, Audience, Traffic, Bounce Rate, Sessions, etc.

7) Start Networking – Encircle yourself with individuals more capable than yourself. The people you meet will help, encourage and be supportive when you keep running into issues, just as a help to open ways to circumstances you probably won’t have generally found. Attend industry meetups and gatherings in the digital marketing domain. Nurture and develop relationships with other digital marketers and enhance your skill set through in-depth workshops and presentations.

8) Learn how to code – It not mandatory to know to code if you’re going to paid ads, but if you want a career in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you need to know coding, mainly HTML and for WordPress. This will help you stand out of the crowd and have a better chance of landing a job. You don’t have to be a web development expert, or know in and out of coding, but if you know the basics and know your way around the admin panel things will be much easier for you.

9) Stay up-to-date – Digital Marketing is a challenging job. The trend here changes every single day. Like I have said early, your imagination only limits marketing strategies. Stay updated with the latest trends going on in the internet and how you can use it. Keep update with the newest Hashtag in trending for your Twitter post, or a Challenge, Like the KIKI challenge, for your promotional video or the 10 Years Challenge for your Instagram, Pinterest or Facebook posts. Many companies used these trends to market their respective product. It’s about searching for an opportunity and then showcasing your product to the mass getting a high rate of reach and possibly high rate of conversion. Stay up-to-date with the different reforms and regulations made by Google, if you are going for Google Ads. You need to keep in the track about the Google Spider Algorithm and its updates. You need to know, how will Google or any other advertising platform disprove your ads and how to can counter it.

10) Learn Different SEO and SEM/SMM Tools – Digital Marketing is used by everyone because of its methods of targeting customers and specific locations, and you cannot do that until and unless you don’t have relevant data about from where the traffic is coming, at what time you are receiving the highest traffic and through which device, etc. All these data can be used for your new paid advertisement campaign. And from where will you find all these data? Well, there are many tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Data Studio, SEMrush, Moz, Aherf (for keyword analysis), Buzzsumo for trends, Facebook Business Audience Insights, Twitter Audience Insights, etc. These tools will come very handy while creating new content for your website or during creating a campaign for paid advertisements in different platforms. It is better if you learn about these and there are many websites which teach about these tools free of cost.

11) Never Stop Learning – If you have completed your Google Academy Courses or Facebook Blueprints, never stop learning. There are many videos on Youtube which you can watch and learn new things you never knew before. I hope you have a blog of your own, start experimenting there and work on it. Dive deep on the internet to find new and exciting things about digital marketing. If you can invest a minimum of 500-1000 rupees, you can try paid advertisement using Facebook or Google Ads. Google Tag manager is one of the most important parts of digital marketing, and you should know your way around it too.

12) Developing new Skills – If you have learned about different forms of advertisements, about SEO and SEM and also have experience with running campaign, now you can develop and learn some new tools/skills. Example:- Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Many don’t know, but these tools can help you a lot, and reduce your work by almost 50% or more. If you are running a campaign and have “n” number of data to review, Excel will be your best friend then. While running any promotional or advertising campaign, you need to look for a lot of data so that you can optimize your ads and it’ll reach to your targeted customers and devices. Reading or going through these data can be hard unless you have expertise in Excel. As I said, Excel reduces your work by almost 50%, and it’s better if you know how to use and work on Excel. Learn Excel, and add it on your resume. It will have a huge impact, and you will have a better chance of landing a job.

Google alone generates revenue of more than $21.6 Billion quarterly. Facebook is the highest revenue generator compared to other social media platforms, and in billions too. The market this big will require a lot of hard work and persistence to get in. A career in Digital Marketing is promising, and Yes, you can land up a job in the same without any prior experience or joining into any institute, but you need to keep on honing your skills and put more hours of hard work to succeed. The field is highly competitive and environmentally dynamic, continually changing and challenging; you need to keep on upgrading yourself in every area and never stop learning. There is no shortcut to success. One thing which is compulsory for a person who wants to pursue a career in digital marketing is to start learning about it, through Google Academy, Facebook Blueprint and YouTube and whatever relevant he/she gets on the internet.

Never stop learning and never stop trying to better yourself.

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