People who want to be digital marketers but can’t get started

Digital marketing is THE field to get into. A report released in February this year states that the demand for digital marketers far outstrips the supply of people – with these types of skills – in the market.

In this digital era – where the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Internet of Things and Big Data – are commonplace, the marketplace for goods and services has moved online. This means that for you to be competitive, you need to be accessing customers where they want to shop  – and this in online.

In order to contact your customers in the digital world, you need to be up to speed with digital marketing in addition to marketing in the traditional sense. You may wonder why we say that you need to be clued up on both forms of marketing – surely you just need to know about digital marketing? Yes, knowing about online marketing is incredibly important however you need to be extremely familiar with the principles that make up traditional marketing because these underpin what digital marketers do.

Being a digital marketer

Today’s word is incredibly fast paced

This is owing to the fact that our world is almost totally reliant on technology and tech changes incredibly quickly. For example, if you can get five years out of your laptop, this is a lot. Experts in the IT field say that you should be replacing your laptop every three years in order to keep up with the evolutions that are happening. Software providers are ceasing to provide support for programs that are older than a certain date, which is prompting users to change to the latest versions of technology.

The world of digital marketing is evolving equally as quickly. And, as digital marketers, we need to pull all tricks out of the book in order to keep up with demand. Some traditional marketers have not made the leap over to the world of online marketing as they’ve seen the rapid pace that is necessary in this field and have shied away from it because they feel that they just don’t have the time to get in touch with this new way of working.

However, in order to remain relevant the traditional marketers are going to need to get up to speed with the world of digital marketing extremely quickly. This goes for business owners as well who do not have the budget to employ a marketing department. If they don’t make the transition to digital, they may find – extremely quickly – that they lose their customers to their competitors.

So what’s the solution?

The digital world can be extremely daunting – especially for those people who haven’t grown up with technology being an all-pervasive part of their lives. Our advice to you is to start small by studying a digital marketing course. If you have a fear about something, one of the best ways to get rid of this fear is by learning about the thing that you are afraid of. Through this process, you’ll see that actually it’s not so bad and that you can indeed deal with it – and even master it.

While you’re deciding on a digital marketing course to study, shop around. Look at all the options on the market and make sure that you pick one which is perfect for you. As a minimum, the course that you choose needs to be accredited by a SETA and endorsed by a recognised institution:

• The reason why you need to choose a course that it SETA accredited is because the company that you work for will want to send you on a course that is accredited by one of these bodies. If the course is SETA accredited they will be allowed to claim against their SDL levies for the amount they paid for the course.
• If your digital marketing course is backed by an institution that is recognised by the market – such as the IAB SA – you are effectively getting the guarantee that the information that you’re getting in the course is backed by industry experts. You’re guaranteed that you’ll get quality information on this course that will take you far in your career.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Want to go on a digital marketing course to get started in the world of digital marketing? The Digital School of Marketing’s Digital Marketing Course is the fundamental course that you need to go on to kick start your digital marketing career. For more information about this and our other online digital marketing courses, visit our website.