How to get a job in Digital Marketing?

Whether Getting a job in Digital Marketing in Egypt , Dubai or even New York can be a challenge, as a lot of freshers or new graduates aim to start a career in online marketing. Besides that your CV or Resume must have skills in digital with hands-on experience Digital marketing has a variety of different areas within it, each one being a potential career path for someone to choose. This gives people looking to begin a career in digital marketing a vast selection of jobs to choose from and can be quite overwhelming at first. If you fall into this category, then it is advisable to first determine what your greatest strengths and interests are and then see which discipline is the most compatible. This will provide you with the best chance of seeing the most progression.

One of the most commonly seen entry-level digital marketing job is a ‘Digital Marketing Specialist’. This is a versatile job, covering fields like content marketing, social media marketing, conversion rate optimization etc. Due to this job having such a variety of responsibilities, it will provide you with a hands-on taster for what each area of digital marketing is truly like, giving you a better idea of which area to specialize in. Upon progressing from this position, it is recommended to focus on 3-5 highly specialized disciplines on your résumé, as this will generate the greatest chance of maximizing your earning potential.

Decide which area of Digital Marketing to Pursue

get a job in digital marketing

Currently, it’s not just knowledge of Microsoft applications that digital marketing employers require. There are a significant number of other skills that are currently in high demand, so to give you a better chance of successfully obtaining a job, we have constructed a list of skills that we believe to be most important, with the corresponding tools required to know how to use:

  1. Content Marketing: Yoast SEO plug-in, WordPress
  2. Search Engine Optimization: SEM Rush, Google Search Console, Moz, Ahrefs
  3. Search Engine Marketing: Bing Ads, Google AdWords
  4. Conversion Rate Optimization: Craft, Optimizely, Google Tag Manager
  5. Affiliate Marketing: Impact Radius, CJ by Conversant
  6. Marketing Automation: Marketo, Bronto, Pardot
  7. Email Marketing: Mailchimp, AWeber, Constant Contact
  8. Web Development: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento
  9. Project Management: Basecamp, Timeforce, Trello, JIRA
  • Analytics: Adobe Analytics, Optimizely, Google Analytics
  • Social Media Marketing: Facebook Ads, Hootsuite, LinkedIn Ads, Twitter Ads

Digital Marketing Self-Learn the basics for a Competitive Edge

As previously mentioned, there are a multitude of skills desirable to digital marketing employers, and with the recent growth in the self-teaching industry, there are now numerous free online courses that will allow you to obtain all the relevant knowledge for the area you choose to specialize in.

The following is a list of all of the best/essential free qualifications you can find online:

  1. Google Academy for Ads (certificate upon completion): This course has helped many people find their first digital marketing job. It will teach you all about Pay-Per-Click Advertising on ‘Google Adwords’, something that is fundamental to most areas of digital marketing, with this certification being mandatory for many job types.
  2. Google Analytics Academy (certificate upon completion): Analytics is the soul of any digital marketing discipline, as the understanding of user behavior is how decisions are made. This course will likely be a prerequisite to any type of job in the field. This course will teach you how to generate an online presence using analytics tools and data tracking.
  3. Hubspot Inbound Marketing (certificate upon completion): This course will take you through the many different ways to generate attractive content and experiences catered to your customers, in essence, providing you with sufficient knowledge of what Inbound Marketing is about to get a job in the field. This certification may be mandatory for all areas of digital marketing.
  4. Bing Ads Accreditation (certificate upon completion): Bing is the world’s second largest search engine and so this course will put you ahead of your competition. Everyone looking to get into digital marketing will have the Google equivalent of this certificate (first course mentioned), but Bing Ads is often forgotten about. Although this course isn’t as important as the previous 3, it is still highly recommended.
  5. Facebook Blueprint (paid certificate upon completion): Facebook and Instagram are the 2 largest social media marketing platforms. This course will take you from beginner to advanced proficiency, therefore it is necessary in finding a SMM job.
  6. Hootsuite Academy (certificate upon completion): This is another SMM course that is similar to Bing Ads in putting you ahead of your competitors. The course isn’t specific to a platform, but will teach you about general SMM management, from automating posts, to increasing your company’s online presence.

Begin with Freelancing

Freelancing is an excellent place to start before trying to gain employment from a company. It is an opportunity to put the knowledge you’ve attained from the courses above into practice, and will earn you some money even before getting employed.

Freelancing can be quite difficult at the beginning, as many people decide to jump straight into it without having any kind of portfolio to show off your skills. It is advisable that you reach out to some small-medium sized firms, family and friends (that own local businesses) to see if they need some help with their digital marketing. At this stage, you shouldn’t charge a fee, this is aimed at building your portfolio so that you can get more frequent paid work in the future.

Once you have finished building your portfolio (3-5 jobs), you’re ready to start getting paid for your work. There are many different freelancing websites to choose from, like Upwork, Fiverr, FlexJobs etc. However, you should research which platforms are best for digital marketing. After you’ve created your profile, you will now be able to fill up your ‘portfolio’ section, giving you considerably more credibility, sparking the interest of more potential employers. However, to convert these potential employers into actual employers, you will need to undercut the market for the service that you’re providing. If you charge the same price as someone who has an array of previous jobs, then unfortunately employers won’t bother contacting you. Research what the market standard price is and make your price competitive (the lower your price, the faster you’ll get your first job).

When you’ve managed to build up enough of a portfolio, you will now be able to generate a brand around yourself. Turn your services into an enterprise and you will be able to connect with larger brands who are looking to subcontract their digital marketing to high-level freelancers. If they are satisfied with the work that you do for them, they will likely contact you directly for more jobs, attracting other large businesses to you. This kind of freelance work will make your résumé very glamorous to any digital marketing employer.

Upon reaching this stage, you will now enough experience to showcase your skillset to employers and get a digital marketing position within a company. Or maybe you’re enjoying the freelancing lifestyle too much to stop, so you can continue your journey down that path.

Preparing for a Digital Marketing Interview

After completing your digital marketing courses, building an online presence and starting your freelance career, you should consider applying for a full-time digital marketing position.

Take time to prepare for your interview if you get selected as a short-listed candidate, do extensive research about the company, their values, objectives and work ethic. Become familiar with the job description and present yourself with confidence.

The following tips will aid in conducting a successful interview:

  1. Research the company’s digital marketing strategy ahead of time to be prepared for any questions that you may want to ask the interviewer.
  2. Edit your resume according to the job that you are applying for, make sure to have multiples copies of resumes to present to different companies. When editing your resume, mention only the work experience that is directly relevant to the role which you are applying to.
  3. Be prepared to answer situational questions such as “what actions would you take if…”. Companies would usually ask these questions during the first round of interviews, and it is one of the most important questions to see if the potential employee is able to solve problems efficiently.
  4. Familiarize yourself with how digital marketing assessments are conducted as they are a standard practice at entry-level digital marketing interviews.

The instructions will be provided by the interviewer in a PDF format, and the assessment may include setting up PPC campaigns with proper ad group and keyword categorization, editing HTML and CSS on landing pages, as well as setting up accounts in Google Webmaster Tools, which can now be found on Google Search Console.

The assessment can be done at home over a 2-7-day period, and can be emailed or faxed to the company upon completion.

Digital Marketing Job

Progressing Within the Digital Marketing Field

After following the above steps, you may have already been hired as an entry-level digital marketing specialist. To reiterate, it is possible for anyone to succeed in finding a job in digital marketing, if you are able to put in the necessary work. Taking free online certification courses, gaining experience through practice and trial-and-error as well as making new connections in the field.

When you feel confident enough, you can find freelancing sites such as FlexJobs to start making some money and continue practicing new skills. After completing enough projects as a freelancer, you may feel like you are ready to apply for your first full-time job, and with the skills that you have acquired over time, you have a very high change of getting hired.

By using your experience as an entry-level employee, you can slowly build up to getting a better job, moving away from entry-level and one day, to becoming an expert in the field.

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