Digital Marketing – Top 7 Skills To Master

It’s been almost a decade that I’m involved in marketing, and when it comes to digital marketing skills that one should master, not much has changed. In fact, in my opinion, things got a little bit easier.

 

Today it’s not a big deal to set up a Facebook ads campaign in minutes or find someone to do that for you. Back in the day, these platforms weren’t as effective. I have had an enormous amount of hustle myself.

 

The same goes for Google. Google search console works like a charm today, but it wasn’t the best back in the day! There was no Canva to create great graphics with zero design skills.

 

• Marketing platforms like Facebook and Google improved their digital marketing tools big time.
• Startup culture got popular enabling small developer teams to create great simple tools for our use.
• The rise of remote working, freelancing, and the gig economy helped us achieve more results in less time.

 

Top 7 Digital Marketing Skills to Master!

 

 

Back in the day, marketers would blindly shoot for potential customers and hope for the best.

 

Today, thanks to inbound marketing, marketers can laser-target their potential buyers using sophisticated tools.

 

Is there one fit for all kinds of recipes in terms of digital marketing skills? I think so! Let’s check our top digital marketing skills in detail.

 

So what are the top digital marketing skills? Let’s take a look:

 

• Digital Advertising (Facebook & Google Ads)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social Media Management
• Digital Marketing Analytics
• Conversion Rate Optimization
• Digital Marketing Automation
• Graphic & Video Design

 

1- Digital Advertising (Facebook & Google Ads)

 

Is there a reason I put digital advertising on top of the list? Hell yeah!

 

Digital advertising is so powerful, and you can get speedy customer feedback! Thanks to Facebook & Google Ads, you can set up a business today and start selling already, thanks to Facebook & Google Ads.

 

That’s what you look for if you are campaign oriented! You can use Facebook Ads to leverage your brand and reach wider audiences with small budgets. On the other hand, by using Google Ads, you can focus more on selling.

 

How do you learn digital ads? There are free courses in Udemy and lots of great content on YouTube. Facebook has its blueprint certification courses, and Google has its digital garage courses and Google Ads-specific certifications.

 

Moreover, it’s also an excellent idea to outsource your ads’ optimization by hiring a Google Adwords Expert.

 

Since Google is a search engine, search engine marketing is often used to address Google Ads. Similarly, for Facebook & Instagram ads, we use the term paid social.

 

 

2- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

 

Search engine optimization is a rather complex skill, and its primary purpose is to rank your website better in search engines. The higher you rank in search engines, the more traffic you get organically, so SEO is something you invest in beforehand but collect the fruits later on.

 

If digital advertising is hunting, SEO is more like farming. For example, you optimize your website for better search results or reach out to a niche relevant website owner for a guest posting opportunity. Results won’t be instant here as the search engines need to recognize these changes first and re-evaluate tons of rankings daily.

 

There are many aspects of SEO, such as on-page SEO & off-page SEO, technical SEO, backlinks, content writing. I will detail how to rank your site better in search engines and increase your organic visibility in the upcoming articles. SEO is a core digital marketing skill; without the essential SEO knowledge, you can’t execute a  sophisticated digital marketing strategy!

 

 

3- Social Media Management

 

If digital ads bring instant results and SEO is a long-term strategy, how about social media management? This is where it gets fascinating because we are starting to see the whole picture.

 

Let’s assume that you are running a Facebook ads campaign for branding. As a result of this campaign, there are a couple of things that can be triggered:

 

• Social Media Page Visits and Engagement with Social Media Content
• Website visits
• Store visits, Direct Calls
• Messenger or Whatsapp Messages
• Form Submits

 

There is a reason I bolded the first one because when that happens, you want to make sure that you are running your social media like a boss.

 

That includes; creating social media content, scheduling posts for best engagement times, answering comments, reviews, and messages, leveraging UGC, and other routines.

 

SEO campaigns also indirectly bring traffic to your social channels. Likewise, your social media efforts, for example, on Instagram, create a mouth buzz and increase your keyword volumes.

 

So all these are connected. We will go more in-depth with social media management, and you will learn a ton!

 

 

4- Digital Marketing Analytics

 

Digital marketing is all about measuring your results and optimizing your efforts for better results. That brings us another huge skill called digital marketing analytics.

 

Let me be more specific: Google Analytics and Google Search Console are the two analytics tools you should master to achieve great results. Of course, there is also the Google Tag Manager!

 

These tools might get tricky to use, especially if you don’t have a technical background. Before using these tools, you will need to add a piece of code to your website.

 

This way, you can start tracking your website’s or mobile app’s performance. After adding the code and receiving data from your website, you begin to optimize your analytics.

 

That includes creating different views for your traffic and setting up goals to measure KPI’s.

 

Believe it or not, there are experts in companies and content creators only dealing with Google Analytics.

 

This is another major subject, and we will cover the most important and practical topics in the upcoming articles.

 

 

5- Conversion Rate Optimization

 

Also known as conversion optimization, optimizing your funnel steps in the buyer’s journey is also known as conversion optimization. I hear you saying, like what? Well, don’t worry, it’s not as complicated as it sounds.

 

Each website has a different purpose, and let’s hope that people in charge of digital marketing define or identify a few steps towards a conversion. Let’s think of my digital marketing blog for a second. What could be the funnel steps?

 

First, my blog would have visitors; then, these visitors might subscribe to my newsletter. In that case, I can start sending them my best content, such as my e-books or premium training videos.

 

If I can nurture my leads well enough, meaning if I convince them that I know my stuff, they might end up buying my essential digital marketing training or the advanced digital marketing training.

 

1000 visitors, 50 newsletter subscribers, 10 e-book downloads, 1 advanced digital marketing training purchase. You can see what kind of journey a potential buyer goes through before buying, and each step has a ratio.

 

Finding these ratios and developing individual strategies to increase them is precisely what conversion rate optimization is all about. In simple terms, you identify the troubling part, and you improve your results by fixing them.

 

 

6- Digital Marketing Automation

 

Whether you like it or not, marketing automation is a reality because marketers deal with many website visitors, leads, and customers. It’s hard to please people one by one, so we would like to automate our marketing in some cases.

 

That can mean a couple of things: sending automated e-mails and chats, updating lead scores, sending Facebook ads leads to CRM when there are sales, sending that to a slack channel. So you can automate things both for potential buyers but can also automate for internal use.

 

At its core, you write down every possible scenario in your buyer’s journey and decide what will happen when those scenarios come to play. It might look like this:

 

If there is a first time visitor, send them a chat request – ask them a question – if they say yes – update their lead score in CRM and send them a series of 10 e-mails – if they open %50 of the e-mails – send them a special discount in black Friday! If they make a purchase mark them as a customer – send them a special offer on their birthday!

 

 

7- Graphic & Video Design 

 

I know this looks odd on the list, but you can’t go that far in the digital world without simple graphic design skills. If you are going to sell anything, words are not enough! You need graphics and motion!

 

Certain areas such as e-commerce require extraordinary visual arts since you have to appeal to the eye. Mobile photography, appealing drone shots, nicely structured videos are going to make your life way better! I accept that some areas, such as tech or engineering, don’t need much of that visual aspect.

 

I know it requires some talent, but you can learn a certain level of graphic design from YouTube and Udemy courses for our purposes.

 

Today, there are accessible and affordable online tools like Canva to give you a head start. Templates would make your life easier, and you would learn all those dimensions and sizes for social media in no time.

 

 

Due to vast improvements in technology companies and their platforms such as Google and Facebook, traditional marketing has shifted to digital marketing.

 

Today marketers have great tools to reach their target audiences and offer them their best products and services.

 

To achieve excellent digital marketing results, any service, or a product, there are some core digital marketing skills that digital marketing people should master. These digital marketing skills are:

 

• Digital Advertising (Facebook & Google Ads)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social Media Management
• Digital Marketing Analytics
• Conversion Rate Optimization
• Digital Marketing Automation
• Graphic & Video Design

 

Now that you have learned what digital marketing skills you need, you can quickly determine which one fits you the best, moving in that direction!

 

If you are like me, you might as well learn from them and become a digital marketing generalist! In that case, though, I have to tell you, that’s going to take time. So be patient!