How Useful is a Digital Marketing Qualification?

The difference between you and the other job applicants may be your digital marketing qualifications. Indeed, many people don’t choose digital marketing. It chooses them.

Learning on the job, watching a few youtube videos and reading a few blogs on SEO, SEM, content marketing, and many more areas of digital marketing will only get you so far in your career.

You may get a job, but to move up the ranks, you’ll more than likely need more than a smattering of professional certifications and evidence you’ve done a bit of study online.

Today, digital marketing is fundamental to starting and growing a business. Career-minded individuals appreciate that employers rely on the certainty of a solid, relevant educational background to rubber-stamp their hiring decisions. Therefore it’s no surprise that hirers are savvier about what they want.

Taking a risk on an unknown, like someone self-taught in HTML coding, ad management, or data analytics, carries additional risk, including online security and privacy compliance.

HR teams look to cover themselves, i.e. their hiring decisions.  Nowadays, relevant digital marketing or computer science qualifications are the starting point for shortlisting candidates for many tech-related roles.

Doing a Masters Degree

While professional certifications have their place, they should be seen as augmenting tertiary-level education.

Continuous learning is a fundamental part of most tech-related roles. As apps and systems change, so too the knowledge to work with them.  Industry-specific training and certificates will always be key to staying relevant in a digital marketing role.  To move up, however, you’ll need something more.

Also, some job postings require a masters qualification as a prerequisite – so either you pay for it, or you’re sponsored through the course by your employer.

There’s no doubting the personal commitment to getting a master degree or any degree, so with this in mind, let’s take a look at a student’s experience in Emerson’s online masters in the digital marketing program.

Reading about experiences and what motivates other people to commit to months of study can be all it takes to make it happen for you.  Do your research, including reading the stories of what it takes to get through a masters program so you’re forewarned and therefore can prepare yourself for the months of study to achieve the qualification.

So once you’ve got your digital marketing qualification, what roles await you?

Digital Marketing Roles

One of the benefits of working in the digital realm is that many different roles are open to you. If you’re unsure where your calling is, this provides the opportunity to work in several of them to find out.

Here are a few of the possible roles for digital marketers with the right experience and qualifications:

Social Media Marketer

Managing multiple social media accounts either on behalf of an employer or for multiple clients is one for people adept with social platforms. Tools like BrandWatch, HootSuite, and others manage public perceptions and broad, mass communications to the company/brand followers.

Brand Manager

A brand manager manages relationships with multiple brands via an agency. They may also manage one or more brands under a single company’s umbrella as the in-house brand manager. This may include some social media involvement but with greater oversight. This manager will often have a team and work to develop the brand steadily over many years.

Business Analytics Technician

While the job titles vary, data analytics is used in roles from a data technician to the managerial level to draw meaning from big data. Companies cry out for qualified people who understand how to get the most out of analytical tools like SAS.

Enterprise Miner

Business analytics aims to obtain product and customer trends, analyze behaviour, and look for patterns. For numbers-oriented people, but never wanted to be an accountant, a focus on data analytics is one possible direction within the larger digital marketing space. It’s highly in demand right now, and remuneration rates reflect that current reality.

Web Designer/Developer

Web designers produce new website designs. Developers are the programmers that help ensure the databases provide the product information people need when they search for the latest release. While digital marketers don’t require a degree or a master’s to work in these roles, if they plan to expand beyond coding and programming, they’ll need more than fast fingers to do so.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert

An SEO expert aims to help a website rank higher in Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo search engines. They look at content publishing, guest posting on other websites, and establishing a strong backlink profile (links to their clients) to bolster their ranking positions.

When done correctly, an SEO expert can dramatically improve the results for companies. Some work inside a corporate setting, while others work alone or for either a web studio or an SEO agency.

Email  and Content Marketer

An email marketer believes that money is still found in the email list. They pursue this through engaging subscribers with email marketing.

While newer marketing approaches such as push notifications have gained traction, customers and prospective future ones still often prefer to receive emails from select companies.

Email marketers aim to squeeze more juice out of the subscriber base while avoiding overdoing it. The latter risks encouraging too many unsubscribe actions and shrinking the list.  Email marketers also know the power of content and often include content marketing as part of their brief.   Writing high-value blog posts for guest sites and adding dynamic content to the company website is a valuable part of SEO.

Data Analysts and Data Scientists

Data analysts and data scientists are in demand. There are not enough people who are qualified nor conversant in this speciality. The larger the employer, the more data they have available to process.

Data analysis insights help hone marketing plans, change customer policies, and suggest new products to launch.

Without accurate analytics, companies that rely on the web are operating blind. They know this, hence the current demand for people who can draw relevant conclusions from databases filled with data.

SEO Experts

Also, search engine optimization (SEO) remains popular. It’s one of the more affordable ways to deliver clear results, higher traffic, and increased visibility that converts into earnings.

Also, being able to manage digital marketing pay-per-click campaigns is an acquired, sought-after skill too. Here, the business is not relying on ranking in the search engines but instead is paying them for advertising space to drive paid traffic.

Valuing Digital Marketing Education

The reliance on and popularity of digital marketing has created many specialised roles.

More platforms, apps and devices have increased the of cyber threats and cybersecurity compliance.  Plus, there are rules and legislation around what can be done with personal data. Therefore completing a digital marketing tertiary level program may be what gets you the job.