10 Lessons from Digital Marketing
I had always wanted to write about my journey as a digital marketer, I even started writing a couple of articles some months ago but they are all still here, sitting pretty in my drafts. Maybe I’d publish them someday but for now, I hope you find this helpful or perhaps share with someone who might.
I started my journey as a digital marketer online, during the first pandemic year. I was at home due to the lock-down and I needed to occupy myself with something I had interest in. I always knew that I wanted to learn digital marketing due to my past experience in public relations but I was confused on how to begin. Anyway, I started off with some courses, reached out to a couple of digital marketers and documented my journey here, on twitter.
Ever since I made that thread, I’ve worked at Helium Health, Pharmarun, Awabike, Bitoshi, and I’m really just getting started.
Here’s a summary of what I learnt over these past two years.
- Discover your Strength
Digital marketing is a broad field with different categories such as:
- Social media marketing — using social media platforms to sell a product or service.
- E-mail marketing — connecting with customers or potential customers using email.
- Paid Advertising — paying to advertise your business on the internet through search engines.
- Affiliate Marketing — paying other people to promote your business with the aim of making sales through them.
- Content Marketing — creating useful content for your audience through blogposts, videos, etc.
- Search Engine Optimization — using search engine friendly keywords in order for your content to be ranked highly on search engines.
It also includes Influencer Marketing, Google Analytics, Guerilla Marketing, Video Marketing and so on; basically any form of marketing that occurs digitally, usually on the internet. I started off exploring each field before choosing my strengths and identifying my weaknesses.
It’s advisable to be good at content marketing and social media marketing if you want to increase your chances of getting jobs.
2. Optimize Research
Research should be your best friend. Gathering information on the needs of your audience, fine-tuning past marketing strategies, as well as obtaining customer feedback could help strengthen the relationship of the brand with its customers. Take Starbucks for instance, despite being the largest coffeehouse chain in the world, they rely on the My Starbucks Idea platform where customers share ideas on how the company can make it’s products better.
Research generally gives you insight and helps you make better marketing decisions.
3. Understand the Different Social Media Channels
A good number of people spend part of their day on social media, it is inevitable at this point.
Although each platform has it’s peculiarity, you have to learn how to maximize the right ones by understanding the type of content that would fly on them. Playstation acquired over 15million followers on twitter due to how engaging their content became over the years; from building a gaming community to tweeting gaming footage regularly, live streaming events and so on.
Video content thrives more and will continue to thrive in the coming years.
4. Optimize Marketing Tools
There are so many tools for content planning, advertising, analyzing, designing, even blogging. Find them and use them, you’d be surprised to see the impact they’d have on your marketing results.
My favorites include all Google tools including Analytics, AdWords, Trends and Keyword Planner, Contentcal, Canva, Buzzsumo, CoSchedule, Unsplash, Mailchimp, Digital Marketer, SendPulse and HubSpot.
5. Focus on Building Brand Awareness.
It’s simple; the more people know about your brand, the more likely they are to use your product or service. Some brands have become so well-known, they’ve replaced the generic name for similar products. Like saying Indomie whenever you want to talk about noodles generally. This is called Proprietary Eponyms and it’s the peak of brand awareness.
Brand awareness is knowing what a brand offers even without patronizing them yet, we see this on social media often.
You need to create a unique, consistent voice and image for the brand across all platforms.
6. Create Experiences, Not Just Products/Services
What really separates your brand from your competitors is not the product/service you offer but the experience you sell alongside. This Entrepreneur article explains this in more detail.
The big guns like Amazon have this on lock.
How does your product make consumers feel? Are you offering ease, empathy?
7. Position Yourself
This might sound cliché but what is worth doing is worth doing well. Giving your best means you’ll retain jobs longer and also increase your chances of getting referrals even when your contract expires.
Word of mouth goes a long way in the tech space too. I once got a foreign gig because someone on my timeline saw that I tweeted a lot about marketing and then referred me.
8. Practice Self-care
Marketing could get overwhelming. Between trying to keep up with different trends and your employers demanding immediate results to unsuccessful campaigns, trust me when I say you’d question why you chose this path on some days.
Whenever you feel inadequate, take some time off and don’t feel guilty about it. Bear in mind that you’re not a magician, don’t hesitate to reach out to someone more experienced whenever you’re stuck.
9. Pitch Yourself
If you’re just getting started, don’t wait for jobs to come to you. Create a resume, draft a cover letter template then apply for jobs. It’s okay to reach out to companies you want to work for, what’s the worst that could happen? A rejection mail? Psst, na smalls.
To be honest, all you need is for someone or a startup to take a chance with you. It goes up from there.
Learning isn’t really complete if you don’t get a chance to apply the knowledge.
10. Keep Learning
When you start a career in digital marketing, you will realize how fast paced the industry can be. It requires thinking on your feet and being creative at every turn. If you want to thrive for a long time, you have to keep refining your skill set. Keep taking steps that will set you apart from others in the industry.
Okay, this was fun to write, thank you for making it to the end!
I made a four year plan when I started my journey and I’ve gotten to stage where I want to work at a marketing agency, so this is me putting myself out there too. If you’re my employer, kindly shoot me a mail (olukorodeoreoluwa@gmail), you won’t regret having me on your team.
Till next time. x
