Top Digital Skills to Help You Reach Your Dreams Online
Having a portfolio of projects demonstrating your coding skills can also help validate your knowledge and expertise and help you land your dream role.
THESE ARE THE (5) MOST REWARDING DIGITAL SKILLS YOU SHOULD INVEST IN YOUR CAREER
1. Mobile Marketing
With billions of people across the globe using mobiles to research, communicate, and purchase, optimizing content and landing pages for smartphones should be something every business does.
Insider Intelligence predicts that in 2024 mobile ad spending will account for 66% of total digital ad spend and mobile apps will generate 82% of that mobile ad spend. In addition, generative AI will continue to disrupt and transform search and virtual assistants.
Along with optimizing content for mobiles, businesses should also be looking at voice searches. More and more people are using assistants like Alexa or Google Assistant to get quick answers so it’s an area marketers need to be aware of. Augmented and virtual reality is another area that’s becoming common on mobile to create immersive and interactive experiences for customers.
2. Strategy & Planning
Businesses that use a digital marketing campaign strategy are more likely to see measurable results in the long term. Instead of planning on an ad-hoc basis, digital marketers need to create and implement campaigns based on analytics and quantifiable SEO data.
For example, setting specific KPIs and identifying methods for measuring each indicator can help a marketer remain accountable. It’s also imperative that they analyze past campaigns and decide which metric is worth measuring.
To put things in perspective, 79% of senior marketers stated that strategy and planning were ‘very important’ to an organization’s success according to DMI’s research paper, ‘Perpetual Evolution’. Despite its importance, employers found this skillset one of the hardest areas to recruit for.
Educators should take advantage of this skills gap, by teaching students how to plan and execute a digital strategy.
3. Social Selling
To connect with and influence customers, sales professionals need to be where their prospects are: online. Social selling is proving its worth for sellers that use it — 65% rely on it for filling their pipelines and it generates half of the revenue for 14 major industries.
Businesses are also beginning to understand the importance of social selling by investing in new ‘sales stack’ technology such as email tracking tools, productivity apps, and sales intelligence software. Above all, social selling tools are seen as very effective in connecting with the modern buyer, one that relies on social platforms for reviews and advice.
As a relatively new arena for organizations, offering training that is industry-aligned will help any student interested in a sales career and achieving social selling success.
4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing
PPC marketing is a popular way for brands to get traffic quickly. Companies with big budgets can get their search result to appear on Google’s first page to drive massive traffic.
But those kinds of budgets are out of reach for most companies so it’s important to use PPC in a targeted way to drive performance and get the most out of every dollar or euro. Here are the key benefits of PPC over organic.
A successful PPC campaign needs to:
Optimize the website
Select a bidding strategy
Set a budget
Research keywords
Include a compelling CTA
Include regular testing
One popular PPC advertising model is Google’s AdWords program and a great way to monitor spend is by using a PPC for eCommerce tracker.
For the digitally adept jobseeker, understanding impressions, reach, cost-per-click, and how to manage a budget are crucial for running PPC campaigns that deliver.
5. Video
Video has evolved from being just a form of entertainment to a major social media content driver. YouTube is now a powerful and influential platform while networks like TikTok and Instagram have turned video on its head to create wealthy influencers.
Why is video so popular? With smartphone users becoming younger and younger, social media apps like WhatsApp, Weibo, and WeChat are becoming the de-facto tools of instant message communication. In fact, WhatsApp has more than 2 billion users worldwide with most downloads being from the United States.
Video as content is easier to consume than other formats e.g. a blog post. It’s also more entertaining and appeals to Millennials. By combining the emotional power of social media video with the reach and scope of digital advertising, markets can tap into a growing market of engaged consumers.
