What Should A Digital Marketer Know?

Schooling doesn't assure employment but skill does. Perfect your marketing skills!

Greetings, Friends -

For nearly 12 years, I am associated with the digital marketing industry and keep my knowledge up-to-date by following search marketers from around the world to learn performance-enhancing strategies, make contacts, and advance my career.

Because I do believe, the internet is not only for amusement, it also brings us to the professional training experience made by expert marketers for inexperienced marketers.

What do digital marketers need to know?

The aim for me is always to keep my mind open and ready to explore! Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) ads will always be my passion, as search engine marketing (SEM) will evolve further continually.

I often find excitement/challenge in every known Google algorithm update like the all-new areas of SEO for exploration and an exclusive feel of satisfaction when an unknown SEM technique work for me.

So, what should I learn first in digital marketing?

1. Basic SEO and PPC tactics

People are always searching for secret sauces - the result is a tactic-rich digital marketing plan that skips the basics, leaves potholes open, and gets deep into the nitty-gritty of search algorithms. People are more interested to know about nowadays -

• Impact of nofollow, sponsored, and UGC links on SEO
• Remarketing under GDPR
• Impact of Google BERT And NLP on content
• How to leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence?
• How do I run programmatic ads?

Sure, all these are important but not at the expense of basics. If you cannot set up a website properly (in a way so that both users and search engines feel comfortable to browse), then it’s time for you to focus on SEO basics first. Similarly, if your Google ads get disapproved due to a reason like, destination unreachable, then forget about remarketing and focus on why your landing page is not returning 200OK to Google’s ad bots?

2. Technical SEO is important

I am from a non-technical background. But I love doing the technical SEO part. To me, technical SEO is one of the pillars of doing digital marketing smoothly.

That’s why I often spend hours on analysis of a website before launching any SEM campaign on it. It helps me track all the loopholes of the site made during development - many in coding format - that essential hider the SEO progress later. It’s the perfect time for SEOs like me to diagnose a website properly - make changes to the site with the help of developers to avoid any backlash down the line.

Things you need to be careful of -

• Communicating with all the stakeholders, developers, and content writers in the early stages of a website development
• Define accessibility requirements and UI design to ensure high standard UX
• Apply SEO friendly markup inside the code
• Setup analytics/tracking tools properly
• Ensure that the website actually loads fast for everyone and is mobile friendly

3. Track communication and changes

Brainstorming and issue-fixing with fellow team members is a cornerstone of a marketing campaign’s success. These early discussions give you a greater opportunity to do your SEO and SEM work smoothly later.

Collaborative sessions with stakeholders in the early stages of the project will help you stay focus on the challenges you may face in search engine marketing later with moderated plans and roundtable discussions in an intimate setting.

Do not refrain to discuss real-life challenges you’re facing in your work, get seniors’ feedback if required, and build relationships with your clients that will last well beyond the project!

Things you need to consider -

• Understand the business requirements and do keyword research
• Identify complex errors with already developed website’s Infrastructure
• Design your marketing workflow and share it with others for better collaboration
• Enhance your SEO with advanced tactics
• Start social media marketing 

How do you succeed as a digital marketer?

As a professional, your role is all about helping the user better understand your service or product - and helping Google provide better search results. This helping attitude will create an invaluable environment in the search engine marketplace.

Don’t aim for quick wins by fooling neither your consumers nor search engines like Google!

So, where do I start digital marketing?

1. Provide answers to the user’s specific questions

Digital marketing is your opportunity to answer highly-specific questions that are searching by your potential customers through SEO, SEM/PPC.

Google Analytics will help you find how satisfactorily you are providing answers to those questions. Do live Google Ads account audit. Do real-time SERP assessment to find what your competitors are doing? Analyzing Analytics data tailored to your business equation will give you deep insights into your marketing and advertising campaigns.

2. Develop community networking

Surfing the web and get to know fellow digital marketers is always beneficial. Learn from shared case studies while struggling during campaign management. Elevate casual social media browsing to guided, valuable conversations with influencers. Celebrate the achievements with your community to give back something valuable for others like you.

Growing your circle of contacts and forging new friendships will never be a waste!

3. Practice hard

Hungry for more? Do not wait always for approval. Go with the ideas you have. Choose your area for experiments carefully to -

• Advance SEO knowledge
• Mastering Google Ads
• Develop hardcore technical SEO tactics & techniques
• Progress on social media marketing
• Leverage Google Tag Manager for better analysis
• Advance CRO research for higher ROI

4. Be confident

Select the medium for doing digital marketing and advertising that suits your goals and budget. Follow these steps -

• Get access to all historical data
• Maximize your learning with the data available to you for a proper understanding of the business requirements
• Identify the areas of concern and arrange them according to their merits
• Chalk out a plan of action for removing all the obstacles to meet the set KPIs at the end of the campaign
• Start execution and keep monitoring the performance

Good luck!

Partha