10 Simple Hacks To Kick start Your Digital Marketing Career

The role of digital marketing specialist has made it to LinkedIn’s latest list of 10 most sought-after job roles in India.

This is excellent news for aspiring digital marketing professionals in India. But how do you carve a successful career in this field? First of all, there isn’t a formal degree or a specialization that Indian universities offer.

For many professionals, digital marketing is a field where they have landed by chance — it’s rather common to find SEO executives who are computer science graduates or have an engineering background. Still now, the common perception of a social media marketer is of someone who spends their entire day on social media sites posting pictures with catchy captions.

Due to the lack of a formal course, the interested ones end up enrolling in online marketing programs or take the route of self-learning to become a digital marketer. Either way, there’s a high chance of being misguided and misinformed because it all boils down to where you’re getting your knowledge from.

There’s way too much information on the internet — but not all of it comes from trusted sources. So you have to look into all the right places. As you can see, the path to becoming an effective digital marketer is pretty sketchy. And, that’s also a reason why many people doubt the future and sustainability of this career. Honestly, they couldn’t be more wrong. Let’s see why.

The growth of digital in India

As reported by Kstart and YourStory, the digital marketing industry has been witnessing a 40% year-on-year growth as compared to 5-6% growth in many other industries.

Even if you leave statistics aside, the mere fact that people’s interest in the term ‘digital marketing’ has been progressively increasing in India over the last five years (see below) is a proof that it has entered the popular lexicon. In other words, people are increasingly talking about digital marketing.

But what’s driving this growth?

Besides providing an effective way to promote a product or service, digital marketing allows businesses to do so even on a limited budget. Because of this, businesses of all sizes are trying to leverage digital marketing.

Not only that. With 480 million (and growing) internet users, India is estimated to become one of the largest e-commerce markets in the world. This, along with the government’s push for the cashless economy and schemes like Digital India program, is further boosting the role of digital marketing. According to McKinsey, 90% of all marketing jobs require some knowledge of digital marketing.

Now, here’s the problem

 While there’s high demand for skilled digital marketers, there isn’t enough reliable talent in the market. The lion’s share of the problem lies in the fact that a majority of marketers transition into the digital arena without being equipped with the right digital skills. A lot of marketing graduates are making their way into the digital landscape with inadequate (or even flawed) understanding of how digital works.

No wonder, 54% of businesses consider digital skills gap as a significant bottleneck in their way to digital transformation. As a digital marketing consultant who has worked closely with small startups as well as Fortune 500 companies, I can tell you there’s an awful lot of truth in this statistics. I’ve seen most of the companies I’ve worked with either struggle at hiring talented digital marketers or suffer due to sub-par marketing.

So the question is — how do you break the mold? You can give your digital marketing career a decent start with a few simple steps and practices.

CLICK HERE to Know the 10 simple hacks to become Digital Marketing Ninja.