Curious about digital marketing? Read on

Hello!

Welcome to another career spotlight! This week, in celebration of the newly launched Unilever Digital Marketing Analyst Professional Certificate, we’re shining a light on digital marketing—what it is, who should learn it, and where to begin.

First, what is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is a catch-all term for all areas of marketing that exist in a digital space, including:

• Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing

Much like digital spaces themselves, digital marketing types and techniques are ever-evolving. For example, several years ago, affiliate marketing strategies were likely heavily structured around blogs. More recently, the same teams have presumably added social media influencers to their strategy, incorporating platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Today, user-generated content (UGC) is becoming yet another aspect of affiliate marketing.

To stay current with digital marketing strategies, it’s important to be able to recognize digital trends and understand where and how your brand fits into those trends. That’s where digital marketing analysis skills come into play. Whether you are a specialist or a generalist, working for a company or marketing your own brand, you can (and should) use data to strengthen your digital marketing strategy.

Who should learn digital marketing?

Anyone who wants to promote anything online should learn digital marketing.

Consider learning digital marketing if you want to:

• Pursue a career in marketing: There are plenty of digital marketing jobs, both in specialized and general roles. (And as far as salary goes, digital marketing managers in the US earn an average base salary of $86,125, as of February 2024, according to Glassdoor—learn more in our salary guide.)
• Find a part-time digital role: If you’re looking for a more flexible path, many companies hire freelance digital marketers to work on campaigns. Since these are primarily online roles, they tend to be amenable to remote work.
• Start a business: Especially if you’re launching an e-commerce business, you can use your digital marketing skills to find your audience and communicate directly with them. (In this case, consider enrolling in the Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Professional Certificate.)
• Build an online brand: Whether a personal brand or a professional one, people with a prominent online presence tend to use digital marketing strategies to build their brand.

Where to begin

For a broad overview, try the Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Professional Certificate. To begin your digital marketing journey, explore the marketing funnel and learn how to create a successful customer journey.

For key data skills, try the Unilever Digital Marketing Analyst Professional Certificate. Data can be a very powerful tool when you’re aiming to scale and grow your marketing efforts. Here, you’ll learn how to use it to your advantage.?

For a specialized social media skill set, try the Meta Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate. Digital marketers need to understand several different platforms in order to build a strategy that will effectively reach their intended audience. Learn about many of those platforms and how to use them.

That’s all for this week. Next time, we’ll dive into some more AI skills.

Have a career question you’d like us to answer next? Share it below. And, as always, we welcome YOUR advice and experience in the comments.