So, you have done a certification course in Digital Marketing, what next?

If demonetization was a black swan event that changed the trajectory of adoption of digital payments in India, Covid – 19 appears to be giving a big growth spurt to the Ed-tech sector.

Analyst forecasts aside, there is enough anecdotal data to suggest that there is a sudden surge in the number of people pursuing a certificate course in related and unrelated fields through a plethora of online learning platforms.

Several reasons are giving rise to this trend:

1.    Zero economic activity in multiple sectors has resulted in leaner business hours and less mental fatigue for many.

2.    Being homebound has given us a few additional hours every day which coupled with lesser physical fatigue means more productive hours.

3.    Job and pay cuts whether instituted or anticipated have instilled fear and anxiety, kindling a need to re-skill and up-skill to stay relevant.

4.    The impending recession and low economic growth forecast point towards slower hiring for several quarters as well as much stiffer competition for every role that eventually opens up.

Learning should be a lifelong goal irrespective of the macroeconomic conditions. It is a well-researched and commonly known fact that people who invest time in continuous learning reap the compounded benefits all through their lives.

If you are a student or a marketing professional, wanting to learn Digital Marketing, it is a step in the right direction. Digital Marketing is no longer important to future proof yourself; it is a lifesaving skill needed for survival today.  

Doing a certification course is an important first step in this learning journey. However, I would like to emphasize that it is only a necessary first step. The journey, thus started, needs to continue for it to add value to you in any meaningful way.

There are three reasons for this:

1.    What you don’t use, you lose. The concepts are fresh in your mind right now. But your day job does not require you to use this knowledge. There is a 100% chance that you won’t remember most of what you learned 2-4 months down the line.

2.    If your goal is real skill-building and not just leveraging the certificate for social proof, theoretical knowledge will only take you that far. Real learning happens when you apply yourself to solve real-world problems.

3.    If you are hoping to get hired or move to a role within your organization that mandates Digital Marketing as a requisite skill, you are fairly unarmed to succeed. Hiring managers are looking for candidates with hands-on experience and not just theoretical understanding.

So, what should you do? Abandon your learning agenda and go back to binge-watching Netflix?

Hell No.

The idea is not to demotivate but to guide you on how to make the most of the knowledge you have just acquired.

If you are a practicing marketer who has just finished a Digital Marketing course, here is what you need to do next

1.    Continue your learning journey by reading up more on how organizations use Digital Marketing to solve a variety of business problems. Whether it is building consumer understanding, reaching the right consumer in the most cost-efficient way, storytelling for action, or growth hacking. The list is endless. There are a bunch of resources that are good at keeping you firmly in the Digital Marketing world. Start with subscribing to the Think with Google blog and Facebook newsletter. Slowly graduate to other marketing publications like MarketingWeek, Digiday, BrandEquity, etc

2.    Request your Manager or Functional Head to allow you to shadow a Digital Marketer in your team. Let’s call this person your Mentor. Let your mentor know that your objective is to learn from them. Request them to involve you in 1 or 2 projects where you can be part of all internal and external agency meetings. Once assigned a project, listen to discussions and observe the process. Do not annoy your mentor by sharing your point of view (your understanding is fairly limited) or asking too many questions that derail their work. Make note of what you do not understand and set aside some time to discuss those things with them every week. Acknowledge and appreciate your mentor for letting you in on their work. If you annoy them or worse pose as a threat to their job, the process won’t work.

3.    Once you have been part of 1-2 different projects, request to have a small project that you can lead under your mentor’s guidance. Most people will not mind having a prodigy who is willing to get his/ her hands dirty for them. The best learning will happen in this phase as you apply yourself to solve a real business problem.

If you are a marketing student or a marketer whose organization does not have a Digital Marketing team, there are still things you can do to continue your learning journey

1.    Step 1 remains the same as suggested above.

2.    Find out people in your network who are Digital Marketers, work in Digital Marketing agencies, or handle sales in Digital Media companies. Build connections if you do not know such people already. Reach out to them for Virtual Mentorship. LinkedIn is a great place to start. It has built a feature called Career Advice through which you can identify relevant people and reach out to them for guidance. Over the past year, a lot of young marketers and management students have reached out to me for advice and I have mostly obliged. Intercell is another Virtual Mentorship platform where you can connect with experienced Digital Marketers and schedule a couple of sessions for a small fee.

Prepare well for these sessions. Ask specific questions rather than generally wanting to know about Digital Marketing. A good place to start will be to pick up a topic you learned in the course and ask them to talk to you about how they implement it in real life. Listening to live case studies provides insights into the practical applicability of theoretical concepts. Ensure you build a wide network with people spanning multiple industries and having diverse Digital Marketing expertise. This is critical to step 3 below.

3.    Once you have invested significant time and energy in building a Virtual Mentor Network, reach out to them again requesting for a Live Industry Project. Volunteer to do this Pro Bono. Remember your objective is to learn, not earn. Most people should be willing to help since:

• Having mentored you for some time, they would somewhat feel vested in your learning and development.
• It is easier to hand out a project informally without having to go through the formal HR process if there are no commercials involved.

Doing a couple of such real-life projects will only deepen your learning but also bring you closer to getting a role in Digital Marketing.

To sum up, building your academic credentials by doing a course in Digital Marketing is a great first step. However, if you want to get real value and ROI, follow it up with the three steps mentioned above. In the absence of backing up your theoretical knowledge with practical experience, the only people who would have benefited from your time and money investment are the founders and investors of the learning platform from where you did the course.

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Aditi Anand has 13 years of experience in marketing consumer technology brands. She currently leads Brand and Digital Marketing Strategy for Nokia Mobiles in India. Her past roles include successful stints at Airtel, Flipkart and Micromax. She is an alumnus of the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad and is currently pursuing an Executive MBA from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business.