On Spotlight: E-commerce Or Digital Marketing?

On Spotlight! is back.

In 2023, I decided to revive back my newsletter after being on hiatus for so long.

Writing a newsletter takes up a lot more time than writing a post on LinkedIn. But I have over 800+ subscribers just for 7 Editions of this "On Spotlight!" newsletter in 2022, which is amazing!

So, I believe this is the right time for me to start this off again in 2023.

In this first edition, I would like to touch on this career topic which I stumble upon recently, E-commerce or Digital Marketing.

What's E-commerce?

In simple terms, e-commerce means it is the activity or method of buying and selling items using online channels.

Some example of online channels are Google Shopping, Amazon, E-bay, Shopee, Lazada, PG Mall, Mudah.my and more.

So, why e-commerce? Why do you want to choose your career in e-commerce?

Some will say it's a hype to join e-commerce company, or get to be a part of big brands. But after having worked in e-commerce before, here are a few reasons why e-commerce is great for your career growth.

E-commerce Career Growth Benefits

1. The understanding of consumer's journey before making a purchase. Almost every consumer won't be making a purchase unless they went through certain steps like surveying brands, prices, promotions, quality and more. Getting a better understanding of this allows you to serve your end user better.

2. Getting the know-how on how to properly run an online business by liaising with the merchants. You'll experience a lot of pitfalls and struggles that your merchants will face and they will feedback to you. Coming up with the right solutions and learn to compromise will help you in your career.

3. Making the right financial decisions for both your merchants and the end consumer.

4. Learning how to manage and handle merchant accounts and help them make the right decisions for their online store.

5. Project and Campaign Management skills. In seasonal times such as Christmas sales, Black Friday, Cyber Monday or 11:11 sales, you will learn that a lot of SKUs needed to be prepared in advance including the promotional price by the merchant.

6. Cross-functional teamwork. In e-commerce, a lot of the processes are inter-connected to each other. At times, you will need to work with finance or delivery partners to resolve issues faced by the merchant.

7. Learning how to adapt the right strategies such as promotional marketing, the SKU placement and competitive pricing within the e-commerce platform as well as digital marketing for paid ads outside the platform.

Once you have these learnings and skills in place, you will be able to grow your career further in the e-commerce arena.

Sounds simple, right?

Well, it is actually not. In order to succeed in e-commerce, you must adapt or at least, have the experience of online shopping in order to be successful at your job.

But how about digital marketing?

This is where I will explain in more in depth about the world of digital marketing.

The World of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is also known as Online Marketing. It is used interchangeably by common folks who are not verse in the word, Digital.

In digital marketing, marketers use a variety of online techniques in search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo or in Social Media like Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn and others to help promote the products.

So, why should you consider a career in digital marketing and which one should you be focusing into?

Here are a few reasons why digital marketing is a great career choice for you.

Digital Marketing Career Growth Benefits

1. You're visually creative and a words person. In digital marketing, content is important to attract people to look into the brand or product. The opportunity to grow as a Creative Director or a writer is huge as you get to expand your creativity to a wider audience.
2. You're great with planning and execution of plans. Planning is a very important aspect for every digital marketer. They usually plan using the monthly calendar and budget to be spent for every marketing campaigns. So, if you're a detailed planning person, it can be a great career choice for you.
3. You're good with numbers, data and analysis. One important aspect in digital marketing is that you have to be good in analyzing the data during or after each marketing campaign. It can reveal whether the campaign is running according to projection or it needs certain optimization.
4. Specialization in an area of digital marketing. At the end of the day, if you had known what you're good at ie) content marketing or SEO/SEM expert, you can choose to specialize in 1-2 aspects of it and begin to charge a premium.
5. Learning how to properly manage sets of data, talk to clients and forecast results using AI and machine learning.
6. A constant never ending learning all the time to improve yourself and the opportunity to be officially certified by platforms like Google, Meta and LinkedIn.

In short, there are many opportunities for anyone to grow in the field of digital marketing landscape.

There are also many "Digital Marketing" gurus out there who claimed that they are expert in all fields when they're not.

The best way to grow your career is through specialization of certain platforms or search engine, like if you're certified in Meta Digital Marketing and LinkedIn Certified Marketer.

Your Choice of Career Path

So, which career path are you considering to choose?

If you're someone who are naturally curious and looking to explore, I would say both career path are great for your future growth.

In both e-commerce and digital marketing, there are a lot of similarities in which a lot of similar skillsets are being applied into the job too.

Thus, if you're in e-commerce now and looking to explore into digital marketing, don't be afraid to make the leap. You will just need to identify one area of expertise you're good at and you're ready to make that jump.

All the best to you when deciding your career path whether it's in e-commerce of digital marketing.

Until next time, take care and stay safe.

~ Cazey Tan