Marketing is one of the few industries that allows you to develop your skills in a number of different directions, using a range of different methods.
This gives you the rare opportunity to build a skill set specific to you, which you can either use to gain a job in a marketing department, agency or to set out as a freelancer. Furthermore, marketing skills are in significant demand, whether from companies, marketing firms, or even unrelated areas like politics.
These skills often include persuasion - in the form of written copy or spoken word - video direction and editing, corporate strategy, data analytics, and SEO-centric web design.
Therefore, it is crucial that you have a rounded understanding of how to develop these skills, from the very basics to advanced theories and strategies. As is the case with any pursuit in life, often learning how to learn is harder than the subject matter itself, and that is certainly the case with marketing.
Naturally, there are a significant number of different ways you can develop these skills. You could, for instance, undertake a degree in a certain area of marketing, which will give you a strong base of knowledge to springboard off of. Starting with a thorough education is a good idea because marketing is a vast and disparate industry. Without a strong understanding of the fundamentals, you can easily become lost, confused, and ineffective in your job.
Ultimately, your marketing career should be crammed full of learning, as different roles allow you up-skill in certain areas. Having a detailed understanding of how you can do this is critical as a result.
Here are some top tips for improving your digital marketing skills:
Enroll in a master’s degree
If you are struggling to know where to start with learning marketing skills, then you may want to leave your teaching to the professionals and enroll in a digital marketing and analytics master’s degree course.
This will offer you an in-depth body of learning which focuses on an increasingly important area of marketing - data analytics. By having a degree to show for your expertise in this area, you will put yourself in a far better position when it comes to finding a job.
Indeed, specializing in data analytics is also beneficial because it demonstrates that you have specialized in a certain area, rather than gained a little knowledge in every area.
This makes you more useful to businesses looking for a consultant or freelance specialist to hire, helping to boost you further up the career ladder faster. In contrast, if you try and solely self-teach yourself with zero industry experience, you are likely going to have to start far further down the pecking order.
Test, test, and test some more
One of the most common mistakes in marketing is overthinking it. Many marketers fill their minds with all manner of advice, hacks, and tactics that are implementable in certain scenarios but which completely overlook the obvious - marketing is about people, not tricks.
It is all too easy to fall into the trap of creating a piece of copy or an advert that adheres to a marketing principle you learned without once testing to see whether it works.
The importance of testing cannot be understated. It is the difference between ruining the reputation of your client’s business and selling out every last product on their shelves. Testing gives you the opportunity to see what type of marketing message your target market responds well to and which ones they reject.
You can do this in any number of ways - whether by releasing a couple of one-off ads together and seeing which one is more popular or by sending it out to proofreaders who vote on which advert is most effective for them.
Above all, testing allows you to experiment with your ideas and find out what works and what doesn’t. Your market will always tell you with brutal honesty which marketing principles actually work and which ones are outdated or ineffective.
It is the equivalent of a stand-up comedian who tests their material out on small audiences before going on tour. They want to find out which jokes people laugh at and which ones can be dropped or adapted. By testing your marketing the same way, you will create a far more effective campaign and become better at your job in the process.
Create your own brand as a practice
To continue with the theme of testing, you could always try out new ideas in a controlled environment by creating your own brand. Whether you want to sell a product on an online store or advertise your freelance marketing services, experimenting with ideas is far easier when the only person who can lose is you - rather than your clients.
Although you should never risk your reputation by testing anything too dramatic, you can use your own personal brand as a testbed for new ideas and your evolving marketing expertise.
Gain work experience at a digital marketing company
Another fantastic way to improve your digital marketing skills is to join an agency through an internship.
By doing this, you will be able to watch experienced professionals at work, both from a distance and up close, if they teach you the basics on a one-to-one basis.
The added benefit of work experience is that it, well, offers you real experience rather than theory. The problem with most learning is that it is undertaken in a controlled environment rather than the real world. What works in a classroom may not work on actual people, so work experience offers you the chance to practice your skills for real.
Learn more about the way humans think
Becoming a great marketer is as much about knowing how people think and act as it is about theories and specialization.
When you become experienced in marketing, you begin to have a subconscious understanding of what works and what doesn’t, instinctively able to communicate with various audiences in an engaging manner.
Unless you are a complete natural, this takes time and effort to learn.
Therefore, set about reading books that speak as much about psychology as they do about marketing because that is what marketing and advertising are at the end of the day.