What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is vital if you have a business or want to sell anything online. Even if you’re just looking to build profile, you need a strong internet presence, if you want people to know you exist. The purpose of Digital Marketing is to raise awareness, connect with people who are interested in what you’re offering, and persuade them to take actions you want. It uses digital forms of communication, like the web, smartphones, social media platforms, and search engines, as a medium to reach potential customers.

Just like traditional marketing, digital marketing is about finding prospective customers and broadcasting your message to them in the right place, in the right tone, and at the right time.

Digital Marketing has one major advantage over traditional marketing, as you can use analytics tools to monitor your campaigns in real time, so you can swiftly adjust your approach. Typically, it would cost more and take longer to make these kinds of adjustments, but with Digital Marketing it’s easier to course correct than it would be if you’d invested in a print ad.

What is Social Media?

Social Media is an umbrella term to describe online platforms focused on community-based communication, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Platforms like this use content sharing and post interaction, and most content is produced from the users, not the owners of the platform. Social media also includes curation sites such as Wikis, as well as professional networking platforms like LinkedIn.

Due to the massive reach of Social Media, good social media marketing skills are now essential for anyone looking to attract the maximum number of customers online.

What is SEO?

SEO, or Search engine optimization, is the science of attracting specific types of traffic to a website, using a search engine. To master SEO, you need to create high-value content with high authority backlinks, and include keywords in that content that your ideal customers search for.

SEO is never a one size fits all solution. To be successful, you must take a bespoke approach. That means you need to optimize your site for the type of search engine you want it to rank highly on, like Google, Amazon, or Bing. SEO typically focuses on scoring highly organic search results, not paid or sponsored traffic. You can also use it in paid ads, to maximize their reach.

As search engines attempt to give the most suitable answer to each person’s search query, you must ensure a search engine views your site as the most appropriate match.

Every search engine uses a different algorithm to determine what the best result to a search query is. This will include a combination of different factors, including the quality of your content and back links, how many visitors your site has, and your website’s speed and up time.

Modern SEO is complex, and mastering it takes more than just getting the right meta tags. It includes understanding how rich snippets, video, and featured snippets work to enhance your rankings, as well as the importance of voice search and Video SEO. If you want to be successful using Google Search, you also need to understand how Google Rank Brain scores your website and must optimize your site to score highly on Google’s algorithm.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is also becoming more critical, and you will need to learn the basics of this, especially since nearly half of all Google searches now have a local intent. Near Me searches have grown even faster, exploding at a rate of 150% more than local searches alone.

Mastering SEO includes understanding Technical SEO, which focuses on priming your website for crawling and indexing by search engines. It’s important you don’t neglect this aspect, as without it search engines will find it difficult to access, crawl, and index your website. As a result, you’ll rank much lower. The reason this process is referred to as “Technical SEO” is because it has nothing to do with promoting your website, and is not the same as the type of SEO you include in your content.

What types of careers will this course help you with?

Once you complete this course, you’ll be a Digital Marketing Master, and will have many different career options open to you. You could work as a freelance Facebook Ads & Instagram Ads consultant, market brands, or promote your own business. Your options will be almost unlimited, as strong digital marketing skills are highly in demand.

As they focus on online business, and can be done entirely online, Digital Marketing jobs are also pandemic proof, so your skill set will always be needed. Just make sure to narrow down your choices and focus on what you enjoy and do well.

Maybe you have a passion for branding, and would like to work as a branding consultant for start-up companies? Perhaps you’re interested in specializing, whether that be in marketing for the tech sector, the health and wellness niche, or in real estate?

The best way to achieve top earnings is to find a niche you can position yourself as an authority voice in, and you can do this by acquiring a skill set your competitors don’t have. If you can offer expertise in Facebook advertising, or email marketing, for example, you will be bringing something extra to the table that will give you an edge.

Having niche knowledge will mark you out from other candidates trying to land their first gig and signal that you’re a high value candidate to employers and clients.

You can also specialize by diversifying into niche careers such as SEO or copyrighting. SEO knowledge is a highly in demand skill and it does not require a qualification. If you know how to do it right, copyrighting can be similarly rewarding.

Because of the amount of online content we consume, demand for skilled SEO experts and pro copywriters has grown massively. More brands than ever require well-written content, that’s optimized to perform well in search. If you can combine the two, you will have a HUGE competitive advantage.

When you are getting started, you can try freelance sites, like En-lace or People per Hour, although it will take a little while to build up a reputation. Blogging can be another area you can build up a following in and then monetize, though to do well you must post regularly, and provide unique content.

Website design skills, which you will learn on this course, are another great way to make money. You can gain practical experience by creating sites for your family and friends for free, or in exchange for their skills. Practical experience is essential when you’re first starting out and will stand you in great stead as you progress in your mastery.

Once you become more confident and have built up your portfolio, you’ll be able to land paid clients. You can use your knowledge to create professional looking WordPress sites for local or online brands – without needing coding skills, or any upfront investment.