Here’s a blog post especially for graduates who are looking to start a career in Digital Marketing and desire to set themselves apart in a competitive employment market where employers are looking for real skills and some experience.
For our agency FIRST, the most valuable people are those who are ‘T-Shaped’. These people can think strategically and have a wide range of digital skills and expertise, but also have a passion for and deep specialist expertise in a particular digital discipline.
If you are serious about getting your first (or second) digital role – here is some further study to undertake and blogs that will help you keep up to date with the latest. (Note: I use www.feedly.com as my preferred feed reader.)
At FIRST, everything we do is focused on helping business increase online sales and revenue by improving the customer experience through data and analytics. While there are many resources around, these are the ones we find valuable and I am sure most employers would also. I can guarantee that your job prospects will be so much better for investing the time in learning and understanding the below than had you not.
I recommend training in four core disciplines:
- Strategic digital thinking
- Analytics
- Conversion, A/B testing and online customer experience
- Performance advertising (Google AdWords / Facebook Advertising)
Strategic digital thinking
Recommended sites to follow:
Analytics
Recommended analytics training:
Google Analytics Individual Certification & Training
Recommended sites to follow:
Recommended practical work
For your own site, a friend’s site, or a small business:
- Set up Google Analytics, including goals, events and/or eCommerce tracking
- On a regular basis review the data, find and share insights with the site owner to increase website performance.
Conversion, A/B testing and online customer experience
Recommended conversion training:
Optimizely Platform Certification
Recommended sites to follow:
Recommended practical work
For your own site, a friend’s site, or a small business:
- Set up www.optimizely.com and run some tests (free for up to 50,000 unique sessions per month)
- Set up www.inspectlet.com to get heatmaps, clickmaps and video recordings of user behaviour (free for up to 100 recorded sessions) or use www.crazyegg.com for US$9 per month
Performance advertising (Google AdWords / Facebook Advertising)
Recommended performance advertising training:
Google AdWords Certifications
Facebook training:
Recommended practical work
For your own site, a friend’s site, or a small business:
- Set-up and run an AdWords account ($500+ budget)
- Set-up and Run Facebook advertising ($500+ budget)
Recommended SEO reading:
Final thoughts
By doing these things, you will involve yourself in the digital marketing community and keep up to date with the latest concepts and trends in digital marketing. You’ll get the needed training with practical applications and some hands-on ‘work experience’ that will be very valuable.
Even more than that, it shows to a future employer that you are a self starter, can work autonomously, have a passion for the industry, a thirst for learning, and you will do what it takes in a role. All of these attitudes are perhaps even more important than the skills themselves.