Marketing is a rewarding career field that can allow professionals to use a wide variety of talents to market products, companies, or ideas to consumers. Advertising has left print media and found its way into digital marketing. It’s no secret digital marketing is a money-making business. Facebook, Twitter, and Google make most of their revenue through ads on their platforms. A career in marketing can be a rewarding career since top companies, both tech and non-tech, rely on marketing.
Advertising has been influencing consumers to buy a particular product for over a hundred years. Marketing is a multi-billion-dollar business. We see thousands of ads every day. While we may do our best to avoid them, our subconscious still notices. Behind each of these ads is a marketer or a team of marketers. These professionals don’t advertise based on how they feel, they utilize data, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) to market the right product to potential customers who didn’t know they needed a Roomba until they saw its advertisement.
Get familiar or become an expert in certain skills to make yourself marketable. The more skills you possess will make it easier for you to land a job and increase the success rate of your efforts. Below are a few basic first steps to build your knowledge base.
Get familiar with WordPress
WordPress makes creating a website simple. A basic website with the right knowledge can be assembled in a matter of hours. WordPress is the leading host of websites and hosts over 30% of all the world’s websites. Marketing often involves adding pages to websites or editing a copy of landing pages of product descriptions. A working knowledge of WordPress and its numerous plugins helps a seamless transition into a digital marketing career.
Marketing isn’t always about selling ads. Much of today’s advertisements come under the disguise of “content marketing”. Content marketing is free content that slowly builds a consumer’s trust in a product or brand to turn them into experts in a certain area. Once a customer feels they have found a company the trust, they will start purchasing from that company. WordPress markets itself as a content management site to help growing companies reach wider audiences through their content. A WordPress developer is a needed asset to a growing company. You can be invaluable to a company if you can build a website and know proper marketing techniques.
Basic coding languages
It is possible to use WordPress without knowing a coding language, but basic knowledge of front end coding skills. Like HTML and Javascript, front end coding skills affect how a customer interacts with a web page. Knowing what Javascript is used for and when to use it can be magnificent for WordPress development and the millions of other sites on different platforms. Knowing coding languages can help a great deal when troubleshooting landing pages or other marketing content.
Data analysis
Location, location, location, might still be an important aspect to business, but a new mantra driving billions in the advertising industry is data, data, data. Data provides insights into customers’ lives to help marketers pick the best strategy or project to market. Marketing a baby stroller to a single man won’t drum up much business, but placing ads on websites mothers frequent might. Using Google AdWords to advertise when a user searches for diapers yields better results than using random unselective advertising methods.
To capitalize on data, you need to know how to collect, organize, and analyze the pertinent data. Companies usually subscribe to analytic software to collect user data. A knowledge base in analyzing data can help further your career. Companies want data to inform their decisions; they should inform your decisions too. Industry giants like Target and Coca-Cola use data to increase sales. Leveraging analytical skills on your resume will give you a leg up on your competition.
Get to know local businesses
Data should be a driver for business, but context matters too. Local businesses rely on advertising, just like industry leaders. Knowledge in a local market can help as well. This soft skill allows you to market even more specifically to demographics in your city. A high-end wine shop wouldn’t want to advertise on a college campus with cash strapped students. A Chicago coding bootcamp can give you the tech skills you can use to further your marketing career.
