Want to learn digital marketing to meet the most growing demand of 2021. Digital marketing is among the top 5 most in-demand jobs on LinkedIn along with Python, Javascript, and Data scientist. The scope of digital marketing has skyrocketed after the strike of the pandemic.
Local businesses have already started to pay for digital ads. The demand for digital marketers is increasing. Keeping this demand in mind many digital marketers and institutes have already established their business on teaching digital marketing.
If you are an aspiring digital marketer then you must have searched for a digital marketing course. The majority of course will break your bank. But let me tell you something. Digital marketing is not a theoretical subject that you can learn from textbooks. Nope.
The best way to learn digital marketing is through practice. If you want to know how to learn digital marketing without breaking your bank then keep reading. In this article, I am going to share with you how I learned digital marketing without breaking my bank.
1. Learn Basics
The probability of your success in a digital marketing career is directly related to how well you have understood the basic concepts. So before learning digital marketing you have to learn MARKETING.
Learn the definitions and core concepts of marketing and sales, how to sell, why people buy things, consumer behavior, etc. You will find tons of YouTube videos that will explain all these fundamentals. If you don’t remember every concept then no worries, you just have to understand the basics of marketing fundamentals. This will help to build the foundations of your digital marketing.
After learning the fundamentals of marketing, now it’s time to learn the basics of digital marketing. Look, digital marketing is a broad concept. There are dozens of subcategories of digital marketing. All these subcategories have their own challenges, concepts, scope, and demand. Before mastering any one skill you have to get familiar with every aspect of digital marketing. Major sub-categories of digital marketing includes:
- Content writing
- Search Engine Optimization
- Social Media Marketing
- Paid ads (Facebook & Google)
- Analytics and Strategies
- Lead Generation
- Influencer Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Brand Building
- E-commerce Marketing
You will find several YouTube videos that will introduce you to all these concepts. If you don’t find one then check out this playlist from Ankur Agarwal. He has done a pretty good job of explaining all these basic concepts.
2. Get certifications
So now as you have made yourself familiar with digital marketing, now it’s time to get some certifications. This will help you to get credibility as a digital marketer and also you will advance concepts of digital marketing.
To learn these advanced and deep concepts of digital marketing you will need to find the course that fits your learning pattern. There are dozens of online course platforms like Udemy, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, Skillshare, etc.
There are two free training courses available from Google and Facebook.
The best certifications are the ones that provide you with practical experience. Digital Deepak internship program is one such program in which you will get paid to learn all these concepts mentioned above, get practical assignments, and learn digital marketing from industry expert Deepak Kanakaraju. To apply for this internship program click here.
Check out all these platforms and many more to find out the course that fits you. Keep the following points in mind while choosing the course.
- Certificate – The online course that you purchase must come with a certificate of completion.
- Length – The course length should be 10 hours or more. This will make sure that you understand every concept in detail.
- Lifetime access – You must have access to the course for a lifetime so that you can learn at your own pace.
- Tutor – The tutor of the course must have expertise in digital marketing. This will affect the quality of knowledge that you will get.
- Budget – Lastly it should fit your budget.
The goal of becoming a certified digital marketer is to learn every part of digital marketing in detail. So now go ahead and search for the online digital marketing course and choose the one that fits your needs.
3. Build your blog
I have mentioned earlier that digital marketing can only be learned by practicing it. After learning the basics and diving into deep concepts of digital marketing, it is time for implementing everything that you have learned. This is the step that many people skip and avoid. This is the crucial step for building your career in digital marketing.
After all these certifications you can apply for jobs and look for freelancing projects. But you don’t have any work experience to show. This is exactly about getting work experience and along with that confidence. This will be a big learning curve for you. You will test yourself with all the theories and lessons that you learned in your course. Follow the below steps to practice everything that you have learned so far.
- Build your blog – Purchase domain of your name, get a hosting provider, and build your blog on WordPress. This will help you to get practical experience in setting up a new website. You will also get a sense of accomplishment when you first set up your website. But you have to keep going forward.
- Create content – Content is the king. The one who creates content can play a long game in digital marketing and the digital world. If you do not have any idea to create content then just create content around the things you have learned from digital marketing. This is the best way to start creating content. Create content in the form of blogs, images, or videos and publish it on your website and social media platforms.
- Perform SEO – After publishing your content you have to make sure that it is visible to your audience. For this, you will need to optimize your website. Start with keyword research, add relevant keywords, create content around such keywords, optimize meta description and images, reduce the load time of your website, study analytics performance of your website, and so on. Apply everything you have learned about Search Engine Optimization.
- Run ads – Running ads will require a huge budget. The point here is to not make sales but to get familiar with the interface of Facebook ads manager and Google ads. You can create a lead magnet like a free SEO checklist or digital marketing guide ebook to run ads for. Start with a traffic campaign with the budget you feel comfortable with. Run ads for about one week and analyze the performance of your ads. Understand every metric and get familiar with running paid ads.
Performing all these steps will give you immense confidence and you can add this to your resume to increase your credibility. You will get a clearer idea about how all these things work. This blog should not be perfect. So do not let perfection stop you from starting out. Just build your blog and start creating content.
4. Grow your network
You have now learned the basics and advanced digital marketing concepts. You have also started to apply all the learnings by creating your blog. The next step is to grow your network. Networking will boost your career in unexpected ways. You will learn more, get more work, and improve your skill by networking. Most people ignore this because they think they don’t need this.
In the professional world, a network will help you to strive through the ups and downs of your career. Everybody has a social group in social life. This group helps individuals to share the ups and downs of life. In a similar way, the network is the social group of your professional world.
Your network will help you to introduce yourself to the market. You will get references and recommendations. You will get more clients. You will learn from other’s mistakes. And last but not the least, your network will also help you to get a job. But the question is how can I start networking? The answer is simple. Just make new connections! Here are a few tips to start networking.
- Create your account on LinkedIn and start sending connection requests to relevant profiles of digital marketers.
- Join Facebook and LinkedIn groups of digital marketers.
- Start the conversation by sending a genuine message.
- Show appreciation for others in their post by leaving positive and encouraging comments.
- Ask your doubts and questions in a group conversation.
- Attend networking events offline.
- Sign up for online workshops.
By doing so, you will start building your network with real people. Many of them won’t give you an appropriate response but some of them will help you selflessly. Such people will make all the difference. Grow your connection with such people. Talk about the latest trends, tips, hacks, and everything about the industry. You can also follow, closely observe and learn from entrepreneurs and business magnates like Garyvee, Seth Godin, and Tony Robbins.
5. Work for clients (free)
As you have grown your network and worked on your skill at the same time, it is time to start making money. Finding clients and closing your first client will be challenging. There are many ways to approach a new client. You can start by creating your profile on freelancing websites like Upwork, Fiverr, and Peopleperhour. You can also ask your network if anybody needs digital marketing services. Here are a few tips on how to find clients and crack the deal.
Before reaching out to client:
- Create your profile on freelancing websites
- Create your resume and add you blog info and certifications
- Complete your LinkedIn profile by adding your projects and certifications
- Add professional-looking photo to your all profile pictures
Finding clients:
- Join LinkedIn and Facebook groups of your potential clients
- Ask your network to inform you if anybody needs digital marketing service
- Bid for projects on freelancing websites
- Create a list of client profiles on LinkedIn and starting sending genuine messages
Closing the deal:
- Offer free consultations and site audit
- Be polite, honest and transparent
- Do not ask for money immediately
- Try to help them understand how will add value to their business
- Understand their expectations and offer the right solution
After closing the deal:
- Under promising and over-delivering
- Add value to their business in terms of sales and revenue
- Respect their time and deliver before deadline
- Stay in touch and keep them posted every day
- Communicate with them in their time zone (in case of foreign clients).
All these steps will help you to close your first deal. Repeat these steps over and over to grow your client base. Always remember to over-deliver than you promised. One happy client will recommend you to their network and you will get a new client. Repeat the process until you start getting enough referral clients to work for.
6. Become an alpha version of digital marketer
Learning advanced digital marketing and working for clients will help you to earn money. With a few months of experience, you can call yourself an expert digital marketer. But as you gain more experience you will need to grow your expertise.
You have to provide such a service that your client does not get from anybody else. You have to aim to become an extraordinary digital marketer. Your prediction of the campaign should be accurate, your strategy should be reliable and your consultation should be of high quality. There should be some quality in you that your clients don’t find in other digital marketers. Here are some tips to become an alpha version of a digital marketer.
- Observe your surroundings – As we live our everyday life we encounter a number of marketing tactics that marketers use to sell their products. When you commute, observe the billboard, when you listen to the radio, observe the radio ads, when you watch TV, observe TV ads, when you talk to your friends and family, observe they convince you to go for a night out. Study how all these things can impact you psychologically and which factors make decisions.
- Observe your social media – People spend an average of 60 minutes scrolling through social media every day. In these 60 minutes, we are bombarded with tons of digital ads. Some ads we ignore, some ads we check, some ads we click, and from a few ads we purchase. Observe this pattern. When you purchase a product from digital ads, what were the factors that made you buy that product? What type of ad was that? Video ad? Image ad? What hooks you to click on that ad? When you start observing all these things your horizon of thinking will expand. You will get a new perspective on marketing. You will start observing the patterns and eventually, you will apply them in your projects.
- Observe brands – The best ads are the ones that do not look like an ad. Such ads are more educational/entertaining and less promoting. It gets blended with your feed. At first sight, you won’t feel like you are being sold something. Instead, you would feel like you are being entertained or educated. Brands like Apple are experts in such marketing ads. So the next time you see an ad that blends in with your taste, watch it again and try to learn from them. You can also watch case studies of such brands on YouTube.
When you start applying all these things, you will experience a shift in your perspective and an expansion of your horizon. And as you apply all these lessons to your blog and freelancing projects, you will become an alpha version of a digital marketer.
7. Look for internships
Being an alpha digital marketer, you can now charge a premium to your clients. You can handle multiple projects at a time. But if you still want to get more experience and make your career as a professional digital marketer then you need to apply for jobs and internships. Having such a great resume and experience, your scope of getting a high paying job will be high. Internships and jobs will give you the opportunity to work on live projects. These projects will be on a large scale. You will work with a team. You will work with clients having a marketing budget of millions of dollars. You will experience a high sense of responsibility for your work. And lastly, your job would not suck because you will be doing what you love.
If you are looking for a digital marketing internship that can help you to become an alpha version of a digital marketer then you should definitely join this internship program. The best part of this internship program is that you will get paid to learn digital marketing. Click the button below to know more about the internship.
Conclusion
The future of digital marketing is bright. People have already started making their fortune in this field. Before the market gets saturated, It’s time for you to learn digital marketing without breaking your bank.