If you are looking to start in digital marketing – you’ve come to the right place. Digital marketing presents an unparalleled opportunity to achieve personal and business goals. This guide is tailored specifically for you, offering a clear and comprehensive pathway into digital marketing.
It will equip you with the essential knowledge and practical steps needed to harness digital channels effectively. Whether to elevate your business’s online presence or to advance your marketing career, we got actionable tips for you.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Content marketing
Social media marketing
Email marketing
Affiliate marketing
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
Digital Analytics
The breadth and depth of each field means that it’s impossible to master them all. Your approach to mastering digital marketing is significantly influenced by the scale of your organization.
Given this context, it’s essential to customize your learning journey to fit both your specific role within the organization and the broader business environment in which you operate.
Typically, individuals embarking on this path fall into two main categories: business owners and career marketers. Each group faces unique challenges and objectives, which means distinct learning strategies.
For business owners, the focus is often on gaining a broad understanding of digital marketing strategies. Your objectives would be to drive leads and revenue to your business. You want expertise across multiple disciplines to drive success but don’t want to be the expert. That’s what employees are for!
On the other hand, career marketers might delve deeper into specialized areas within digital marketing. The aim would be to develop expertise that can enhance their career outcomes.
Once you’ve identified your learning path, it’s time to dive into theory.
Initially, my first destination would be Digital Garage by Google, an invaluable resource offering a broad overview across multiple digital marketing disciplines. From SEO to online advertising, it presents a wealth of knowledge at no cost, serving as an ideal starting point for beginners.
After laying the groundwork with an introduction to the basics, I would then shift focus towards acquiring more specialized knowledge. This phase of learning would involve turning to industry publications like Search Engine Land, well known in the industry for their up-to-the-minute coverage on the latest trends, insights, and breakthroughs in the digital marketing landscape.
The next step would be to delve into resources provided by digital marketing agencies and marketing software brands. These materials often offer perspectives drawn from practical experiences.
Lastly, I would regularly engage with YouTube, where there are many free resources and content from industry professionals.
There is no expectation to become an expert just by studying theory. You only need to obtain enough theory to be able to execute.
That’s why execution is really the defining factor for success for digital marketing.
You’ll need to complement your theory with some practical experience.
Websites are the foundation of digital marketing so it’s the best practical way to start.
It doesn’t really matter how you achieve a website build ; what’s important is just getting started. You could use a simple drag-and-drop builder, edit a WordPress template or even dive into coding one from scratch. The kicker is that you don’t need a formal business to launch a website. Creating a personal website is a low barrier way to get into website creation.
The key is to try challenge yourself technically. No matter the path you choose. Owning your own website is like having a personal lab where you can try out various marketing ideas and see what works best.
When you have a website, you can access useful data about how many people visit your site, how long they stay, and what they do there. This information is really helpful for figuring out which parts of your marketing plan are working.
Plus, having your own website lets you play around with its design. You can learn a lot about what makes a website easy and enjoyable to use, which is super important in keeping visitors interested.
The best part about building a website is that it naturally leads you to the next important step in digital marketing: attracting visitors. Essentially, creating a website sets you on a path where you’re motivated to learn and apply strategies to increase your site’s traffic.
Learning digital marketing is a lot about understanding different numbers and what they mean for your website and campaigns. These metrics track site visits, user engagement with content, and conversions, such as purchases or newsletter sign-ups.
Keeping an eye on these numbers helps you figure out what’s working well and what’s not. For example, if a lot of people visit your site but leave quickly, you might need to make your content more interesting.
Using tools like Google Analytics is a big part of this. These tools show you detailed information about your visitors and how they behave on your site. The key is to use this information to try out new ideas and see how they work.
You could change the way you write your posts or when you post them and then check the numbers to see if more people are visiting your site or staying longer. Continuously checking, adjusting, and rechecking is key to enhancing digital marketing and crafting impactful campaigns.
When starting out in digital marketing, it’s really easy for to feel swamped by all the different options available. It’s tempting to try everything, but the best strategy is to focus on what will net you the fastest short term results
This way, regardless if you are a career marketer or a business owner, your learning is tied to business outcomes.
For business owners, pick a discipline that drives in traffic straight away (we recommend PPC). Then pick another discipline that converts that traffic to revenue. Email and CRM are staples for conversion.
For career marketers, it’ll take some discovery to figure out what you enjoy and what you are good at. Once again, align it to short term results so you can demonstrate value to your employers.
The concept of being a ‘T-shaped’ marketer has become increasingly valuable. This idea refers to having a broad understanding of multiple marketing disciplines (the horizontal bar of the ‘T’) while also possessing deep knowledge in one specific area (the vertical bar). For both business owners and career marketers, developing a T-shaped skill set can offer immense value, whether in the context of employment or running a business.
Becoming a T-shaped marketer means you’re not just a jack-of-all-trades but also a master of one. This combination is highly sought after in the modern digital marketing world. It allows employees to offer maximum value to their employers and enables business owners to ensure success in their key marketing channel while managing others efficiently, either directly or through external support. This approach balances broad awareness with deep expertise, positioning you for success in the dynamic field of digital marketing.
Our resources page is a great place to start when you are just beginning. Make sure you look for the beginner topics!
I’m a seasoned Digital Marketing Consultant with over 11,700 hours of hands-on platform experience. Let’s discuss how I can help you unlock the full potential of your digital marketing.
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