Digital Marketing Career Paths Explained

As the digital world dominates the marketing sector, we see why digital marketing remains a thriving industry. The career has endless opportunities for skilled professionals and innovative minds.

However, the multifaceted field is more diverse than you can imagine. Knowing several specialties is critical to ensure you pick a career that aligns with your interests and progress professionally. Without further ado, here are some popular digital marketing career paths.

Popular Digital Marketing Career Paths 

Picking a specialty and developing your expertise makes career progression more seamless. 

Having considerable marketing skills boosts your desirability as a candidate. At the same time, command over a specific subject makes you an expert digital marketer. 

So, as a rule of thumb, you must gain little knowledge in numerous disciplines and dive deeper into a particular career. Here are a few domains you may want to consider in your digital marketing career.

Social Media Manager 

Given its massive user base, more marketers look forward to investing in social media. 

Also, since social media will become even more mainstream with AR and personalised content development, engagement on Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube is expected to grow. 

You can become any brand’s voice and promote them by sharing value-driven content across social media channels. 

However, since management requires careful planning and execution, you must familiarise yourself with digital marketing tools like Buffer and Hootsuite to develop, plan, and schedule daily posts. 

A social media manager must also stay up-to-date with the latest social media trends to leverage them into marketing campaigns. 

Besides, knowing how to network with others for collaboration will also be a part of your job. For instance, businesses often partner with relevant brands or influencers for product and service promotion.  

Email Marketing Manager

Despite the use of popular social media channels, email remains a reliable communication method. 

Modern businesses still leverage email marketing to drive massive profits. Emails help boost business relationships and provide value to customers via personalised campaigns. 

As an email marketing manager, you target the audience in their inbox, unlike Facebook or Twitter. This implies your strategy must be effective enough to stand out and grab the customer's attention. 

Learning how to cultivate language and create subject lines that encourage the viewer to open the email is critical. You must build campaigns depending on the business goals, from lead nurturing emails to promotional emails. 

As a manager, you’re also expected to track progress by monitoring the clickthrough, open, conversation, and bounce rates. A/B testing follows this to pick a practical approach that boosts business.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Specialist

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques help optimise websites to increase their search engine rankings. It’s no surprise that SEO skills are highly in-demand in the digital marketing world. 

Businesses seek professionals who can design and develop content that intrigues visitors and addresses their concerns. One popular example of an SEO practice is the placement of keywords within a blog post or a website, thereby increasing its ranking. 

As an SEO specialist, you must research and identify trending keywords. Following this, the content specialist must disperse them naturally within the content. A combined effort of both move the website to the top of search results, reaching more audience and deriving more business.

Conversion Rate Optimisation Specialist

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) entails boosting website conversions. For instance, numerous people visit your website regularly, but not only a few take the desired action (subscribing to a service or signing up with their email). 

The role of a CRO specialist is to design a seamless website for enhanced conversion. Unlike search engine optimisation, the primary purpose of conversation rate optimisation isn’t merely to boost visitors but to derive value from each visit. 

Therefore, they experiment with numerous strategies and collect data to analyse results. Evaluation helps them implement the best practices to improve user engagement and conversion rates. 

If you have strong research and analytical skills, a CRO specialist can make up for a promising career in the digital marketing world.

Content Marketing Manager

Content marketing strategy entices, engages, and retains customers by sharing relatable and informational podcasts, articles, videos, posts, and more online. 

This type of marketing is crucial to any brand’s reputation. Therefore, they seek content managers who can create inspiring, entertaining, and convincing content. 

One must have strong content creation and editing skills and familiarisation with tools like Grammarly and Canva to proofread content and design enticing graphics. 

Your potential employer will also expect you to have a comprehensive understanding of the sales funnel to convert visitors into leads and leads into customers. 

Finally, content creation is only half of the job; the other half entails content promotion. Therefore, solid promotional and networking skills are a must to reach a wider audience and grow the business.

UX Designer

UX (User Experience) Designers handle every aspect of user experience, including the user's first interaction with the brand. Because user experience can make or break a business, companies seek professional UX designers to optimise the experience based on customer needs and wants. 

People who break into this field have a technical background or are versed in high-end design. You must know the end-to-end website and digital marketing app development.

As a UX designer, you are tasked to make design decisions based on your research. You are responsible for designing the pages and their components that encourage users to engage and convince them to buy the product.

The optimised the user experience, the better the conversion. This means enhanced reputation and more business for a brand.

AI Specialist

AI reduces human error, offers unbiased decisions, and is available round the clock. 

One popular example is data mining. Previously, businesses extracted data manually. Today, they leverage scraping tools to harvest online data in a snap. 

As an AI specialist, you must analyse business objectives and develop robust AI solutions to meet the goals seamlessly. 

The role requires you to collaborate with other team members, including software engineers and data scientists, to incorporate AI solutions into existing systems. 

You can contribute to any business by creating tools to scan data and customer profiles to determine the best communication methods. This information can be used to resolve customer pain points and boost efficiency. 

Because AI will only experience a spike with no signs of slowing down, it is worth learning it now. 

If you enjoy analysing data and creating systems, the AI specialist role will make up for an interesting career. It will be a sought-after field as soon as you hit the job market.

Digital Marketing Manager 

A digital marketing manager has numerous duties, from developing leads to promoting the brand and adding to a company’s growth. 

Although the precise responsibilities vary per the company size and its requirements, you’ll work closely with social media managers, AI specialists, and email marketers. This will help ensure the marketing message is aligned across different channels and delivered to the right audience. 

You’ll also collaborate with company videographers, graphic designers, and writers to plan and implement an efficient strategy for fruitful results. 

The company also expects you to measure the effectiveness of campaigns and optimise the strategies based on helpful insights.

FAQs

What Emerging Trends Should I Know as a Digital Marketer?

Social media commerce and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are a few trends you must know as a digital marketer. Social media channels keep introducing e-commerce features to allow for business growth opportunities. Likewise, AI automates numerous tasks, from predictive analysis to automated chatting. 

How Can I Further My Career In Digital Marketing?

You can scale your career in digital marketing by keeping yourself up to date with industry trends and gaining relevant qualifications and experience. Consider taking courses now and then to stay abreast of the evolving market trends and implement your learning through freelance projects. 

How Much Can I Make as a Digital Marketer? 

As a digital marketer in Ireland, you can make around €42,000 annually. However, this varies depending on your experience and location. A more experienced person residing in a city with high living costs would likely make more than a newbie living in a cheaper area.

That’s a Wrap! 

Digital marketing is a rapidly growing industry with a demand for competent professionals. It also offers consistent learning due to emerging technological advancements. Therefore, the opportunities for growth and development are endless if you’re willing to put in the effort. 

However, if you’re uncertain where to begin, consider taking a Digital Marketing Course at UCD Professional Academy. While this course will teach you basic marketing skills, from content creation to distribution, you can also consider Graphic Design, Social Media Marketing, or PR & Marketing Communications courses for specialisation. 

After completing the course, you’ll have numerous valuable skills and a certificate to back them. This will make your job application stand out, and your potential employer will be willing to consider you over other candidates.