How to Get Started with a Career in Digital Marketing
Interested in career in digital marketing? You’ve made a great choice! Digital marketing has become more important than ever, with the rise of eCommerce and online shopping. If a business isn’t online, it’s incredibility hard to succeed, and it’s even harder if they don’t have a digital marketing strategy.
For this reason, digital marketing professionals are in demand. Get your foot in the door with a digital marketing job and start your career with these tips.
Take classes
If you’re young and brand new to the professional digital marketing space, a great place to build up your knowledge is by taking classes. Most colleges and universities offer a number of digital marketing courses that you can take, but classes don’t have to come out of a formal institution. There are a number of online course hubs, such as Lynda.com and Udemy, where you can pay a small fee to take digital marketing classes put together by experts who are some of the best in their industry. Explore the digital marketing world through these classes, so you can start to get a sense of what interests you.
Choose a specialty
Once you have an idea of which aspects of digital marketing most interest you, it’s a good idea to start narrowing down to a couple specialties. There are so many career paths in the world of digital marketing purely on a channel and tactical level: there’s SEO, PPC, social media, PR, content marketing, web development, graphic design and so much more! Not to mention there are different specialties and niches within each of those channels.
You don’t have to lock yourself into a career path for your whole life, but it’s great to have some idea of what you’d like to start out with. It can always change and evolve down the road. Look at your current digital marketing habits to get a sense of what you like best. Do you currently write a blog? Are you an avid Instagram user? Do you enjoy web design? These can be early indicators of your specialty.
Complete an internship
With a few specialty ideas under your belt, it’s a great idea to pursue an internship so you can get a sense of how a role in this field would work. There are so many different options for internships, but probably the biggest choice you’ll make when it comes to pursuing an internship (and career) in digital marketing is whether you want to work agency or “in-house.”
An agency is a marketing company that works with many different brands to provide them marketing services. Working “in house” means that you work for one specific brand, and are a part of their marketing department. There are many differences between these two work environments, but either one is a great play to get started with your digital marketing career by completing an internship. If you’re looking for a truly fast-paced environment, then an agency internship at a company like Summon Digital, may be the perfect place to start!