5 Essential Skills Every Digital Marketer Needs to Know

The digital industry is vast, and it can be tough to navigate for newcomers or marketers looking to find their niche. From knowing the best data analytics tools to mastering SEO and content marketing, there can be a lot to grapple with if you don’t focus your attention on the areas that matter to a business.

A great digital marketer will have the ability to adapt quickly and learn on their own, even being ready to pivot into different digital careers if old skills become less in-demand. They will be working with diverse teams and clients, so will have to know how to communicate and build strong teams.

The great news is that there is global demand for marketers with agile digital skills. According to DMI’s research paper ‘Perpetual Evolution’, it’s talent and technology that are driving the future of digital marketing with companies keen to hire marketers with digital know-how. And never forget that it’s important to leverage and improve your hard and soft skills as you move forward into exciting new positions.

So, how do you fast-track your way up the corporate ladder or set yourself apart from the competition, particularly if you’re a digital nomad or looking to become a successful freelancer? Check out these 7 essential niche skills to keep you relevant in the ever-changing digital industry.

1. Video Marketing

Video continues to take the internet by storm and this isn’t about to stop. Customers love videos, particularly on social media, and 8 out of 10 people have purchased after watching a brand’s video.

What makes it so engaging? Because it’s personal and relevant. When people can see your face (or the face of the person promoting the brand), they are more likely to trust your business. It’s also wonderfully versatile content to use across different platforms. Just think about the success of Instagram and the rapid rise of TikTok!

Digital marketing professionals don’t have to know everything about video production. But knowing how to make videos without hiring a professional is a good place to start. There are some great tools to help you do that such as Promo and Camtasia. And if you have some training in this area and love it, your skills will never be wasted as video will always be in demand.

If you want to learn more on your own, you can try out video editing tools like Apple Final Cut Pro X or Adobe Premiere Pro.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is key to all levels of digital marketing and anyone going into the field must have a basic handle on it. You can certainly leave the highly technical, back-end stuff to the more technical people on the team, but knowing how SEO really works and a solid understanding of best practices and content optimization are crucial for running a successful digital marketing campaign.

Both SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) inform your entire digital strategy on a data and content level. So you need to be able to communicate to other teammates about this and won’t get far without learning the basics and understanding how SEO and SEM can work together.

3. Content Marketing

Content is at the core of digital marketing and content marketing will continue to be a crucial part of the game no matter what happens. But content marketing is a huge job in itself. You have to be able to create high quality, SEO-friendly content for many channels and understand how to create an effective content strategy to engage and convert audiences.

And to make things a little more challenging, it’s important to note that content can take many forms, from video to social, emails, web content, blogs, e-books, videos, whitepapers…the list goes on. You also have to have a firm grasp of social media marketing as content is crucial on social platforms. Get some inspiration from six global brands that know how to do content marketing successfully.

4. Understand Design Thinking & Planning

Design Thinking is a term that refers to a way of approaching problems from a user-centered perspective. The approach essentially encourages us to think in a human-like way when solving large-scale complex problems.

According to The Interaction Design Foundation, there are 5 key phases to this process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. The reason why this works well is that so much of it is centered on the user experience which is key to digital marketing success. Another interesting thing about this approach is that it can be used in a non-linear way – so that in some instances you may get to the testing phase and then come back to the middle phase, for instance, to reconsider ideas.

Designers and developers are likely to use this type of approach, so it’s a good idea to at least have a solid understanding of it to pump up your marketing resume and apply it when feasible.

5. Highlight Your Unusual Skills

As far as soft skills go, great digital marketers should be curious, enjoy versatility, forward-thinking, business-focused and strategy-centered. But there is plenty of room in this field for all kinds of personalities and skillsets. So, you should leverage your unique personality to stay competitive in the industry.

It may, for instance, be unusual to find someone talented in SEO strategy as well as management, or it may be unique to find someone with a computing science degree that also loves social media. Never be afraid to use your strengths to your advantage.

What Did We Miss?

There's lots of skills that are involved in the marketing industry and it's important to hone the abilities you want to profit from. Would you rather be a novice of a lot of skills, or be a master of a few? Was there any niche skills that we forgot, please feel free to discuss in the comments.

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