10 Reasons Why You re Not a Digital Marketer

Finally, the last candidate walks in and makes herself comfortable. After a series of preliminary questions, I asked “What will you be doing for us, if you’re hired?” to which she replied, “I’ll be the digital marketer wherein I’ll handle all digital promotion of the company.”

Sounds good so far, I further inquired about her level of knowledge and expertise with SEO, content creation, content marketing, Email marketing, Google Ads, Affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, etc.

To be a digital marketer, you must understand the nitty-gritty of all the niches that digital marketing encompasses. You might not want to hear it, but before you call yourself a digital marketer, make sure you’ve covered all the bases. 

Anyways back to my story, her response to my inquiry was “I have a basic knowledge of…” I dug deeper into her skillet and past works and discovered she was adept in social media marketing and management. 

Should you be called a digital marketer if you’re only good in one niche of digital marketing? 

WHO IS A DIGITAL MARKETER?

Digital marketing is the act of using electronic devices, and the internet to create awareness for a product or service. In essence, a digital marketer employs digital platforms to reach customers, establish brand awareness, and promote products and services. They spend their days generating, posting, or updating content, monitoring or managing social interactions and campaigns, or doing other tasks to help a company’s digital channels succeed.

10 REASONS WHY YOU ARE NOT A DIGITAL MARKETER

Being a digital marketer is broad and the learning curve is quite intense as well. Excelling in one niche doesn’t make you a digital marketer.

Let’s look at the numerous resources and technologies that, if you lack them, will render your “digital marketer” title insufficient.

1. One Niche Knowledge: you can’t be a digital marketer if you excel in only one area of the vast areas of digital marketing. It’s the truth. To bear the title, you have to walk the walk

Digital marketers wear many hats and do different things at the same time. They set up advert campaigns, run Ads on all digital platforms, create content and repurpose them to suit each platform, prepare marketing and sales pitches, monitor conversions, analyze data, optimize content and websites, etc. 

The list is extensive. Try not to go about tooting your horn about being a digital marketer until you have both feet firmly planted in every niche that exists in digital marketing, 

2. Writing Capabilities: “I hate writing, I can’t deal with it.”  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but to be an efficient digital marketer, you must breathe and sleep words, it’s inescapable. Every content that a business has hinges on writing. Social media posts, blog posts, website information, Advertisement scripts, etc are first written and edited.

Copy.ai, Quillbot, and Grammarly are some of the tools available to help you write better.

A digital marketer is not just any writer but a brand’s storyteller. You must blend storytelling and information sharing to create brand recognition. The ultimate goal of your writing is to persuade the reader to take a certain action, such as signing up for a newsletter, purchasing a product, subscribing to your website, or following you on social media.
  
What you say matters, but how you say it matters more.

3. Poor Research Skills: To be a successful digital marketer, you must enjoy conducting research. The primary purpose and role of a marketer are to determine what the target audience wants, who they are, where they are, and how to effectively communicate the message and raise brand awareness to them. All of this is achievable because of meticulously planned and executed research.

Every problem that a business encounters can be tackled with thorough research. Whether it’s generating leads, selecting a website theme, building an email template, learning what a competitor is up to, learning how current and former business colleagues resolved challenges, or learning about the audience’s newly acquired taste. The list is extensive and diverse. Research may be used to solve any problem at any time. 

And the digital marketer’s goal is to turn those vast lists of inquiries into data that can be manipulated and insights gleaned from.

4. Lack of Basic Excel Proficiency: “Oh my God, I’ve to know Excel too?” Of course, you do, unless you have a secret data analysis tool. All the data in the world is useless if you can’t analyze it; make sense of it. 

Having researched to figure out what the problem is, the next step is to use data analysis software to break down the data into actionable categories so a marketing solution can be proffered. 

5. Lack of WordPress Expertise: WordPress is one of the biggest Content Management systems. Techcrunch, Time magazine, CNN press room, Disney books, Spotify Newsroom, and Hypebeast to mention but a few all use WordPress.

That’s to say, WordPress isn’t just a CMS that small-scale businesses use to quickly put together a website. It’s a content management machine that most likely any business that needs the services of a digital marketer is using or should be introduced to. 

In other words, the volume at which you shout “digital marketer” should be reduced if you’re deficient in this tool.

6. Poor Design skills: the bedrock of digital marketing is visuals. No matter the digital platform, visuals are king. Graphics, animations, motion graphics, UI/UX, website design, etc. all thrive on how appealing their aesthetics are.

In this case, a digital marketer doesn’t necessarily need to know how to use design tools, but it’s paramount that design knowledge and techniques are understood. That’s the only way a digital marketer can ask that an image used on a design be changed as it doesn’t convey the same information as the written content, and confidently correct the website developer on color usage and text hierarchy. 

No matter how good a copy is, how well written and structured a blog post is, how engaging an Instagram carousel written content is, if the accompanying graphics design that houses them is not visually appealing, it’s a massive failure. 

7. Poor Email Marketing and Newsletters Marketing: Email isn’t dead and it’s not going away any moment soon. But why is email important and why should a digital marketer be able to write killer emails, you wonder. Let’s dissect it, shall we

Emails and newsletters are tools companies employ to build intimacy with their audience. Top companies have cracked the email code. Google shared an email that their GMB app will be replaced by  Google Maps starting July 2022. Bolt will inform you of an app upgrade or a possible hike in price via emails. Banks have taken emails a step further by personalizing them; you receive birthday messages, frequent informative content, month-end financial reports, and resolve financial issues all via emails. 

Remember, one of the most significant roles of a digital marketer is data collection and analysis. Emails are used to reach the audience directly, find out what they want, the kind of product they prefer, and what has irked them about your product, and disseminate information on imminent changes. 

Whenever you think of direct audience reach and communication, think emails

8. Poor Marketing Automation Analysis: marketing automation is the process of creating automated tasks and response systems that save time. With marketing automation, businesses set up automated responses that target their customers via email, web, social, mobile, and any other digital platform. While you focus on business expansion, a marketing automation plan can save you time and money while driving revenue and ROI.

As a digital marketer, it’s important you know how to create a landing page, set up forms, design and schedule emails

9. Google Adwords: does it get any more digital than Google? You shouldn’t proclaim yourself a digital marketer if you can’t run a successful Google Ad. 

Most of the businesses you’ll be working with, will desire to expand brand awareness and reach, and generate high revenue via Google Ads. As a digital marketer, you should know how to create, optimize, analyze and report on the performance of Google Ads using Google Analytics.

10. Inability to think Creatively and Critically: Digital marketing is an art (design, writing, editing) and science (Google analytics, Marketing automation, SEO), and a successful digital marketer should be able to merge the two forms efficiently and effectively. None is more important than the other. 

Author: Olivia Eneani

(Content creator and digital marketer, 07068308137)