In a world where the need to market your brand and reach new audiences is paramount, digital marketing is an incredibly important aspect. While for many years marketing consisted of more traditional, brick and mortar-style approaches, reaching consumers via email, social media, search and beyond has never been easier.
Many digital platforms and channels allow virtually anybody to create both organic and paid digital marketing content. While these platforms can be easy to use, most lack the necessary knowledge, skills and experience to effectively utilize them for maximum benefit.
Much like businesses and brands enlisted the services of professional marketing firms in decades past, many are now choosing to hire or contract with digital marketing professionals. These individuals, many of whom can provide services from anywhere in the world, benefit businesses in a plethora of ways.
As such, here are ten reasons why digital marketing grads are currently in such high demand.
A Relative Shortage of Graduates
Arguably one major reason why digital marketing graduates are in such high demand is the relative shortage of graduates themselves. Given the explosion of digital marketing solutions for businesses, it shouldn’t be surprising that most companies are getting in on the action.
Whether businesses directly hire individuals as part of a broader digital marketing team or are seeking to contract with marketing firms, there is a strain on supply in terms of graduates.
This actually makes pursuing a bachelor’s or master’s degree in digital marketing quite appealing for many. Universities such as Emerson College Online offer flexible digital marketing and data analytics degrees that are 100% online. Specializing in all aspects of digital marketing — from consumer insights to brand storytelling — colleges like Emerson College Online put students on the fast-track to careers in the highly-lucrative and in-demand field of digital marketing.
An Understanding of Marketing Trends
Businesses may be good at what they do, and entrepreneurs may have a keen mind for business in general, but marketing is an entirely different ballgame.
Digital marketing, however, requires an understanding of trends and analytics to accurately plan successful digital marketing campaigns for the future. Some of the emerging trends in digital marketing include:
- Personalizing the shopping experience
- Maximizing campaign effectiveness for voice searches
- Using visual content to persuade audiences
- Focusing on methods to retain customers and generate loyalty
Digital marketing graduates have an innate understanding of these trends, allowing them to develop highly-effective campaigns that produce optimal results.
The Freedom to Focus Elsewhere
Entrepreneurs, CEOs and managers — especially for small businesses — often feel like they must handle every aspect of day-to-day decision-making. This can be both tiresome and ineffective: after all, even the smartest entrepreneurs aren’t masters at every facet of business.
Digital marketing graduates provide these companies with an ability to delegate critical marketing decisions and actions to those with experience. This makes it possible for managers, leaders and even other employees to more adequately focus on their own departments and tasks.
Rather than worrying about how to improve marketing campaigns and micromanaging each decision, digital marketing hires take on this responsibility and allow you to focus elsewhere.
A Guarantee for Future Growth
Another prime reason why businesses are scooping up digital marketing graduates left and right is the inherent profitability that the profession provides. A skilled digital marketing expert can cultivate campaigns for virtually any business that result in unlimited growth potential.
(Click here to find out which businesses are generating the best ROIs from digital marketing.)
While the adage “you have to spend money to make money” applies, digital marketing professionals know how to generate prime return on investment with each campaign. As a result, each campaign can generate more revenue than it costs in expenditures, helping to rake in more profit and grow the business overall.
A Reduction in Marketing Costs
Even though full-time or contracted digital marketing professionals cost money, the benefits can add up quickly. It’s not just a matter of earning more profit and growing your customer base: it’s also a matter of avoiding potential pitfalls and mistakes that amateur marketers make constantly.
Digital marketing can be used for virtually every purpose that traditional marketing allows for, all while providing a more affordable price-point. As Plus1Comms outlined in an explanation about digital marketing saving money:
“Traditional advertising is great for increasing brand awareness because it’s directed to a large public audience, but it’s hard to measure.”
On top of this, digital marketing graduates have an understanding of what is needed to adjust campaigns to improve performance, as well as avoid bad decisions that lead to a waste of ad budgets. Overall, many digital marketing hires not only reduce marketing costs, but save businesses money in the long term.
The Flexibility to Reach Everyone
Another important reason why digital marketing graduates are in such high demand is the fact that digital marketers allow for universal reach. When thinking about traditional forms of marketing, you have a variety of options such as:
- Newspaper/print media
- Direct mail campaigns
- Television
- Signage
Besides being expensive, each one of these formats can be limiting in terms of who your business reaches. Digital marketers know how to use modern campaign strategies to reach virtually all of your target audience.
Whether it be through email, social media, search engines or elsewhere, digital marketing allows brands not only to reach a maximum share of their audience, but also allows for affordable impressions to be made upon the same customers across multiple platforms. This helps maximize the effectiveness of any marketing campaign.
A Better Understanding of Your Industry
Copious amounts of market research, consumer data and analytics are necessary to truly understand the inherent complexities of any industry. Even the savviest entrepreneurs and business owners cannot fully plot the nuances of their niches without a bit of assistance. This is another key reason why digital marketing graduates are so intensely desired.
The impact of market research on digital marketing is incredible. Such analysis can help with:
- Determining your target audiences
- Discovering crucial influencers
- Finding optimal digital platforms for marketing
Because of this, digital marketing hires don’t just provide assistance with deploying ideal ad campaigns. They also lend a hand in maximizing organic brand reach and focusing your brand’s efforts in areas and at audiences where the greatest potential for gains exist.
Improved Scalability
One of the most integral elements to success for businesses and brands is their ability to grow effectively. As a business continues to grow, the need for additional employees to perform vital tasks increases. This can cause growing pains for many businesses, as the need to hire new staff and make new investments can often be difficult to balance with projected revenue growth.
As such, many businesses rely upon digital marketing graduates to simplify the process a bit. Perhaps most importantly, digital marketing teams can often easily scale operations up or down without a need for additional employees or resources. Other than an ad budget, digital marketing teams can dramatically increase visibility through multi-channel campaigns as needed.
This scalability factor makes digital marketing not only a task that can help grow your business at-large, but one that takes away concerns about whether your marketing team can adapt to growth. It should go without saying that there is huge demand for employees who are essentially insulated from the major concerns surrounding scalability.
An Ability to Tell a Story via Ads
In both traditional and digital marketing, storytelling remains a prime component of any successful media campaign. Storytelling allows for a variety of benefits in digital marketing, all of which help improve the return on investment in campaigns. Such benefits include:
- Stronger connections with your target audience
- A simplified message that audiences can appreciate
- A personalized feel for an otherwise generic brand’s message
Digital marketing graduates can effectively weave together stories that make digital marketing campaigns all that more persuasive. The best digital marketing stories tend to be universal, easily convey a core message and provide a compelling narrative.
While not every marketing campaign will have room to tell an actual story, digital marketers know how to shape even the simplest elements of marketing into those that project a narrative. This is why they are so highly sought-out by brands and businesses alike.
Measurable Results for Marketing
When everyday employees are responsible for juggling the acts of marketing, the results can be mixed — and often unmeasurable. Small businesses in particular face this struggle, as their existing employees may not even have backgrounds in digital marketing.
The good news is that almost any business can afford the services of digital marketing graduates, whether through dedicated hires or through the services of a firm. Digital marketing professionals ultimately know how to track progress and measure results, using a variety of marketing metrics such as:
- Conversions
- Bounce rate
- Cost per click
- KPI
- Social reach
The ability for digital marketing graduates to track results in real time allows for quick and meaningful campaign adjustments, as well as long-term assessments of which strategies generate the best ROI.
Digital marketing graduates are in demand for a variety of reasons, but their sheer skill, experience and understanding of modern marketing broadly explains the reason. With so many digital marketing opportunities available to businesses today, enlisting the services of those best-equipped to maximize their potential only makes sense.
