Marketing has undergone substantial changes in recent years, and digital marketing has come out on top. Across the world, developers, data and insight analysts, and digital marketing managers are in high demand, often raking in salaries well over the six-figure mark. In fact, US News and World Report ranked marketing manager as the third-paying job of 2015, only behind physician and dentist. However, many digital marketing roles are going unfilled.
Why?
A talent gap exists right now in digital marketing. A whopping 90% of marketers report suffering from a shortage of digital skills, and only 8% of surveyed companies feel strong in the area of digital marketing, according to "The Future-Proof Marketer in 2015" [email required] whitepaper by digital technology training company Grovo.
Job seekers looking to enter the field need to build skills that make them competitive now.
In training digital marketing professionals, building corporate training programs, and connecting employers with digital talent, I've developed a solid understanding of the top skills professionals need to land lucrative digital jobs this year.
Moreover, my colleagues at Digital Professional Institute and I studied hundreds of job postings for digital talent, and we ended up with numbers to prove how valuable digital skills are in the current job market.
Must-Have Areas of Expertise for Today's Marketer
Here's a look at the different areas in which marketers need skills (and what skills are needed).
1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization has been around for a while, but it's more necessary than ever for digital marketers to build proficiency. Ranked fifth on LinkedIn's 25 Hottest Skills That Got People Hired in 2014, SEO was also cited as a required skill for 14% of the companies we looked at in the Digital Professional Institute study.
The best digital marketers know SEO is more than just understanding keywords and getting them on their sites. It's about optimizing websites at a page and server level to generate traffic and conversion.
To compete as a candidate for a high-paying digital marketing job, it's imperative to have technical SEO skills, including server-side settings, sitemaps, and server response codes. Moreover, competitive candidates should have experience using Moz, SEMRush, and other tools to identify customers' search behaviors and the competitive landscape.
2. Pay-per-click (PPC)
Some 7% of the companies we looked at in the study listed Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as a required skill in their job descriptions—and one of the most important and growing facets of SEM is pay-per-click (PPC).
In theory, PPC strategy is simple: increase traffic to a company's website by buying ads on search engines that charge based on the number of clicks to the website.
In practice, however, PPC is a lot more complicated.
To develop a modern PPC strategy, today's digital marketer needs to identify and group promising keywords for ad campaigns, draft compelling ads positioned to optimize click rates, and measure the results of online advertising campaigns to gain insights on how to increase ROI.
To demonstrate your abilities in this area, you need to show that you have the research and analytical skills required to create and execute a strong PPC plan that aligns with an overarching marketing strategy.
3. Mobile
Smartphones have become an omnipresent element of our daily lives, so marketers should be taking advantage of mobile opportunities. However, mobile marketing is still a relatively new field, and most businesses are behind the curve in terms of optimizing their marketing for mobile.
To demonstrate value in this area, you need to understand how mobile marketing differs from desktop marketing and communicate why that matters to the rest of the business.
Moreover, a digital marketer should have general familiarity with mobile development to best communicate with the design team and create a cohesive mobile marketing strategy that aligns with other online and offline efforts.