The marketing industry has quickly evolved to adjust to the digital world, as recent technological improvements have had significant effects on the industry. Print advertisements are fading out with the decline in sales of newspapers, magazines, and catalogs, while online sales and digital downloads increase.
We have far more online banner ads, video ads, and email than we do billboards and direct mail. Marketers are rushing to keep pace with the boom in online shopping. Likewise, because new technology pops up daily, new digital marketing roles are created to meet these new and ever-changing digital needs and market accordingly to get the attention of internet users.
Some of these newer roles might not currently exist in your company, so consider what aspects of digital marketing these roles fulfill and decide whether or not that’s something your business could benefit from.
If the following positions still exist in 15 or 20 years, they’ll likely have evolved beyond what they are now. If you’re looking to fill positions like these for your business, keeping this in mind could help with protecting and advancing your business into the future.
Digital Marketing Specialist
Of the various new digital marketing positions, a certain type of digital expert was necessary to help digitize businesses’ marketing plans and strategies and take them directly to their customers. That role is that of the digital marketing specialist.
A digital marketing manager strategizes and manages the digital aspects of a business’s marketing strategy. They work to construct solid online marketing strategies, as well as to entice and catch the interest of customers on a business’ website, social media pages and various other digital platforms. The digital marketing manager is also usually required to communicate with print marketing and PR teams to ensure that the business has focused and consistent marketing goals.
Although digital marketers and other marketing professionals are aiming for the same thing, digital marketers needed to adjust to become more knowledgeable about technology as well as be more digitally concentrated focusing on results-driven digital marketing campaigns and messaging for current and potential customers. The vast amount of information gathered from internet users has enabled digital marketers to design refined messaging campaigns aimed at specific audiences.
Inbound Marketing Specialist
One of the latest careers in the digital marketing industry is inbound marketing. Unlike standard outbound marketing, where companies pay lots of money to push their messaging everywhere possible, inbound marketing isn’t as obtrusive, is less costly and frequently produces better results.
Inbound marketers zone in on addressing the concerns and issues of buyers at all phases of the sales process. Search engines such as Google and Bing are what help allow this specialty area in marketing, where marketers look for relevant inquiries and searches from current and potential buyers and design content that acknowledges those questions and searches helps respond to them. An inbound marketer’s job is to present their company as the best place to seek information from for users searching for related keywords or phrases. For example, an inbound marketing specialist for a jewelry manufacturer would likely design content for searches such as “Qualities of a good diamond.”
SEO Specialist/Analyst
With smartphones, extremely wide varieties of businesses are accessible to everyone, and they are all trying to outdo each other in order to earn consumers’ loyalty. Because search engines are the biggest influencers of site traffic, businesses want to be viewed as the industry leader for whatever product(s) or service(s) they are selling. But it’s easy to get lost in the search results pages if you don’t use the right methods or tools to get your business found.
This is where search engine optimization (SEO) analysts come in. An SEO expert can assist businesses with improving their websites and content optimization by analyzing the site, cultivating and implementing strategies, and increasing search rankings. This helps improve online search visibility so that your site shows up on that very sought-after page 1 of search results and appears consistently in keyword search results, which helps prospective buyers find your business more easily. Because SEO is always changing, this becomes an ongoing task requiring staying up to date with Google’s latest guidelines and trends and checking site analytics for progress and any modifications that need to be made.
Web Analyst
The World Wide Web became available to the public in August of 1991. The first websites started popping up shortly thereafter, but the existence of web analysts started significantly later. Web analysts study website data to determine ways to refine a site, as well as to find and fix any bugs. Their findings can also help the business make tactical choices that will help accomplish their goals, particularly if their website is their main way of making their service(s) or product(s) available to consumers.
Social Media Manager
With 2.46 billion social media users worldwide (and that number continues to grow), it is no surprise that social media managers are highly sought after all over the world. Many individuals use social media on a daily basis and receive their news and other information from social media a majority of the time. That means social media is essential to drawing in potential buyers. Currently, social media is a major medium for brands to communicate with their buyers, particularly millennial pop culture influencers with substantial buying power.
A social media manager’s job is to strategize, oversee and preserve all of a business’s social networks to ensure that they are brand consistent and acknowledge all customer feedback. Staying current on social media is an essential part of staying ahead in our present digitally-based world.
96% of marketers surveyed in a study completed by the Social Media Examiner stated that they were indeed using social media marketing. 92% of marketers surveyed from the same study also stated that social media was imperative to their brands. Naturally, businesses are looking for digital marketing specialists who can accurately express and communicate brand standards on social media while communicating with and drawing interest from current and prospective customers through promotions (i.e. deals/sales/coupons), content and productive dialogue/communication.
Chief Listening Officer
This is a fairly new but quite important job position within the digital marketing industry. It is a step up from the social media manager position and requires more of a comprehensive strategy for social media. A Chief Listening Officer supervises both the external and internal correspondence to get a better grasp of what customers do and don’t like about the company and its products/services and then form strategies to improve or uphold those thoughts and ideas with the help of the social media manager.
They also present their results to company investors concerning things like brand criticisms, new merchandise ideas, tips from buyers and overall comments and opinions from social listening. With people being more open to sharing their thoughts and ideas on social media, this position plays a large part in advanced thinking to remain ahead of your competitors and keep buyers content with your business.
Data Scientist/Analyst
The phrase “data science” has been a business buzzword for a few decades, but the data scientist/analyst role today has transformed to meet the digital modifications within the business world. Understanding your market is vital for maintaining a prosperous business. So having a knowledgeable data scientist to assist with gathering information into easily understandable data visuals and insights is incredibly essential.
Data scientists/analysts use a mix of technology and business skills to gather and simplify data relevant to a company, specifically looking for statistics and patterns that can help in advising and refining a company’s internal and external operational choices. They have large amounts of organized, semi-organized and disorganized data available to them. Therefore, they need to be able to gather, decode, simplify and apply large data sets to specially designed data plans of action for businesses. There are pros and cons to having all this information available. It is excellent for maintaining an advantage over competitors, but only if you’re aware of how to use it in the right way.
A data analyst, for instance, can follow and record weather and purchase patterns and determine a possible connection between hot weather and buyer habits, and then use that to develop ways to increase sales (i.e. promoting a 15% off coupon on hot-weather days when most individuals are less likely to buy a particular product or service).
Because gathering and processing of data is one of the leading trends in the digital field, there has been particularly strong growth with jobs in data. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall number of market research analyst jobs is expected to grow by 19% through 2024.
UX Designer
User experience (UX) designers focus on just that – guaranteeing the best imaginable user experience by enhancing and improving the convenience and practicality of products and websites in order to make user dealings with technology a satisfying and easy experience. This position has actually existed for a while in many variations, but as companies put additional value on online presence, user experience becomes more and more significant. In the digital field, this means designing websites that are instinctive, simplified and effective.
A UX designer’s role can be crucial, particularly on e-commerce sites/web stores where a user’s experience can affect their buying decisions. They explore various possibilities and methods using A/B testing in order to figure out the best kinds of landing pages, calls to action, buyer journeys, etc., to use throughout the site and its related products (e.g. apps). This enhances the buyer experience and general satisfaction of customers. It also provides a good awareness and understanding about web users to help a business improve.
A comparable role is that of a user interface designer, which places more emphasis on the design factor. Whether you have more business interest with web development or graphic design, keep in mind that both positions are projected to grow faster than normal because of heightened demand for web-related design work.
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