Career in Digital Marketing: Why You Should Get a Certificate and Where to Start?

Last updated on March 11, 2021

We are living in an ever-changing fast-paced world, and it brings a lot of new opportunities with it. One of those opportunities is a career in Digital Marketing. We are relying on the internet more and more every day, the companies are now going online for marketing, and to manage this, they need professionals. They’re on a lookout for people who understand social media, ads, sales, and more. Digital marketing has many aspects to it and they are fast changing. It’s not necessary to learn all the skills plus it’s not even practical. Digital marketing is more of a skill-based career and focuses less on the experience. Thus, even a newbie can launch his/her career in this field.

Digital marketing requires skills such as creativity, willingness to learn, working in, and as a team. The best part is that you don’t need to join a college to learn these skills. There are many companies that look for different but effective ideas to boost their sales through marketing. So even if you don’t have a degree/certification in digital marketing, you can still land yourself into some decent jobs if your ideas are good enough and out of the box.

If you’re interested in a career in digital marketing, keep reading to learn more about the field. As said earlier, digital marketing has many different parts to it and it’s constantly changing and evolving while adapting to the consumers’ tastes and needs. It’s not possible to list all of its aspects, but some of them have been listed below:

• Marketing automation
• Email marketing
• Copywriting
• Web analytics
• Search engine marketing (SEM)
• Search engine optimization (SOM)
• Digital advertising
• Managing social media handles (Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, Youtube, etc.)
• Content marketing
• Design
• Mobile marketing, including SMS
• Apps
• Growth hacking

Digital marketing covers a broad spectrum of areas. Some employers might be looking out for growth hackers while others might be looking for social media handlers.

Employers are now looking for skilled people in this field and you can get these skills by doing a certified digital marketing specialist course. A certified course is a viable alternative to university/college degrees. Completing the digital marketing course will validate your skills and abilities in your field of expertise. Companies require people with true information and knowledge of the field and employees with certification will give them that assurance. It will ensure the employers that you have relevant knowledge in the field. The importance of getting a certification is given below:

1. It will give you a competitive edge over your peers. Having certifications in courses that your peers don’t have will certainly give you an upper hand in the competition.
2. The certification will give you professional recognition. It will give your potential employer an ability to recognize your high standard skills and rate you accordingly. Many organizations encourage their employees to take up the certification in order to gain the confidence of their clients.
3. It will demonstrate your commitment to professionalism. It will prove that you have put in efforts to excel in your career, boosting your professional credibility and increasing your prestige in your workplace.
4. By completing the certification course, you will realize that you have gained a boost in your confidence. The new and updated information and techniques about the industry will help in improving your pre-existing skills, increasing your output, and overall gain incompetency.
5. Certification will provide you with up-to-date skill sets based on a strong foundation of knowledge. These skills will help you in executing your work in a better and efficient way. It will help you to stand out among a pool of candidates during a recruitment process.
6. As said earlier, it’s an ever-growing field. Certification will provide you with the basic skills of the field which in return will help you in forming a strong foundation for industry level work. So, no matter what kind of new projects you face if you have a solid foundation, it will definitely help you in all your projects, keeping you ever ready for all kinds of new projects that’ll come in your way.
7. Getting a certificate with a specialization is priceless in this constantly changing industry. Employers look for specialized skills while hiring, such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, content marketing, etc.
8. All the time and efforts invested in the certification course will ultimately help you in increasing your earning potential. People with certification are more likely to get hired and their pay is higher than their non-certified peers. Specialization in different fields (as mentioned above) will also increase your chances of getting even higher pay.

According to Salary.com, the median salary of digital marketing managers in the United States is $102,932. The salary depends on a number of factors such as skills, specializations, certifications, education performance, and experience. Like all other fields, people with more experience get paid more. Australia, Netherlands, the United States of America, and Canada are the countries that pay the maximum salaries to people associated with the field of digital marketing. There are a number of multinational companies that hire people for digital marketing such as Accenture, Capgemini, HCL, Cognizant, SG Analytics, KNOREX, American Express, Agdova Technologies, Amazon, United Spirits, etc.

Digital Marketing is a growing field with a lot of opportunities emerging every day. These are the most exciting times to get skills in digital marketing. Certification in digital marketing will help you in grabbing all these opportunities while also exploring your creativity at your own pace. A career in digital marketing also gives you a flexible career choice, after getting a certification you can either work for multinational companies or you can even work as a freelancer where you can set your own charges based on your work profile.