Digital marketing is the key to success

Considering how connected our world is now, it’s no surprise that marketing has gone digital. From new channels to fresh content types, the messages we see now are everywhere, shorter, louder and spread like wildfire. Today we’ll explore how digital marketing is the key to success and what that means for your career opportunities.

How has marketing become digital?

Here are just a few ways that our connected world has changed marketing forever:

Online footprint

Before, all a company needed to worry about was the signage at its locations. Now, companies need to create engaging messages and maintain an inviting presence across the digital landscape. This means new job roles as a social media marketer, content manager, brand manager and digital marketer are available for creatives like you to explore.

Data-based strategies

Previously, you’d do some focus groups, poll a few customers and use your best judgement to come up with effective marketing campaigns. Now you can see where their eyes go on a page, track clicks, analyse sentiment and jump on trends in near real-time thanks to advanced data analytics. If you’re excited about the data side of marketing, a role as a data scientist, marketing analyst or marketing strategist might be right for you.

New content types

While many brands still produce direct mail pieces, print coupons and the like; a lot of marketing is no longer physical media. Blogs, emails, texts, videos, infographics, podcasts and social media posts are increasingly used to drive engagement and create the desire to purchase. If you love making things online, you could be a graphic designer, marketing manager, social media executive or content creator in this space.

For the bots

Next, we can’t ignore the algorithms. Before digital marketing, you didn’t have to worry about getting seen so much. You knew exactly where your customers were and posted a card through their letterbox or took out a spread in the local newspaper to reach them. Now, using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM), you have to lure the right bots to your page so your content is indexed and shown to new and potential customers. That’s a big change to how marketers write and produce content, so naturally, new roles followed. Are you the next SEO guru?

More social

Plus, marketing isn’t just a one-way street anymore. With comments, email replies and shares; your customers can tell you what they like (and don’t like) publicly. That means you need to have people like account managers, community managers, sentiment analysts, PR managers and crisis management experts available to support you when bringing new campaigns online. These are great roles if you like to be in the thick of it and thrive in a fast-paced environment.

AI & automations

Lastly, there are more tools to help you than ever before. From content suggestions through Grammarly to smart workflows on Monday.com - just doing marketing is more digital. Creating the foundations for a new campaign will require the help of automation experts, project managers and designers. They’ll put the processes in place and manage the project so you get a smooth digital campaign creation from ideation to publication.

So you see? It’s not just marketing managers and creative types in this field. Now that marketing is digital, you need a wide range of professionals to get campaigns off the ground. If that sounds like an amazing and exciting environment for you to work in, talk to us at 01204 952 747 or email enquiries@bolton.ac.uk. We’ll show you just what #UniAsItShouldBe is and help make your career aspirations a reality.