Thousands of people think about becoming a digital marketer every day. Someone plans to enter adulthood in this way, and someone wants to forget about the hard or boring work with a low income. Regardless of their motives, all these people are bound to face a lot of questions. Where should they go? What exams should I take? Do you need courses or can you start studying on your own?
Our detailed guide will help you navigate correctly and choose the best strategy for mastering a new profession. Read to the end and you will learn not only how to get your first job, but also how to become a cool and sought-after specialist with a high income.
Minimum knowledge and skills required for entry
For a future successful specialist, it is important to “pump” your knowledge in the following directions:
1. Study several books about marketing
2. Reading books to expand your horizons
In this direction, we need to focus on the topics of business, sales, management, and psychology. A deep understanding of the business fundamentals, internal processes, and principles of employee interaction will enable you to think in the right categories. We can recommend in some sense classic publications, such as:
- Robert Cialdini “The Psychology of Persuasion”;
- Peter Senge “The Fifth Discipline”;
- Gil Konrath “Agile Selling”
3. Subscribe to thematic communities
Use social networks and messengers to get content-related information. This will create a powerful channel that will provide you with up-to-date industry news he will tell you about trends and show you practical cases. Format and features high competition guarantees that you will get almost 100% concentrate on useful information. In addition, many communities offer the opportunity to get advice from more experienced professionals with an active practice.
4. Work with marketing services and software
5. Mastering the skills of business communication and active sales
Whatever it sounds like, a marketer should be able to sell not only products and services but also themselves. Your task is to sell your knowledge, experience, time, creativity, and other qualities as much as possible. Without proper communication, the marketer may not be noticed in the team. Managers are often busy with contracts, salaries, taxes, and audits, but you must be able to show that performance is not a given, but the achievement of a competent professional.
A useful trick! Try to work a little in cold sales. After that, no negotiations will be terrible.
7. The skills of information search
From the first workplace to a cool marketer
Now we will look at the step-by-step instructions that will help you not get lost on the way to becoming a highly sought-after and expensive specialist. And we assume that you will start with a diploma from a specialized University or a certificate of completion of thematic courses.
1. Finding a place for an internship
Any practical experience is rated higher than beautiful certificates and diplomas. You can start in any direction, but it is better to try to get a job with an Internet Marketing Agency. It is here that the most diverse tasks will fall on the young specialist. Moreover, you need to choose a small company. Large digital agencies usually use interns to perform monotonous and non-core work.
Advantages of an internship in a small online marketing Agency:
- working on targets;
- the creative will be evaluated;
- an experienced team, you can always ask for the help of a colleague who is better versed in this or that issue;
- the results will be analyzed by people who are familiar with the chosen field;
- there is a possibility of gradual career growth, up to the head of the marketing Department or Director.
You can also face such disadvantages as:
- chance to get involved in a monotonous job;
- risks of performing non-core tasks.
An analysis of the situation will help you eliminate possible shortcomings, and this activity is inherent to any good marketer. If it becomes clear that you are not developing at work, but actually working on the production line, then you need to change the place of internship.
2. Turn an internship into a permanent workplace
3. If the internship did not become a job
4. Create an attractive resume
To reveal this stage, it is enough to consider the typical mistakes that young marketers make. This:
- no photo available;
- the wrong photo format;
- there is no information about the place of internship or previous work;
- no data on skills/education/qualifications;
- nothing is told about the applicant himself;
- there is no information about which tools/technologies/services the candidate can work with;
- the text shows arrogance or biased expectations of a potential job;
- including information about children’s Hobbies and awards;
- an informal style for submitting information.
We need to analyze the moment with photos in more detail. Images must be concise and simple. Try to show that you are an adequate and positive person. You can’t use photos from cafes, restaurants, or clubs. The ideal option is to create a professional business portfolio. This will cost a little, but usually, the cost of positioning yourself in a resume quickly pays off.
5. Interview
Let’s look at typical errors. Most often, candidates spoil their impression of themselves by allowing the following:
- Tardiness is unacceptable. You shouldn’t come too early either, because it shows that you have poor time control. Ideally, you will show up at the designated location 10-15 minutes before the interview begins.
- Stories about bad past colleagues/teachers/supervisors. Would you want to hire someone who would tell you at your next job that you are incompetent and generally not a good person?
- Ignorance of the specifics of the company’s work. At the interview, you need to let the potential employer know how you will be useful to their business. Therefore, you first need to find and study information about the organization.
- Demonstrate that it is you who are interviewing, not you. Even if there are many other offers and, in fact, you are now choosing a job, do not show it explicitly. Allow HR to feel the full power of the decision.
- It’s too expensive or pretentious. Dress as you plan to look at the workplace, that is, clean, comfortable and neat. Informal or too chic things are better left in the wardrobe.
Try to tune in for interest and goodwill. Come up with a concise story about yourself in advance. Don’t tell me how cool you are, but rather prove yourself useful. For example, the most prestigious diploma will not be valued as highly as specific offers to increase sales.
6. Creating conditions for career growth
The experience of many marketers shows that the quality of performing professional functions is rarely directly related to career growth. In order not to remain in the same position for years, you need to work in the following directions:
- search for direct communication channels with the Manager;
- be able to position ideas in terms of their profitability for the company;
- to be, rather than seem, useful for business.
As you gain experience and knowledge, the value of the marketer increases. We recommend that you remind your management about this approximately once a year. Here it is important to act without ultimatums, but no one has canceled the appropriate and easy manipulative techniques. An argument in the style of “I Want more money, because my competitors will pay me better” or “Raise your salary, or I will not go to work next month” – this is not something that can work at all. Try to unobtrusively “integrate” into your boss’s brain the idea that your company will only benefit from your promotion. If hints don’t work at all, speak directly, but in a friendly and reasonable way.