As the world becomes increasingly digital, so do the risks associated with online activities. Marketing professionals, in particular, are tasked with handling vast amounts of sensitive data that are critical to their organizations’ success.

However, this data can be vulnerable to cyberattacks, data breaches, and other security threats that can have severe consequences for both the business and its customers.

In this article, we will explore the key security issues that marketing professionals need to be aware of and provide tips for safeguarding their digital assets.

From protecting personal information to securing company data, we’ll cover everything you need to know to keep your marketing campaigns safe and secure.

1) Compromised Credentials (Identity)

Most cyber incidents and breaches are through stolen or compromised credentials. Your credentials in the hands of a hacker allows them unfettered access to your personals and private information.

This includes financial and healthcare information, social media, email accounts, and cloud storage. With
information gained from compromised credentials, hackers can gather information to steal your identity and ruin you financially.

2) Malware/Ransomware

Malware/ransomware can be delivered in several different methods. It can be included in an email, embedded in an image, and posted on a webpage that is automatically downloaded when the load the page. Attackers look for pathways to have the malware bypass the normal protections.

Email and requested/visited websites are traffic that are expected to be sent to a user’s computer. It is that fact that the email and webpage are expected that we sometimes drop out guard.

3) AI Phishing

AI phishing is when an attacker uses AI to develop the phishing attack. Some of the old way of identifying a phishing email is the use of bad grammar or misspelled words. With AI phishing those no longer apply.

When you receive any email, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Did I expect to receive this email? Not all unexpected emails are nefarious.
2. Is the address legitimate? Addresses can look close to a common address.
3. Am I being asked to click a link or download something? Always be aware of links. The words on the hyperlink may not match the actual URL of the link.

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4) Data Privacy

Confidential data is the core of business operations and critical to its success. Data disclosure can eliminate a company’s knowledge or technology that differentiates it from its competitors.

Data ‘leakage’ is when private data is disclosed to a party who does not have the authorization to see/have that data. The most recent path of data leakage is through ChatGPT.

Samsung engineers asked ChatGPT to write some code for them. In doing so they shared confidential code with the AI which incorporated the shared code into its data set making it open to the public.

5) Spoofing Websites

Website spoofing is when a fraudulent website is presented to a user instead of the actual website. This is most common for front pages of websites that request login credentials. The user assumes that the website is real and enters in their username and password, and the fraudulent website records the credentials and then redirects the user to the real web page.

The user is asked to enter their credentials on the real webpage and they are let into the website. The user is unaware that they have given their credentials to an attacker for them to gain access to their website account.

This attack has been very common for cloud storage and services websites like Office 365, Dropbox, and box.com. Always check the URL and if there is a valid certificate(padlock image next to the URL) for the website.

As a marketing professional, it’s crucial to prioritize security and take proactive measures to protect your digital assets. With the increasing prevalence of cyberattacks and data breaches, the risks associated with online activities are higher than ever before.

By being aware of the key security issues, following these best practices, and implementing robust security measures, you can safeguard your business and customers against potential threats.

Remember to stay vigilant, keep your software up to date, use strong passwords, and regularly backup your data. By taking these steps, you can help ensure that your marketing campaigns are safe and secure, and you can focus on achieving your business objectives with peace of mind.

The post Top 5 Security Issues for Marketing Professionals appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

If you’re thinking about getting a degree at any age, it makes sense to think about the value of that degree. Is the qualification needed for the career you want? Are there alternative paths to that career? Can you develop better skills by gaining experience in work? 

All of these are perfectly valid questions. After all, getting a degree requires a pretty large investment of both time and money. You want to know that you’ll get enough return on that investment to make it worthwhile.

Why marketing?

When it comes to marketing, a lot of entry-level jobs list a bachelor’s degree as a requirement. That doesn’t mean there aren’t alternate ways to get into marketing but having a relevant degree certainly makes your resume more competitive. 

Growth industry

Marketing skills are in demand in the current jobs market. According to a recent report from LinkedIn, marketing job posts grew 63% in just six months last year. Half of those jobs were in the digital and media sectors, meaning digital and content marketing skills are highly valued. 

Personal Development & Career Path

The reason for this increased demand for marketers is tied to the rise in digital marketing. New methods of marketing have continued to develop out of the digital sector. This means that marketers capable of creating engaging content or managing social media accounts are needed.

This leaves a lot of room for personal development. Young graduates who are well-versed in social media and community management can hit the ground running in digital marketing. Getting on this path early can lead to content strategist and marketing management positions.    

What are the Types of Marketing Degrees?

When we say marketing degree, the term is a bit too general. There are a lot of degree paths that focus on marketing in major or minor ways. The level of degree available will depend on your current education history, but the specific course will be down to your personal choice. 

Associate, Bachelor’s, or Master’s?

Recent statistics suggest that 74% of US marketing professionals hold a bachelor’s degree. 9% have an associate degree and 8% have a master’s degree. Here’s a quick overview of the differences. 

Associate degrees – 2-year courses that cover marketing and business in a more basic way than bachelor’s qualifications. They’re designed to give students the basic skills needed to apply for entry-level marketing jobs.   

Bachelor’s degrees – 3/4-year courses that cover business and economics. There is a range of bachelor’s courses with marketing at their core, but you’ll also cover wider business topics like management, communication, and administration. 

Master’s degrees – 2-year courses, usually only available if you’ve already completed a bachelor’s degree. MA or MBA courses are designed to develop a deep understanding of complex business topics. They are highly specific, covering areas like strategic marketing or marketing analytics. 

Free to use image from Pixabay

Marketing Specific or Business General? 

This is down to personal choice. There are general business degrees that will cover marketing as a module as well as marketing-specific degrees. There are also multiple universities and colleges, both offline and online, offering different course platforms. 

If you’re looking at a specific job role or career path, then research which type of degree is most relevant. Remember that you will need to add to your marketing skills if you intend to progress to management roles in the future. 

Check the Modules & Curriculum

This is important, and not only because it lets you see which courses align with your career goals. Marketing has changed significantly over the last decade, even more so if you go back to before the digital age. Many business courses are still behind on current marketing trends. 

What Jobs Look for a Marketing Degree?

Once you’ve got your marketing qualification, what jobs should you be looking for? Here are some job titles and areas you should watch out for, and what qualifications you’ll need for them.

Entry level

If you’re starting with a degree and no experience, or work experience but no degree, take a look at these roles. 

• Sales/customer service roles – These are adjacent roles to marketing where most companies do not ask for prior qualifications. If you don’t have a degree, this is a good place to start.
• Marketing or public relations intern – Another possibility if you don’t have a degree, or you’re still in education. 
• Digital/content marketing associate – These roles will almost always require an associate’s or bachelor’s degree. A good grasp of new digital and social marketing techniques will be required to succeed. 
• Copywriter/Bid writer – This is a good route into marketing for those with journalism or literature qualifications. These roles combine aspects of marketing, creative writing, and persuasive writing. 
• SEO specialist – A more focused form of marketing centered on SEO content optimization. If you know how to optimize a blog post for search engine rankings, this role is for you. Bachelor’s or associate qualifications will be a minimum requirement. 
• Social media/community manager – Since these are relatively new roles, we tend to see a mix of degree-qualified marketers and people who’ve had success fostering communities or online brands but don’t have on-paper credentials.  

Free to use image from Unsplash

Career Progression

If you have an MA or MBA, or significant experience in one of the above roles, then you can look at these more advanced roles for your career progression.

• Digital Marketing Manager – A role for experienced marketers that involves running campaigns and coordinating marketing associates. 
• Senior Marketing Coordinator – A department management level role. Responsible for overall marketing strategy and departmental performance.  
• Content Strategist – A specialist role that focuses on content strategy. Designing content plans based on demographic and keyword research are a core aspect of this role. 
• Marketing Analyst – This role involves analyzing customer behaviors and market trends. If you want to move into analysis from a more direct marketing role, you’ll likely need specific data analysis qualifications. 
• Public Relations Specialist – The public voice of a large organization’s PR team. Managing a brand’s public perception and setting brand-level communication policies like tone of voice.   
• Experiential Marketing Specialist – This area of marketing is focused on optimizing the customer experience. Experiential specialists have a deep understanding of customer psychology and behaviors. 
• Corporate Communications Manager – Communications managers are responsible for company-wide communications policies. This is an executive-level role that a marketing coordinator or public relations manager might move up to. 

Average marketing salaries

Across all the roles we’ve discussed above, salaries vary widely. For those entry-level roles, you could be looking at anything from $25 – $40K depending on the role and your experience. 

When it comes to median earnings for marketers with a bachelor’s or master’s degree, we can get a bit more specific. Recent statistics from Zippia show us that $69,993 p/a is the average for bachelor’s degree holders and $80,365 p/a for master’s degree marketers. 

Image sourced from Zippia.com

Marketing Degree Pros and Cons

So, the question we asked above was “Is a marketing degree worth it?” Yet, in truth, it’s not a simple yes or no answer. The question you need to ask is “Is a marketing degree right for me?” Here’s a summary of the pros and cons that might give you some answers.  

Pros

• Degree holders have better job prospects and higher earnings potential in marketing
• You can study highly specific skills with the right courses
• Gain soft skills like communication and collaboration

Cons

• High time and money investment required 
• Diminishing salary returns at higher levels
• Can be a restrictive environment for self-starters and entrepreneurs

What are Marketing Degree Alternatives?

If you want to stick with education but don’t want to invest four years into a degree, then accredited online courses can provide an alternative. This can be your best choice if you wish to upskill in a specific area like running conference calls from Canada. 

If higher education really isn’t your thing, the other option is gaining experience. Some businesses prefer internships and training programs for entry-level roles. This allows them to train marketers “their way” rather than re-training someone with more experience.  

Free to use image from Unsplash

How to Decide if a Marketing Degree is Right for You

Ultimately, choosing to do a marketing degree depends on your goals, your preferences, and your talents. Consider all three factors before making your choice. 

Career Goals

Do you want a management position that needs marketing knowledge? What areas of marketing interest you? What skills do you already possess? Answering these three questions will help you define your career path. That will narrow down your course choices. 

If you want to get better at selling small business phone systems in Vancouver, you don’t need a four-year course for that. If you want to develop into high-level marketing roles, then you want that degree. 

Personality

You don’t need a specific personality type to work in marketing. Your personality and interests might determine what area of marketing would suit you best though. For example, if you’re outgoing and creative then public relations or social media management might be for you.    

Investment & Return

Money isn’t everything. But, if you’re going to put the resources into getting a degree, you want to know that you’ll get some return on your investment. From the figures we quoted above, it seems the “optimal” qualification in terms of salary return vs. time and money investment is a bachelor’s degree. 

Average earnings for marketers with a master’s qualification were only $10k higher. This suggests that you’re not really getting a significant financial return for the additional investment. Of course, if that master’s leads to your dream job, you might see it differently.  

Final Thoughts: Forge Your Own Path

Is a marketing degree worth it in 2023? The short answer is yes. Whether that means a marketing degree is right for you, we can’t tell you. Hopefully, though, this guide has given you the information you need to make that choice. 

The post Is a Marketing Degree Worth it in 2023? appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

If you feel lonely as a digital marketer, you are not alone.

According to an ongoing survey conducted by CareerExplorer, marketing managers rate their career happiness at 3.1 out of 5 stars, which puts them at the bottom 40% of careers.

Why would a job that involves the most entertaining and fun aspects of business, that being growth, change, and interaction between business and customer, lead to such an unsatisfactory rating?

Further, how could a job that is perfectly suited for remote working still rate so low?

Why Marketers Are Unhappy

There are lots of reasons why someone could be unhappy with their job, but for now, let’s focus on the five core factors that generated a 3.1 star rating for marketing management. We’ll expand it a bit to accommodate soloprenuers/consultants and marketing agency owners as well:

• Compensation & Revenue
• Meaningfulness
• Personality Fit
• Work Environment
• Skill Utilization

Marketing Compensation & Revenue

Marketing Managers aren’t happy with their salary, even though they rate very high according to CareerExplorer’s survey. With an average of $135,000, marketing managers are the highest among similar careers like management consultants, investment fund managers, online merchants, operation managers, advertising managers, human resource managers, and project managers.

On the marketing business side, marketing agency revenue has continued to increase as well. According to Statista, digital advertising agency revenue grew from $5.69 billion in 2012 to $30.6 billion in 2022, an increase of 437% over 20 years (22% average annual increase).

Even so, they’re not happy!

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Meaningfulness

Do marketing managers find their work meaningful? Most of them don’t according to the survey. They ranked meaningfulness at 2.7 out of 5 stars.

Personality Fit

How about the personality fit of people who are marketing managers? According to the survey, marketing managers rank fit as 3.8 out of 5 stars. Not bad considering! Still not great.

Work Environment

What about the work environment of marketing managers? That’s not bad as well, with a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars. Even so, it could be better.

Skill Utilization

Finally, let’s talk about skill utilization. Do marketing managers feel that they’re using their skills to an adequate degree? They have skill utilization a 3.5 out of 5 stars. Again, not bad but not great either.

Overall, marketing professionals are missing on a lot of the key factors that lead to job and life satisfaction. Could there be a root cause for the disconnection?

Why the Marketing Profession is Awesome

We now have some insights into why the marketing profession may not be ideal, now let’s examine why it’s a really, really good job for some people. Let’s use those same survey factors to discuss.

Marketing Compensation & Revenue

Marketers make GOOD money. The survey by CareerExplorer said $135,000 average, which sounded high to me, however, Salary.com confirmed the range with the median being $113,582. No matter how you look at it, that is a great paycheck.

Meaningfulness

This is an abstract measure, but I think marketers have a huge opportunity to find meaning in marketing. Your job directly impacts the success of businesses. Businesses provide goods and services for their customers, while also providing paychecks for 47.5% of the population of the USA. What’s more meaningful than helping 58.9 million people to get paychecks?

Personality Fit

The marketing profession is perfect for people who like networking, extroverts that like building relationships, number-heads who love analytics, creatives who like constantly creating new media, attention-seekers who love interacting with audiences, and business people who like money. If your personality fits into any of those groups, you can find a good fit with marketing.

Work Environment

Marketers to work pretty much anywhere, PLUS there are tons of networking groups, expos, masterminds, courses, and other events to attend all year long all over the planet. You can work from home, work at an office, travel to clients’ locations, or take your laptop to the beach. A marketer can create their own work environment if they want to!

Skill Utilization

Few professions utilize a more dynamic list of skills than marketing. From technical to analytical to creative to relational, marketing requires the utilization of vast, complex, and evolving skillsets. You will never get bored with a marketing career because you never know what you’re going to need to know next. Better yet, you have the opportunity to create entirely new skillsets that no one has even considered before!

Loneliness is Bad for Productivity

With all that said, why are marketers still unhappy? I believe that the majority of marketers are more socially-minded than your average person. They crave connection between people. That could be connection with other marketers, connection between companies and their customers, and connection between owners and marketing professionals.

Problem is that since marketers can work anywhere, they often default to working remotely. As of mid-2022, Linkedin reported that jobs offering “remote work” increased 457% year over year. Remote working for marketing roles working remotely increased 177% in just the first half of 2022.

What do you get when you have primarily “social” people working remotely? You get lonely, and loneliness hurts productivity, creativity, and health.

Research by Dr. Vivek Murthy showed that loneliness and depression cost employers $44 billion a year. A study of remote workers found that one in five said “loneliness” was their biggest struggle.

So, while marketers are generally well paid and provided with challenging work that engages their personalities, they are faced with loneliness which greatly impairs work satisfaction. How do we fix the issue?

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How to Fix Lonely Marketer Syndrome

The fix may seem obvious, but it is usually missed or approached too casually in most cases. Marketers need to become part of marketing communities. Not just any communities however, the ones that will truly impact their business and mindset will have the following characteristics:

#1: Formal Education Systems

Ideally, your community should have a proven set of frameworks that other marketers (preferably hundreds or even thousands) have used to succeed.

#2: In-Person & Online Events

Online events are great, but if there is no planned in-person event, you’re going to be missing an important part of connecting with others: seeing them “for real.” Your new community should have plans for in-person meeting opportunities, even if it’s just once a year.

#3: Broad & Narrow Specialty Groups

If you can find a network with a significant amount of people in your specific marketing niche, great! Just note that they should also be connected to broader topics so that you can learn more about interacting with entire marketing teams, not just people do the exact same work as you do.

#4: An Established History

Brand new groups are great, but there’s nothing worse than committing to a brand and having it disappear on you. Ideally, look for marketer communities that have been around for at least 5 years, but preferably longer.

#5: A Hierarchy for Ascension

The best communities provide opportunities for their members to grow and contribute, with the possibility of becoming a thought-leader, teacher, or contributor to the knowledge contained within an organization. Look for groups that have positions, awards, and prizes for top community members.

Where to Find the Right Marketer Community

Lucky for you, you’re already on the right website! DigitalMarketer has been growing their marketer community since 2008. With over 120,000 marketers completing courses, thousands of contributors, and over 1 million email subscribers, DigitalMarketer is the community of choice for marketers in over 60 different countries.

Whether you’re a beginner looking for your first certification with a Lab Membership, an agency owner looking to scale with our Certified Partner network, or a successful business owner looking to scale with the M3 Mastermind, DigitalMarketer is the place to be.

Beat Lonely Marketer Syndrome and join us today!

The post How to Cure “Lonely Marketer Syndrome” appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Ever more businesses changed their attention from traditional marketing to digital marketing in 2022, and that’s why having a thorough digital marketing strategy is more important than ever.

The Objectives of Digital Marketing Strategies

Marketers may accomplish the following objectives with a digital marketing strategy:

• Increase brand exposure and authority by engaging users.

• Understanding your target audience.

• Save both time and money.

• Create fresh leads and potential customers.

• Tracks performance.

• Increase the potential of ROI.

• Staying ahead of your rivals.

• Define your advantages, disadvantages, opportunities, and dangers.

6 Effective Digital Marketing Strategies

Let’s look at some proven and effective digital marketing strategies that can help you in planning an efficient digital marketing campaign.

#1: Content Marketing

To begin, keep one thing in mind, content should not be an afterthought! Make it a point to provide high-value content in order to get the appropriate engagement and so establish trust.

A digital marketing strategy that lacks the right mix of effective content is doomed to fail. However, simply generating content may not help you reach your objectives! Create content that supports your marketing objectives.

Create content to deliver solutions by understanding what people require. Conducting online Q&A sessions is one of the popular content marketing tactics.

If you’re still asking, “Does content marketing matter in the digital marketing strategy?” No doubt, the simple answer is YES!

Consumers are shown through content how your products and services will enhance their quality of life. This is how content marketing increases the number of quality visitors to your website, resulting in increased exposure, quality leads, and sales.

The Most Effective Content Types

If we agree on the content marketing strategy’s effectiveness, let’s talk about which types of content to focus on and which gives us an advantage in being successful in marketing.

These are the most important content types for 2023.

Video

A video is an excellent tool for showing a brand’s culture and purpose, as well as inspiring consumers to purchase products or services. Furthermore, a recent Statista analysis predicts that digital video viewership will reach 3.48 billion by 2023.

If you are a brand that is looking to establish a digital presence on the internet, then using video marketing will yield the required results. It will also help in the spreading of your brand to customers across various niches.

Blog

People have traditionally used blogging to express their ideas on certain topics, but in recent years it has grown as a key communication platform for businesses as well.

Blogs are a powerful sort of long-form content that is ideal for businesses that deal with niche topics. If people are looking for info about what you do, a blog is a perfect way to provide what they need, as a result also building confidence in your brand.

Financial and professional services such as home improvement, automotive, and software are examples of businesses that might benefit greatly from blogging.

The two content types that I mentioned above are very important to implement for the coming year. However, there is a ton of content types, I listed some of them here:

1. Email Newsletters
2. Webinars
3. Podcasts
4. eBooks
5. Downloadable Guides
6. Tools and more.

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#2: SEO/Search Engine Marketing

SEO serves as the basis for all of your marketing strategies and serves as the central point for integrating all aspects of your marketing campaign.

When SEO is the driving force behind your marketing plan, all of your efforts will be directed toward the same objectives. An SEO campaign’s aims frequently involve increasing the usability of your website in order to create a favorable user experience, generate leads, and boost conversion rates.

Users are more likely to visit your website than your rivals’ if your SEO approach effectively places your website at the top of the search engine result page (SERP) since people trust search engine suggestions.

To put it simply, SEO successfully helps your company by doing the following:

• Boosting website traffic.

• Developing authority and credibility.

• Increasing visibility for a wide audience and more.

Types of SEO

SEO is not an easy task, it needs a lot of learning and experience to master it. Here are the types of SEO that you need to focus on specifically.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO refers to internal site practices that help improve ranking and visibility. Keep the following crucial things in mind while improving On-Page SEO: keyword research, pictures, meta description, title tags, and so on.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO, also known as external practice, takes effort outside of your website to improve search engine results pages (SERPs). Build backlinks from other websites to inform search engines that your website is of higher quality and more important in off-page SEO.

Technical SEO

The last kind is Technical SEO which may help you optimize your site’s indexing, crawl pages, site performance, security, interpretation, website layout, and so on. It takes the most important role in improving the visibility of the site.

#3: Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has made several things easier for digital marketers, namely, it gives them the opportunity to attract the ideal clients, identify their wants and needs, and finally satisfy their desires with targeted solutions. Social media platforms are crucial for information sharing and reputation development.

Before making a purchase decision, 54% of customers use social media to gather information about your brand’s products and services. So it’s better if you don’t lose out on the free promotions and advertising that come with having social media profiles.

Furthermore, When using social media marketing, you need to be careful to share the right content with the targeted audience.

Ideal Social Media Platforms for Digital Marketers

When developing your marketing strategy, it’s important for you as a digital marketer to think about which social media platforms will be most effective.

The platforms we believe are the most useful for digital marketers are listed below. It is clear that all of these platforms are extremely powerful, yet some are somewhat superior to others.

1. Facebook

Facebook is the most popular platform for building brand communities, with 2.96 billion monthly active users.

2. YouTube

YouTube has almost 2.1 billion users, making it the second most active social platform. YouTube is used by around 79% of internet users.

3. Instagram

Instagram is a good platform for marketers to develop a brand. Instagram, which is based on visuals, is a platform that may help you establish your brand’s identity. To be successful on Instagram you need to be consistent. You can use the Instagram scheduler to automate your posting.

4. TikTok

TikTok has already surpassed Instagram as the fastest-growing social media platform in the last year. The app is favored by the younger generation, and with older viewers increasing month after month. TikTok is the go-to platform for digital marketers seeking to maximize organic reach within a short period of time.

5. Twitter

Twitter is known as a “Micro-Blogging Site.” Twitter is a powerful tool for proper interaction and brand growth. Twitter is used in the marketing strategy of 65% of marketers.

#4: Email Marketing

According to Campaign Monitor, 57% of small businesses use email marketing as their primary marketing strategy, and email may help all businesses. When it comes to digital marketing, email is one of the first places that all small businesses should start, whether it’s to share business news, follow up on purchases, or create a newsletter.

Email marketing is the use of emails to build a strong relationship between your business and customers. To properly sell your brand, you must first create an email list. This should include all clients to whom you want to send newsletters.

A sign-up form on a company’s website is the most effective approach for them to acquire contacts. People will offer you their email addresses in exchange for something they value. This might include tips, a discount code, information, or guides.

#5: Podcasting

Creating a podcast may provide several benefits to your business in unexpected ways, making it an excellent investment. According to 2022 statistics, there will be around 424.2 million podcast listeners worldwide, which means 20.3% of internet users listen to podcasts. That is a massive number, which indicates the public’s familiarity and trust in them.

An excellent podcast will provide clients with useful information. They will return to your website for more content, or they will subscribe to your podcast on a podcasting platform.

Listeners are more inclined to purchase your offers if you consistently provide engaging and entertaining information. Not only that but the more people that come to your podcast’s website, the more traffic your website will receive.

In another way, podcasts provide great and diversified opportunities for digital marketers to advertise brands, products, or services. Compared to leads from conventional website traffic, leads from podcast advertising have a conversion rate that is seven times greater.

#6: AI-Powered Marketing

Nowadays, as we have seen, AI (artificial intelligence) is constantly changing the world of digital marketing. The use of AI-powered tools and platforms to simplify multiple marketing tasks like producing lead generation content and identifying targeted clients has grown in recent years.

Thanks to this AI technology, as you may see in the 2020s, many digital marketing processes are facilitated or even entirely automated. Artificial intelligence obviously has a positive effect on digital marketing strategies.

Your marketing approach may be completely transformed, and you can get remarkable results. However, you need to put enough budget into it and use the right collection of AI marketing tools.

Different Use Cases of AI in Digital Marketing

Here I listed some common and trending AI use cases that most well-known companies use in their digital marketing process.

• AI for content creation (copywriting)

Digital marketers may use AI to develop cost-effective personalized content that meets the demands of their customers without placing too much load on their team. Yet, this does not imply that AI will entirely replace humans in the content creation process.

Copy AI was considered the best tool for copywriting until Chat GPT dominated this AI copywriting technology and became a trend.

It collaborates with writers and data science experts to deliver the last push that differentiates average from outstanding content. AI can entirely replace human writers only in simple and regular activities.

• AI for content personalization

Digital marketers are constantly struggling to provide the right message to the right consumer at the right moment, which is where AI language technology comes into play.

NLP (natural language processing) and NLG (natural language generation) are AI technologies that help digital marketers to personalize content and creative messages at scale and at the quick pace required in a digital marketing world.

AI writing tools like Jasper Al (the popular one) can help digital marketers in the content creation process to create personalized content that can engage followers or clients.

• AI for Creatives

In digital marketing, creatives are critical if you run a marketing campaign with the goal of engagement and lead generation. And there are many AI tools that can generate professional-looking social media and ad creatives for marketers.

Let me mention some interesting AI tools for creative use cases. AdCreative AI, it’s becoming a popular tool for generating professional-looking ad creatives and social media posts within a few minutes. And Runway is an AI-powered video editing tool that can make video creation easy especially for video marketers.

• AI for customer experience personalization

AI is being used to drive customers, understand consumers, simplify operations, and deliver a memorable experience. In a variety of ways, AI may help to improve the customer experience.

Communication is one of the key activities to achieving marketing goals and objectives. AI-powered chatbots can enhance the customer experience. Chatbots in marketing and customer service give 24×7 availability and support to customers. Dynamic Yield is considered one of the best AI-powered platforms for an end-to-end solution for all marketer’s personalization needs.

• AI for Dynamic Pricing

AI can make dynamic pricing simpler and more effective. It provides immediate prediction by allowing for real-time pivots for incidents. Some of these incidents can be predicted using previous data, but not all. With AI, you can analyze what’s going on a lot faster, and you can modify the pricing in minutes rather than quarterly.

With this form of analysis, humans are prone to making mistakes. Using AI for dynamic pricing may save people time, maximize income, and shorten market reaction time. AI-powered price monitoring platforms like AI-led can monitor and optimize prices based on data, these are more valuable for the eCommerce industry.

These are the common and most popular AI use cases. However, AI has plenty of other use cases in the digital marketing process, with all positive and negative impacts.

Final Words

Digital marketing is the most effective solution for business. You should work on several areas, so try not to become frustrated; remember that you can always outsource to marketing experts for some of your specific tasks.

The post The 6 Most Effective Digital Marketing Strategies to Try In 2023 [Updated] appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Have you been looking for ways to breathe a new life into your marketing strategy?

Have you been desperately trying to get your marketing strategy to deliver better results?

Here’s what you need to do: Get help from your whole company.

Why involve non-marketing employees into your marketing activities?

Depending on how this marketing collaboration is going to work for you, you are likely to discover many more ways it benefts your company. In my experience, it’s always these three:

Identify internal talent

When it comes to digital marketing, organizations tend to look for skills and talents from outside. This makes sense because those new hires bring their experience, so there’s no training required.

But think about this: Your current employees know your product best. Many of them have direct experience talking to your clients. Including them into your marketing means working with people who can relate to your client best, people who care because they love your company.

If there’s one thing in digital marketing that can win over big budgets, that’s customer centricity. If you want your promotion to work, focus on your customers. And no one can do that better than those people who genuinely care about your customers.

Motivate your team

Feeling included can do wonders to your employees’ morale. In fact, being able to exchange ideas, work on projects and see results will probably motivate your employees like nothing else.

Motivation fosters inspiration and creativity, and those will boost the performance of your digital campaigns, provided you are going to be open to (often crazy) ideas and experiments.

Get fresh insight: Foster trust and innovation

When it comes to new ideas and experimentation, those are key in our marketing industry because nothing is actually evolving at such a fast pace as digital marketing does.

Social media platforms come and go, yesterday’s popular SEO tasks can get your site in trouble today, there are new tools popping up monthly, and their old trusted tools losing relevance.

Digital marketing landscape fuctuates and unless you keep bringing in new tactics and technology, your today’s tactics may stop working tomorrow and you will have nothing to replace them.

New ideas are born in collaboration, and that’s how your digital marketing strategy will keep innovating.

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How to involve your employees in marketing activities?

When it comes to involving more people into any project, there’s always one problem to resolve: Time.

Your employees’ time is being paid by you, and once they start spending that paid time elsewhere, this is an additional expense.

On top of that, all people are different. Some of them can balance all kinds of different tasks and still get everything done. Others are always behind, so adding more tasks on their plates may get them too overwhelmed.

You don’t want your company to start struggling because every employee does nothing by marketing, but you cannot also leave certain people behind and invite those that are better at prioritizing and getting things done.

There are several effective ways to solve this puzzle, and it is essential to get this determined prior to inviting employees into your marketing strategy.

You can try one or a combination of the following solutions:

• Position digital marketing as a reward to those employees who complete projects on time. This will encourage other employees to catch up.
• Provide a merit increase to reward those employees that find time to participate without leaving their priority tasks behind
• If your budget allows that, determine the amount of time everyone is allowed to spend on your digital marketing projects. It could be 10% or 20% of their work time, and it could work similarly to how Google implemented it. Tools like TeamSense can help you determine the best amount of time you can allocate for your employees to spend on side projects.

You will likely need some type of software to help your clients keep track of their time and get better organized, especially if you are managing a remote team. 

For distributed teams where some people can be overseas, you will need to come up with convenient and affordable methods of communication which can include a virtual phone line, a dedicated Slack channel and an instant messenger. You can also set up sharable schedules using Google Spreadsheets (which are free).

Finally, there’s a great collection of productivity tools to choose from, so just pick one to get yourself started.

Once you figure out your control-and-reward strategy, let’s see where your employees can help:

Which marketing tasks can benefit from cross-company efforts?

Content ideation

Brainstorming ideas for your content is the first obvious task your whole company can contribute to. This is not just about your blog content: Let them all brainstorm on your email marketing content and email subjects, come up with lead magnet ideas, knowledge base topics, etc. 

Make sure to collect some input from your customer support and/or sales team because they will inform your content team of common questions and struggles your current customers are dealing with. These should definitely be part of your content strategy.

Your brainstorming meetings can be in person, virtually, or even in typing. It’s best to have a good mix to make sure even your shiest employees have an opportunity to contribute.

Social media and viral ideas

Social media is one of those channels that require constant creativity and experimentation in order to grow organic following and engagement.

It often happens that a business social profile can go through the roof once a creative intern takes it over.

It is fun and can be gamified. You can set up some kind of a quick contest rewarding an employee whose social media update generated the most engagements. And it’s not just engagements, of course. At our company, we had all sorts of small bonuses to reward employees whose social media updates would:

• Send a lead
• Get re-shared by a celebrity
• Generated the most comments, etc.

Once you get a bit comfortable with those little contests, extend those to cold emailing tactics, for example, reward emails that bring a link or journalistic coverage/mention.

Mini-projects

Finally, those that do best at balancing their actual job with helping your marketing efforts can be rewarded even further: Give them freedom to come up, set up and promote their own little projects.

Giving people freedom to create something from scratch is the best way to empower your marketing strategy with innovation. Feeling your trust and responsibility, those people will do their best to create something useful and market that to their best ability. 

Those side projects could be single-page sites they can set up on their own, a separate “linkbait” project, a virtual event they can create, promote and hold.

Let them experiment with WordPress and alternatives, find new tools, experiment with new social media platforms, etc. The point of this exercise is to master new technology and try new ideas while creating something useful for the company.

Conclusion

Digital marketing is ever evolving. Without fresh insights and excited employees, your digital marketing strategy will quickly become stale, focusing on a single tactic that seems to be working, until it doesn’t. 

Opening up your marketing efforts to other people in your company and letting them help will innovate and diversify your tactics, as well as get your whole company united around one common goal, i.e. your marketing results.

The post How (and Why) Include Your Whole Company in Digital Marketing appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Resilience, flexibility and creative thinking under pressure are all traits that digital marketers innately possess. And these also just happen to be the ingredients for success during times of uncertainty, which is why the demand for passionate people in this space has never been higher.

In this article, you will learn why this is the best time to start your digital marketing career (even as a complete beginner).

Why Digital Marketing and Why Now?

Digital marketing has drastically evolved over the last decade and continues to change with each new iteration of our favorite platforms and analysis tools. But no matter what changes may come in the future, one thing is clear, digital marketing will continue to thrive. 

This is due to a lot of factors, but one main one is the large number of new businesses being created every single day. The U.S. Census Bureau states that on average there are about 2-4 million new business applications filed every single year. 

But as you’ll see from the image above, this average has increased dramatically since the start of the pandemic. In fact, in 2021 there were 5.4 million new business applications in the U.S. which was the highest of any year and a 53% increase from 2019. 

That’s millions of new businesses which now need help with creating and growing their digital presence.

And in knowing this, it’s no surprise that interest in this career path has also been on the rise.

Digital Marketing Is An In-Demand Skillset

So we now know there’s an increase in interest in learning these skills. But what about the demand from employers?

Well, over the past year we’ve seen a 12.2% marketing job growth according to data presented by Deloitte. Companies surveyed by Deloitte also estimated a further 10.5% marketing hire increase over the next year.

Not to mention that LinkedIn reported ‘Digital Marketing Specialist’ as the most in-demand job title based on volume of postings on the platform.

But these roles don’t look the way they used to.

According to a study done by Upwork, it’s predicted that 36.2 million workers in the U.S. will be fully remote by 2025. That’s an 87% increase from pre-pandemic rates.

This means that not only is there an increase in demand for people working in digital marketing, but employers are significantly more open to people working for them in whatever way suits them best. 

We’re no longer (necessarily) bound by the 9-5 workday, full-time working relationships, or even being in the same geographic location as our employers. We can work when we want, how we want, and from wherever we want. 

So we now know there’s demand and flexibility – next, let’s get into what it really means to be a beginner in the world of digital marketing.

Digital Marketing is Incredibly Beginner-Friendly

Some of the most brilliant digital marketers you’ll come across have no formal qualifications in the marketing field. But what they do have are skills, passion, and practical experience built through determination and a willingness to work from the ground up. 

And that’s because unlike in many other fields, people looking for talent in this space don’t place nearly as much importance on having decades of experience or years of formal training on your resume. 

Digital marketing itself hasn’t even been around for that long, and many universities and colleges still don’t offer practical training on the subject. The marketing world is evolving so quickly that by the time you finish a four-year degree on the subject, you would have to begin all over again to learn about all the changes. 

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Instead, employers are a lot more interested in well-rounded soft skills. So this might just be the career path for you if you are able to:

• Commit to lifelong learning
• Continuously innovate and explore new creative ideas
• Lead and inspire, but be willing to work effectively as a part of a team
• Be both creative and analytical in your approach to your work
• Have general knowledge of the field but be a specialist in a few key subjects
• Take risks and back yourself 
• Embrace setbacks as learning opportunities
• Approach every new task with flexible thinking and without bias

And with access to so many amazing self-paced digital marketing courses, it’s easier than ever before to upskill yourself in the more technical skills required.

Skills You Need to Succeed as a Digital Marketer

We’ve already discussed some of the softer skills and traits that can make someone an excellent digital marketer. But of course, technical skills are a large part of your success in digital marketing too. 

As you’ll notice from the image below, the top in-demand skills in the marketing world on LinkedIn are: social media marketing, paid search, social media, search engine marketing, and marketing in general.

In addition to the above, as a digital marketer, you might also have to be across the basics of:

• Search engine optimization
• Email marketing
• Influencer marketing
• Copywriting
• Data analysis
• Video marketing
• … and more

The key here is not to overwhelm yourself by trying to specialize in all areas, as no one will expect this of you. A positive attitude, passion for your work, and a willingness to upskill yourself in areas you’re not confident in as you go, are what will matter most in your digital marketing career.

And if you ask seasoned digital marketers what their career path has looked like up to this point, they’ll likely say it’s been like a Jackson Pollock painting. It might not make sense to people who don’t work in the field, but to them, it’s a beautiful masterpiece of diverse skills coming together and acquired over time.

So if you’re ready to get into a career that’s bold, versatile, exciting, and rapidly evolving – digital marketing might just be the right fit for you.

The post Why 2023 Is The Best Time to Begin Your Digital Marketing Career appeared first on DigitalMarketer.