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AN INTRODUCTORY GUIDE TO

DIGITAL
MARKETING

YOUR GUIDE TO THE NEW AGE MARKETING TRENDS

 Table of Contents

Introduction to Digital Marketing 2

Digital Marketing Communication Mix 2

Career Benefits 3

Jobs in Store for a Digital Marketer 4

Search Engine Optimization 4

Social Media Marketing 5

Content Marketing 6

Mobile Marketing 7

Web Analytics 7

Pay Per Click (PPC) 8

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 Introduction to Digital Marketing

Often referred to as ‘online marketing’, ‘internet marketing’ or ‘web marketing’,

digital marketing has gained popularity over the past decade. With the arrival of social
networks, digital marketing now also boasts of a new branch of social media marketing.

Even though the term ‘digital marketing’ was coined in the 1990s, its complete usage
and importance has risen only in the recent past. As technology advanced rapidly over
the past two decades, digital media became so widespread that anybody could access
information anytime, from anywhere.

This helped in promoting products through this all-pervasive media as the marketers could monitor what is
trending, what is the selling point of a product, etc. Not just that, digital marketers are also able to monitor, in
real time, what is being read, for how long, and by how many people - put a number on all content out there and
through that analyze what works and what doesn’t alongside the rate of sale conversion.

As a marketer – digital or otherwise – you need to have a complete understanding of your audience. This is a
challenge for the current crop of digital marketers as there is a variety of protocols, specification and interfaces
across different digital media and devices.

Digital Marketing Communication Mix

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Digital marketing is a broad discipline, which can be broken down into a bunch of modules. Like the general
marketing mix, digital marketing communication mix is the adaptation of place, product, promotion, and price
in the digital context.

As the number of internet users grows, so does the reach of your product, brand or services. This can be
achieved through various techniques such as search engine optimization, search engine marketing, pay per click,
web analytics, integrated marketing communications, etc. You can learn the basics of digital marketing by
enrolling for the introductory course at Simplilearn.

Career Benefits

Before you consider digital marketing as a career option, you should analyze
the benefits in store for you in the future! Few career benefits are listed below:

Within the next two years, digital marketing industry is expected to create half a million jobs across the
globe and there is huge shortage of specialized professionals in this space. Being the one with industry
accredited certifications will prepare you for advanced job opportunities in the digital marketing
industry.

You can position yourself as an online marketing expert and lead communication/content promotion
campaigns. Employers are now fast moving toward freelance and contract workers to find the
higher-level skill set they need instead of hiring full-time marketers. With the right certification,
this will open up avenues across multiple industries.

Have an impact on increasing direct sales and position yourself as a valuable resource.

Get an industry-recognized certificate from Online Marketing Certified Professionals (OMCP) and be
ready for a plethora of career options.

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 Jobs in Store for a Digital Marketer

In the recent past, digital marketing has gone hand-in-hand with the traditional media marketing or at times
outranked it, for any product/services promotion. This is the reason why job opportunities in digital marketing,
which was pegged to be worth over $62 billion in the United States in 2012, are immense. A simple search for
‘digital marketing jobs’ will throw up nearly a 1,000 jobs on any given online jobs portal. In 2013, the digital
marketing jobs overtook internet marketing jobs which have more or less plateaued, by a great margin.

In fact, there is such an increment in jobs in the digital marketing sector that employers are finding it hard to find
the right candidates for their digital teams.

Within the digital marketing sector, there is double-digit talent gap under each specialisation. For e.g., there is a
27% gap between existing and required talent in just marketing experts for email, content and social media. For
mobile it is 29% and for analytics it is a whopping 37%!

Digital jobs for social media marketing, search engine optimization, digital strategy have seen an increase of
35, 15, and 24% increase respectively. Not just the jobs, even pay scale has improved for those who have made the
smart transition from traditional to digital marketing. What is more, that there is less disparity between male and
female salaries in the digital structure!

Trend analysis of jobs in marketing indicates that digital marketing is a superb industry, especially for the younger
employees. Graduates who studied business, graphic design, marketing, or social media are more likely to have
twice as many job options than their counterparts with other subjects. Overall, the marketing market will see
about 40% growth in the next decade. Overall, the marketing teams are to either increase their strength, or main-
tain it which makes digital marketing one of the most lucrative jobs out there.

As mentioned earlier, digital marketing is made up of several core areas. Let us each area in detail and understand
the career opportunities for each of them.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the method of increasing traffic to a website by

enhancing its rank on a search engine – taking steps so that a particular website will
be seen higher up on an internet search.

SEO does not just mean enhancing the quality of content on the webpage – by
ensuring that there are enough relevant keywords and the page itself is organized
with subheads bullet points and clear hyperlinks – it also means that the site’s HTML
code is also optimized in a way that any search engine can determine what is on the
page and display it as a result of a particular search.

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SEO then becomes the bottom rung of a ladder for a marketer to know their end customer. There is SEO and
then there is SEM - Search Engine Marketing – which employs SEO and other mechanisms such as social media
marketing and paid searches to enhance any product’s exposure. As more and more people use the web to
access information, search engines are the new go-to places. This has helped the SEO industry grow leaps and
bounds. Thus, a certification in SEO prepares a professional to excel in this section.

Job Opportunities:
As the LinkedIn skills survey showed, there was a 15% increase in jobs for Search Engine Optimization
in 2014. This is only going to increase as more and more consumers get drawn to the
web for services and product analysis.

Also, as the search engine giant Google recently revamped its search algorithm, the onus is back on
SEO managers to rethink their existing strategies to make their website more in sync with the new
trend. Not just keyword, but technical optimization has also got a huge boost. This translates into more
tedious work, which in turn means more jobs to keep the website/content ‘fresh’ for consumer’s use.

And, despite more additions to the ever-changing jargon book of digital marketing, 78%
of marketing professionals say SEO is part of their job description – as revealed by an industry survey
conducted by moz.com.

Social Media Marketing

Today, the world has indeed become a small place, thanks to social media. With an
average person spending at least an hour a day on a social networking website, it is
important to exploit this avenue as a marketing tool. Social media marketing, thus, is
a fast-growing segment of online marketing, where you will employ techniques and
strategies on social media websites to increase traffic to your website, promote your
brand and protect your online reputation.

Social media certification, offered by Simplilearn, helps those who are involved with branding, public affairs,
marketing communications to plan, execute, and assess a comprehensive and effective social media campaign

Job Opportunities:

The need for Social Media specialists is on the rise as consumers are turning more and more towards
the social media networks for information. According to business2community.com, social media
specialists have a 42% job growth. Payscale.com says that the average salary for a social media
manager is anywhere approximately between $34,500 and $56,500.

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 Content Marketing

Content marketing is the fastest growing segment under digital marketing. Content
Marketing is all about writing articles to build a brand. Through various write-ups
generated on several platforms – social media blog posts, LinkedIn articles, exclusively
created content for Facebook posts, online journals, magazines, and even digital
newspapers – content marketing uses the written word to generate inbound link.
And, as content has become the primary ingredient for success in an online campaign,
a career in content marketing is the future! Not just that, for organizations, content
marketing is the least expensive form for marketing. Which means: if you do it
efficiently, you could post a better net profit.

Job Opportunities:

In a study conducted of over 300 marketing job listings, the most common requirement found was
‘content marketing experience would be preferable’. This above the fact that over
55% of companies surveyed were planning to increase their content marketing
expenditure. Apart from that, 54% of marketing teams plan to add more content
marketers in 2015.

Even with a varied academic background, 68% employers sought for marketers with writing and
editing skills. Good news for content marketer hopefuls is that employers are not
interested in their graduating subject; 48% of employers requested marketing as a
background subject with communications skills and three-five years of experience.

Mobile Marketing

Even though it has been famously claimed that ‘content marketing is the only
marketing left’, a keen digital marketing expert will not overlook a major digital
segment – the mobile world. As the technology world keeps getting more ‘mobile’
with newer versions of phones and tablets – and even computers – becoming smaller
and better, getting your marketing right on this platform is a priority.

In order to make the most of the mobile market, you need to be better-equipped to monitor any mobile
marketing campaign and also conceptualize and implement a mobile marketing strategy on your own. In order
to learn the best practices used to interact with the mobile consumer, address security and privacy issues and
launch mobile campaigns that impact sales and brand loyalty, you can enroll in Mobile marketing certification
course from an accredited institute.

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 Job Opportunities:

In a survey conducted by Smart Insights about Digital Marketing Trends in 2015, mobile marketing was
third after content marketing and marketing automation. Having a ‘mobile friendly’ website is just one
more step closer to the end customer. The survey also revealed that mobile is fast eating into the
desktop share for consumer focused tasks. With every site getting a separate ‘app’ for mobile, it is the
fastest growing internet segment altogether. What’s more, in March 2014, more than 2,700 jobs were
advertised for mobile marketers in United States alone. This is a 55% increase in jobs since 2011.

As mobile segment grows, so does the clamor to market better on this platform – which transforms
into more jobs for the mobile marketers!

Web Analytics

To master how to improve presence on your website or even develop content for it to
maximize inbound traffic, you first need to know how people have been responding to
similar websites, what are their preferences, what is the behavior of the visitors to
your website. For this you need the right web analytics tool. It is all about tracking
and analyzing how people use your websites and applications, so that you can
improve site performance and implement better marketing campaigns. Any
Web Analytics Certification course provided by accredited institutes, train you to
develop comprehensive expertise and find the right tools to assess visitor behavior on
websites.

Job Opportunities:

Web Analytics have been leading the marketing activities band for a while now. According to an
industry survey done by moz.com, despite this, there is apparently a dearth of qualified data analysts
in the industry.

Analytics have been the be-all-end-all of online marketing fields but with a lack of qualified personnel
it remains a bit under stress. Median salary for those in web analytics at $74,375 is even higher than
that of a marketing person at $73,034. As the users’ accumulated data on sales, purchase history, site
interactions, search activities grows – so does the need for a qualified personnel to collate it into
usable data – the world of web analyst.

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 Pay Per Click (PPC)

We all know that theory and practical application are different. Learning how to
strategize and converting it to an actual working model are also different. Armed with
the analyzed data of trends and patterns, having all the knowledge and understanding
$ on content, mobile marketing, search engine optimization and even conversion
optimization – the final step is the one most popular but important aspect of digital
marketing – the payment. Pay Per Click (PPC) and Cost Per Click (CPC) are the money
drivers in the internet world.

Pay per click (PPC) in an online advertising model where the revenue comes in through sponsored
click-through advertisements; which means that a website ‘carries’ an advertisement but is only paid if that
ad is ‘clicked’. The hosts are only paid when their ad is clicked. PPC certification focuses on optimizing ad
spends and maximizing click-through rate (CTR) and conversion.

In order to learn the basics of campaign setup, campaign economics, landing pages, managing campaigns,
and advanced PPC concepts, it is advised to take up a Pay per click (PPC) certification course!

Job Opportunities:

According to searchenginewatch.com, PPC specialist was the second-most sought after job profile
across several online job boards. With the median salary for a PPC expert around $69,010 and the
salary range anywhere between 25th and 75th percentile, PPC is another lucrative niche for a digital
marketer.

Advanced Online Marketing Suite

Simplilearn has created a comprehensive training program, Advanced Online Marketing

Certification Suite, that empowers the participant with various digital marketing
strategies including SEO, content marketing, PPC, web analytics, mobile marketing,
social media conversion rate optimization. Click here to know more.

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Simplilearn’s Digital Marketing course is prepared by the who’s-who of the industry.
Here’s a brief about of each of our celebrated authors.
Avinash Kaushik
Author, Blogger, Digital Marketing
Evangelist, Google
The author of two best-selling
books: Web Analytics 2.0,
Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.
Jennifer Evans Cario
Author, Speaker &
Social Media Strategist
Founder and President of
SugarSpun Marketing and
Author of “Pinterest Marketing:
An Hour a Day”
Todd Malicoat
Author, Speaker and
SEO Specialist
Author of the popular SEO blog
StuntDubl.com and Speaker at
SES and PubCon
Greg Jarboe
Author, Speaker and
Video Marketing Expert
Author of “YouTube and
Video Marketing: An Hour a Day”
and Writes for Search Engine Watch
and ReelSEO
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Bryan Eisenberg
Author, Speaker and Founder &
CMO of IdealSpot
Co-author of bestselling books
“Call to Action”, “Waiting For Your
Cat to Bark?” and “Always Be Testing”
and Co-founder & Chairman Emeritus
of the Web Analytics Association
Brad Geddes
Author, Speaker and
Marketing Consultant
Author of Advanced Google AdWords,
and founder of CertifiedKnowledge.org;
Writes columns for Search Engine Land
Jeff Hasen
Author, Speaker and
Mobile Marketing Evangelist
Author of Mobilized Marketing:
Driving Sales, Engagement, and
Loyalty Through Mobile Devices and
CMO of Hipcricket and co-creator of
the certification program for the Mobile
Marketing Association
Matt Bailey
Author, Speaker and
Internet Marketing Trainer
Founder and president of SiteLogic
and Author of “Internet Marketing
An Hour A Day” and SOS! A CEO's
guide to Digital Media
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Online Marketing training from Simplilearn gives you the right guidance and
flexibility to prepare as per your convenience.

25 Hrs 90 Days Practice Tests 7 complete courses

e-Learning content e-Learning Access & OMCP certifications

Courseware Approved Downloadable Online progress

by OMCP Workbooks and Exercises quizzes

Good Luck!

For more information on our Online Marketing offerings, please visit our
course page here