What to Learn After Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a popular career expected to grow significantly over the next decade. But what else could you learn to expand your digital skill set and make yourself a more attractive job candidate? If you already know how to use digital marketing, you might consider learning/UI design, web development, or data science. This article will cover good design skills, coding languages, and data analytics knowledge for Digital Marketers to help you have a clear understanding of what skill to tackle next.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing uses online channels and tools to promote products and services. As the popularity of the internet continues to grow, digital marketing has become one of the most effective ways to publicize a business and help it succeed. Knowledge of digital marketing can be an asset to entrepreneurs and owners of businesses large and small, and many companies are hiring Digital Marketers to conduct research, build brand loyalty, and create community. Digital Marketers also analyze data collected from online marketing efforts to make a business more efficient and profitable.

Because it is based on data, digital marketing is highly targeted and measurable. With digital marketing, you can adapt and make changes in real-time to reflect your advertising. You can also create targeted ads to ensure products and services reach an interested audience.

Using analytics, you can quickly tell how many people see your ads, how they react, and what action they take. Measuring your success (and where you need to improve) can help overall strategy. Plus, digital marketing levels the playing field, allowing businesses of any size to compete for clicks. Additionally, there’s a low barrier to entry: you can start your paid digital marketing campaign for a minimum amount and build as the company grows.

Read more about what digital marketing is and why you should learn it.

What Can You Do with Digital Marketing?

Marketing has changed drastically since the advent of the internet. While early ways to promote a business included yellow page listings, print advertisements, and ads on buses and billboards, many marketing efforts have now moved online. With digital marketing, you can adapt and make changes in real-time to reflect your advertising. You can also create targeted ads to be sure your products and services reach an interested audience.

Digital marketing efforts are highly measurable. Using analytics, you can quickly tell how many people see your ads, how they react, and what action they take. Measuring your success (and where you need to improve) can help you develop your overall strategy. Plus, organic digital marketing levels the playing field, allowing businesses of any size to compete for clicks.

Additionally, there’s a low barrier to entry to advertise with digital marketing. You can start your paid digital marketing campaign for a minimum amount and build as your company grows. Digital marketing offers the unique chance to control where you spend those crucial advertising dollars.

What to Learn After Digital Marketing

Working as a Digital Marketer can allow you to learn skills in addition to your digital marketing skill set. While creating content, you might become interested in graphic design or video production. A deep dive into website optimization could spark your curiosity about how websites are designed and programmed. Maybe you’ll love web analytics so much that you decide to learn to do more advanced analysis. These are all smart additional skills to learn after digital marketing.

Graphic Design

If you have an artistic flair, you may want to look into graphic design classes. This visual discipline can enhance your digital marketing skills and lead to a career as an Illustrator, Art Director, or Logo and Brand Designer. You can learn about Adobe’s Creative Cloud products with Photoshop classes, Illustrator courses, and InDesign classes.

UX/UI Design

UX/UI Designers envision and create the websites and mobile apps that people rely on every day. From banking and to buying shoes to ordering dinner and booking services, ecommerce depends upon good UX/UI design. UX Designers focus on the needs of users and their experience when they create digital products. Digital Marketers with an interest in the user experience might want to look at careers like UX Researcher or UX Writer.

Web Development

Digital Marketers work on website optimization, which could lead to an interest in web development. Web Developers do all of the coding work that goes into creating and maintaining a website. Web Designers create websites with a special focus on engaging, intuitive design. Web Developers and Web Designers use a variety of coding and programming languages to make websites that are functional, user-friendly, and visually appealing while also meeting additional project specifications. The websites that Web Developers and Web Designers create can vary in complexity, from a simple plain-text webpage to a complicated ecommerce or social networking site.

There are three types of Web Developers: Front End, Back End, and Full Stack Web Developers.

• Front End Developers program all the website elements users see and interact with, such as page text, drop-down menus, images, and forms. Front End Developers need to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• Back End Developers create, test, debug, and maintain all the technological components that support the front end of a website and allow it to operate. The primary coding languages used in back end development are Java, Python, Ruby, and PHP.
• Full Stack Developers deal with both the user-facing elements of a website plus all of the architecture behind the scenes that users don’t see. Full Stack Developers need to know a full range of front end and back end languages.

Working with Data

Digital marketing is data-driven, so collecting and analyzing data is an integral part of working as a Digital Marketer. If you love working with numbers and discovering trends, you can go beyond Google Analytics and become a Data Scientist or Data Analyst.

Data Science

Data Scientists wrangle data, cleaning and organizing for analysis, and then use statistical modeling to uncover relationships between variables. Data science is a multidisciplinary field that is more concerned with the questions that need to be asked to find possible avenues of study rather than the answers to these questions. Those with a background in data science perform open-ended research and modeling. This field provides the scaffolding for the various analyses that Data Analysts will then perform. Data Scientists need to learn computer programming languages like SQL, Python, and R, which allow them to perform efficient analyses of large datasets.

Data Analytics

Data Analysts use a set of techniques, tools, and processes to analyze raw data to extract relevant information, trends, and insights. This skill set includes collecting data, organizing and storing it, then performing statistical analysis. Data Analysts draw conclusions from the data and use that information to solve problems with business processing, decision-making, and predicting a company’s next steps. In addition, most Data Analysts transform large sets of data into clear and engaging data visualizations accessible to all members of a team or business.

Data Analysts work in many fields, from the healthcare industry to retail to FinTech on Wall Street. They are typically well-organized multi-taskers, detail-oriented and good with numbers, and in possession of strong presentation skills. Data Analysts work with data visualization tools like Tableau and Microsoft Power BI, as well as programming languages like Python, SQL, R, JavaScript, and Scala.

Motion Sells

Video is the hottest thing in digital marketing, and learning how to produce and edit videos is a smart next step for a Digital Marketer. You can also learn to create animated infographics to boost your digital marketing work.

Video Editing

Video Editors take raw footage, choose the best shots, and assemble them to create a narrative. They can add special effects to set the mood and add appropriate music or voice-over. A skillfully edited video shares a message while telling a story. Adobe’s Premiere Pro is a popular video editing tool that Digital Marketers interested in video editing will want to learn.

Motion Graphics

While Video Editors take raw footage shot by a Videographer and put the best shots together to tell a story, Motion Graphics Designers add special effects to these videos to capture the audience's attention and amplify the message. Motion Graphics Designers create computer animations that bring text and graphics to life on the screen. They often work as part of a video editing team to produce a video, film, television show, documentary, or advertisement. Motion Graphics Designers work in the movie and TV industry, the music business, and advertising, and they create infographics for both large and small businesses and nonprofits. Motion graphics are most often used in title and credits sequences, as well as sections of videos that explain concepts. Motion Graphics Designers use Adobe Creative Cloud tools like After Effects, Animate, and Illustrator to create effects.

Coding

Coding is the vehicle that drives digital applications and devices, and learning to code can be a gateway to a career beyond digital marketing for those interested in tech. Learning to code can be intensive, but it might be just the challenge you want. Coding is methodical and demands attention to detail as well as persistence. Becoming a successful coder is a big confidence booster and puts you in an excellent position in the job market. One of the best ways to learn to code is by taking a coding bootcamp. Some of the most common coding languages to study in a bootcamp are HTML and CSS, JavaScript, React, Django, Python, and SQL.

Learn Digital Marketing with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop’s digital marketing courses teach skills that can help you start a career in the industry. Classes are small, with expert instructors, and you can retake a course for free up to a year after you take it. Those ready to dive into the field can attend in-person classes at Noble Desktop’s New York City location or attend live online digital marketing courses from anywhere in the world.

Noble Desktop also offers more detailed courses for those looking to hone their skills on specific channels. Students can take individual classes on Facebook Marketing, Email Marketing, Social Media Content Marketing: Blogs & Twitter, and Video Marketing: TikTok & YouTube. Students can also study for a Digital Marketing Certificate and learn a comprehensive set of tools and skills for digital marketing. Another Noble Desktop resource that can help prepare for a career in digital marketing includes its digital marketing blog, which has detailed articles about social media marketing, SEO, and other essential tools for digital marketers. Students can also watch Noble’s seminar on The Pillars of Digital Marketing Success, which is available on YouTube.

Key Insights

A career as a Digital Marketer can lead to a desire to explore new directions. You can take additional classes and gain skills in other areas, including:

• Graphic design
• UX/UI design
• Web development
• Data science
• Data analytics
• Video editing
• Motion graphics
• Coding