Expanding Your Marketing Skillset For The Digital Era

In the last 20 years or so, since the emergence of Google we’ve seen quite a fast progression from traditional marketing methods towards digital. It is now more important than ever to make sure you are up to speed with all things digital if you are a marketing professional, or risk being left behind.

Not so long ago the main methods of advertising were TV, radio, newspaper, billboards and direct mail, over the last 2 decades we’ve seen virtually all of these channels slump in popularity with the fast rise to prominence of online. Google, Facebook, Instagram and more recently Tik Tok and Snapchat have changed the way marketers go about their job and with an accuracy level of reporting and return on investment, it’s easy to see why.

Traditional marketing methods were very hard to track in terms of success, it was more just about overall sales with no way to accurately judge anything at a granular level. With digital marketing on the other hand you can see exactly how an individual advert or campaign is doing and view which channels are generating the most money.

Don’t Get Left Behind

The younger you are, the more proficient and familiar you will be with all of the latest social media platforms, this is only natural as you will have used them from a young age, for those over the age of 45 the chances are they will have been introduced to it at a later stage in their life where perhaps they didn’t have the same interest level. It is important to understand though that these platforms are the future of marketing, and it is essential from a professional development perspective to know how to utilise them and how to make money from them.

This is easier said than done but one of the biggest mistakes people make as they progress through their career is to stop developing and learning new skills, they get comfortable, they move to a more senior position but before you know it, someone much younger than you with more knowledge will surpass you – particularly in the digital marketing sector because it moves so quickly. We are really still only in the early stages of digital marketing in the grand scheme of things, the internet has only been widely accessible since the 1990’s and fast forward 20 more years things will look very different again.

How To Keep Your Skills Up To Date