Kick-start your digital marketing career!
Did you know?
There are more than 101 social media platforms available.
Six of these have with more than one billion users each.
Four of the six are owned by one company.
Interesting facts?
Digital marketing is one of the most exciting and developing field of marketing. It enables companies to reach millions of people in a heartbeat and without the long lead times and expenses of traditional campaigns. It offers immediacy, images, videos and sounds as well as users contributing to the content.
Digital Marketing is also called data-driven marketing due to its convincing statistics, it uses AI (artificial intelligence), bots, customer driven trends, conversations and connections to get the message across. Influencers are driving traffic towards a brand (at a cost), content is tweaked to optimise searches and its interactive nature prompts involvement with the brand.
Finally, marketers can track their impact, from relationships and very specific targeting campaigns, for example geo-targeting and targeting specific markets. Real-time opinions, complaints, feelings and preferences are shared, and every campaign is on-the-move, mobile and as long as the target market has data, they will get the message. Marketers have had to learn to read statistics, graphs and charts like a romance novel. Pay-per-click, average time spent on a page, bounce rates, likes and shares have become business intelligence that leads to better decision making.
Apps were built and became a career for some, which none of us could have imagined 10 years ago. A website should now allow for quick access, attention-grabbing content and when viewed on a mobile phone, should be legible and easy to navigate.
The umbrella that covers all of this is basically just digital branding through omnichannel communication marketing. It doesn’t help that the online presence of a brand doesn’t equal what customers see and experience in-store or on their website. It is a much more integrated approach than just identical pay-off lines, brand colours and similar logos.
It is extremely important to involve digital specialists, such as SEO managers or copywriters who have the vocabulary knowledge to create an integrated campaign that involves all channels, and a digital marketing specialist that can assist in planning a comprehensive campaign that will deliver! With a specialist twist they can braid all the possibilities together to ensure that digital marketing doesn’t end up being just another online shop!
Structured data assisted search engines are there to sift through the content easier and quicker to yield a relevant result. Too many words, too little information, not mentioning product choices, colours and sizes, not offering online ordering or being vague about who the brand is, will not result in increasing sales numbers. The use of professional copywriters that specialise in SEO (search engine optimisation) is vital for survival.
Like any other industry, it has pitfalls and danger zones. Data breaches, website security and trusted and verified payment options, are non-negotiable privacy promises through encryption to ensure that a brand’s target market stays their target market and does not fall into the hands of criminals. It needs to be a transparent promise without t’s and c’s!
But, like any other traditional marketing campaign, it starts with knowledge. Building and offering what customers want, to the right customer, at the right time, price and place, is still the basic recipe. You might even instinctively know who the customers are, but if you don’t know or cannot anticipate their digital behaviour, the personas you have identified will be ignored through all your efforts. A little research goes a long way!
Statista.com affirms that the advertising spend in South Africa in 2019 was estimated to be worth R30.4 billion. As digital marketing demands are met, internet advertising is expected to represent 25 percent of that spend. That’s a whopping R7.6 billion. Putting impressive figures aside, digital marketing is fast becoming a sought-after career option for those who want diversity in their work experience.
Studying towards a Higher Certificate in Digital Marketing Practice with STADIO will provide aspiring digital marketers with valuable foundational knowledge for a career path in digital marketing. When it comes to making this career choice, you should consider the following questions: Do people interest you? Are you a creative thinker? Are you curious?
The Higher Certificate in Digital Marketing Practice provides a complete package to best prepare young professionals for a career in digital marketing. This full-time, hybrid course covers the principles of marketing, consumer buying behaviour, brand communication and design practice aimed at content creation. In the hybrid approach to learning and teaching, students will be taught both online and on-site, with alternating sessions. The mode of delivery for this course is focused on balancing working from home and having contact time with your lecturers. Students will leave the course ready to market and advertise on the internet and multiple social media platforms for all types of industries.