Is digital marketing the right career option in 2020?

Introduction

Recently I had a discussion with my colleague's son about career options. He asked me about digital marketing as a career option. Though he wants to pursue this but has apprehensions if this is a viable and long-term career option.

I thought about this and did a google search to find out some facts. In recent years digital marketing as a career option has become very lucrative and lakhs of people are taking courses, doing self-learning for a professional career in this field.

But on the other hand, we keep hearing about a lot of traditional media marketing companies closing down or losing a large part of their revenue to digital media companies. And that’s the reason for my cousin's apprehension if marketing is still a viable career option in 2020 and forward.

I did some research in this area and found out that a lot of people have misconceptions about marketing as a career option. In this article I’d like to address some of these misconceptions and also share some insights about marketing, personal branding, and how marketing, especially digital marketing, can be a great long-term career option.

What is Marketing?

Before we delve deeper into the subject, let’s first start with the basics.

American Marketing Association defines marketing as - 

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

So marketing comprises all activities for creating (market research, surveys, defining target customers, identifying customer needs), communicating (advertisements, emails, samples), and delivering (through various channels) valuable products and services to consumers. 

We can understand marketing better by looking at the law of marketing.

1. Marketing is based on science and not on creativity

2. Marketing starts even before you create a product. The idea is to understand your target customer, understand their needs and create products or services that fit

3. Marketing is also about sending the right message to the right person at the right time. The right message will influence the customer to take the action that you want.

4. Marketing also involves retaining the existing customer and keeping them happy

5. The ultimate purpose is to build a brand and capture a position in the mind of the consumers. Many of the known brands like Xerox, Google, Uber have become verbs. So when you want to find something on the Internet the first thing that comes to your mind is Google. This is the power of the brand.

Is traditional marketing dead?

No, both traditional and digital marketing will co-exist. The usage of traditional marketing vs digital marketing will depend on the product, target audience, market segment, etc. 

If a product is generic (like soap, oil, toothpaste) with a very wide target audience, TV ads will be the right channel to reach millions of people at low cost

But specific products catering to a niche may be more suitable for digital marketing.

So both the traditional and digital marketing will continue to co-exist and companies will determine the type of marketing they want to do for their product and services.

Can I make good money in digital marketing?

Of course. If we just look at the Indian market, the potential is huge. You will be able to reach out and scale your business to millions of customers. If you select the right niche, create good products and win the trust of your users your earning potential is unlimited.

To begin with, you only need 1000 true fans to succeed. These are the people who believe in your vision, trust you, and are willing to grab anything that you’ve to offer. 

With a strong personal brand, you can attract a lot of potential customers and serve them through your products, education, consulting, coaching, and other services.

Here is the link to this very interesting article - 

1,000 True Fans ( https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ )

So you can make money as an employee, freelancer, consultant, coach, and running your own agency. 

CATT - Marketing funnel and framework

Wealth = n ^ CATT

Where n is your niche

N - Niche - Choosing a right niche is very important for success. Niche is a combination of talent, market needs, and your passion.

C - Content

To establish yourself in a niche you’ve to consistently create content that provides value to your customers. The content can be in the form of a blog post, ebooks, videos, white papers, case studies etc.

A - Attention

The right content will attract people to your web site. To drive attention to your website you can use paid ads, SEO, social media etc. This will help you to grab your customer's attention.

T - Trust

Build trust with your audience with offers, marketing automation, and re-targeting. By providing value to people you'll be able to win their trust. Trust is very important in any sale or transaction. The buyer should be convinced that he is making the right decision by buying your products and services.

T - Transaction 

Once trust is established, people will turn into customers by buying your products and services. If you've done all the above steps correctly you will not have to force your customer to buy your product and services. You’ve to nurture these customers so that they purchase more of what you’ve to offer.

Integrated Digital Marketing

The CATT funnel is executed through Integrated digital marketing. A lot of individuals focus only on specific aspects of digital marketing such as SEO, email marketing, etc. But due to the lack of an integrated approach, they are not successful. If you can produce valuable content for your audience, the search engines will recognize it and a lot of organic traffic will be generated for your content. This will build trust and people will start recognizing you as an authority in your niche. Once people enter into the funnel as they see value in what you're providing it becomes very easy to sell them your products and services. As the trust goes higher you can offer them your other products, higher in the value ladder.

Power of Personal Branding

Your personal brand establishes you as an authority and creates the goodwill that in turn can generate a lot of business for your company/ agency. 

A brand is a set of expectations, memories, stories, and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.

– Seth Godin

People want to hear from people, and not from brands. If you’re regularly connecting with your customers using deep marketing methods your personal brand will become even stronger.

Your personal brand and your company are 2 separate entities. If you sell your company to investors then also your personal brand will exist.

So you should always invest in building your personal brand. It differentiates you from the competition. 

“The Best known will always beat the Best”. 

You have to also ensure that you are discoverable and people know about your skill, experience, and expertise. You’ve to ensure that you’re discoverable through various social channels such as Linked In, Facebook, Youtube, and your blogs and websites.

Summary

This was a brief summary of marketing, career option, marketing funnel, and personal branding. After reading this article you must have understood the basics of marketing and why marketing is a long term career option. Marketing and sales as a career have existed for long and will continue to be a lucrative career option. With more and more people shifting from traditional media to the Internet and social channels the demand for digital marketing professionals will continue to grow. 

So this is the best time to make a move and learn about digital marketing. And the best option currently available is Digital Deepak’s internship program. This program is offered by Deepak Kanakraju who is a leading digital marketing expert and has more than 10 years of experience in this field.

This internship is a 12 weeks intensive program that will help you to build a career in digital marketing. Deepak’s approach is very unique for this program. You’ll receive cash back on completing the internship assignment. The cashback is paid weekly. This means if you’re consistent and complete your assignment on time you'll get the course fees back in the form of cashback. This is a unique concept and I think it is the 1st of its kind in the country. The fear of losing money motivates you to take action and implement what you’re learning.

Deepak is opening the 5th batch of the internship program soon. If you’re interested please click the link below to register.

https://deepak.me/internapply