11 emerging careers in digital marketing

With the advent of digital marketing, there has been an increase in the uptake of skills to satisfy the increasing demand of services in this field. However, it is not easy to determine where one can start and what gaps one can fill in this whole industry. Sometimes, it feels like one can do everything, but when looked at a closer range, one finds there is so much that can be done even in just one of the many specialties, and so again one is drawn back to the despaired feeling of where to specialize. In this insight, we share the different careers that work together to deliver excellent digital marketing services.

1. User Experience (UX) Designer
   Ever visited a website and you felt, maaan this site is not just beautiful, it is very easy to navigate and you actually found yourself amazed by the journey you made throughout the website? Okay well, chances are that you benefited from the work of an expedient user experience (UX) designer. These are the people behind optimizing the customer’s/ visitors journey on platforms such as smartphone applications, ecommerce websites, e.t.c., and they are tasked with conducting continuous research to identify what constitutes a good customer journey, such as the user needs, goals, behaviors, and pain points, and even developing mockup designs and project prototypes.
2. User Interface (UI) Designer
   Once the user experience (UX) designer is done developing the mockup/prototype they send it over to the user interface (UI) designer who then converts the designs into beautiful visual interactive interfaces, ensuring consistency of the key elements of brand identity such as colors schemes, fonts and others, which are all key aspects of digital marketing. Think of the work of a UX designer as building the shell of a house, and the work of the UI designer as carrying on with the interior design work for the shell of the house.
3. Web Developer/ web Designer
   These are the people who build a company’s website, mostly after being handed the project files from the UI designer. Unlike in earlier days when the developer/ designer would just build a website so that the company is online, the dynamics have changed, and now, every aspect of the site has to be so well curated that it meets and exceeds the expectation of the visitors, which is achieved through excellent coordination between UX designers, UI designers and web developers or designers.
   
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialist
   Remember a time when you searched through the internet for something and found it sooner than you expected? Okay now remember a time when you tried searching something and you were frustrated you couldn’t see it. Finally remember when you searched for an item on a browser, only to login to a social media platform and find that product right on your screen – sounded like magic right? Well, in a way it was, but in some other way it wasn’t. All that was the job of a digital marketing geek somewhere, known as a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist.
   The work of a search engine optimization specialist is to help bring the products or information you are looking for closer to you by streamlining the manner in which they are posted online, so that the most relevant queries or searches rank higher when searched, and this is done by using specific keywords that generate traffic. For example, when you search for a product, say website development, a list of service providers appear, and their order of priority is based on among other things the hard work of an SEO specialist who helps some companies appear on the top positions, increasing their chances of selling their products.
5. Social Media Marketer
   Many times when you interact with a brand online, you are either interacting with automated responses run by robots, or social media marketers who are real human beings. Social media marketers are people hired to help a company manage its online presence by handling inquiries and other feedback from the online community. For example, in the past, our firm Rensyl Integral has often been outsourced as the digital marketing marketing consultant for a number of brands globally to be their eyes and ears online. This is often done to cut costs from the side of the client, or to access quality social media marketing services, and has proven especially helpful for MSMEs and startups.
6. Copywriter
   Copywriters are a special workforce that helps in the development of marketing messages meant to deliver sales. The main job of a copywriter is to develop marketing information meant to persuade leads to make purchases. They develop advertisement messages as well as direct mail and sales page content.
7. Content Marketer
   Unlike copywriters, content marketers are bent towards education rather than persuading. Their job is to nurture an educative relationship between them and a company’s audience, thereby helping them interact with the company in more ways than from the selling angle. In short, content marketers and copywriters complement each other, where the former educates the customer and the latter tries to sell to the customer. Some of the responsibilities of content marketers include developing and maintaining blogs, emails and even video content that deliver educational information to a company’s target audience.
8. Graphic Designer
   As a marketing consulting firm, we can hardly implement anything without the services of excellent graphic designers. These are the group of people responsible for the nice and creative posters, banners and photos, whether digital or print, that help communicate the marketing message of a brand to its target audience. The next time you go to an event and see a roll up banner, you are most likely seeing the work of an excellent graphics designer. Graphics designers work with software programs such as Adobe photoshop, Adobe illustrator and Canva among others to convert plain text shared by copywriters to attractive pieces of information that can then be shared out.
   They also help in the business development stage of a brand, especially in coming up with essential components of a brand identity such as logos, brand styles and brand colors among others. The work of graphic designers goes hand in hard with that of content markets and copywriters.
9. Photographer
   There is no better way to explain how hard it would be for any company to imagine carrying out successful digital marketing without an excellent photographer. A large part of marketing relies on emotions, and a large part of emotions relies on photographs. Photos carry a lot of silent messages, such as what the company is doing, where it is, what people are saying about its products and so much more. Photographers accompany company officials to events and capture moments which are shared, and used by social media managers, content marketers, copywriters and graphics designers among others to sustain the brand’s online activity.
10. Videographer
    Capturing moments does not stop at just the photographer, but the videographer too is an important stakeholder in this objective. Just like photographers, videographers accompany company officials to events and places where video material can be captured to convey certain marketing messages on digital media. These include product demos, launches, corporate social responsibility events and so much more. Such videos are posted as stand alone content or alongside other content to convey well curated marketing messages to the target audience. These videos are relied upon by graphics designers, content marketers, copywriters and many others officials.
11. Paid digital advertising specialist
    In advanced setups, there is a position set aside for the brains behind adverts that companies place on digital platforms, and these are called paid digital advertising specialists. These are the people who, under a certain budget, determine when and where to place advertisements in order to help a company achieve certain marketing results. They also ensure that such advertisements are optimized to yield the best. While companies can definitely generate traction using organic means, there is always an option to increase the ROI by engaging in paid digital adverts which can be more targets and placed in the eyes of more potential leads.
    For example, while in a small company social media marketer can be the one to run paid adverts, they may not be well versed with intricate tricks and strategies such as target marketing, and this may lead them to run irrelevant ads to a wrong target audience, thereby burning cash and increasing the cost of customer acquisition. It takes a well informed paid digital advertising specialist to change the tide.

We hope you learned something and are eager to start exploring your career journey in the digital marketing industry. We are more than happy to offer mentorship and career opportunities where possible.

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