What’s The Best Way To Get Started In Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is one of those massive and unhelpful buzz terms that seems to get slapped on everything; social media marketing, SEO, writing blog posts and being a YouTube star. To get started in digital marketing is thus an overwhelming deluge of bad information, guru bait and old people pretending they understand what the hip young kids are talking about.
It’s also a massive growth industry and if you think that’ll change in the next five years, it’s time to pack it up and go home, Luddite.
So, what we’re starting with here is that digital marketing – whatever that means – is a quagmire of unrelated stuff being thrown together, and to get started in digital marketing means navigating a minefield of bad information, old people and the opportunity to make a ton of money.
Let’s get to how to become an expert at all of it in a few short steps.
Start With Direct Response Marketing
Before you get up to date with new tech, you should consult arcane knowledge of ancient sales wizards.
Before you start taking photos of your avocado toast for Instagram, (Probably not why you don’t have a house right now but it isn’t helping,) you need to take an important step.
And it is an important step because it’s the one step that nobody does. Not even most marketing graduates and actual “professional marketers” do this one thing you need to do. A thing so basic it’s laughable, yet so rare that learning it can make you a millionaire.
Know what you’re doing.
Most marketers don’t have a clue how marketing works. They think their job is about sending emails, writing catchy slogans or posing for pictures with their avocado toast.
Some people make a living doing that, but they’re not safe or successful because they can’t actually generate a profit so they can’t prove they do anything valuable.
The answer to this is to learn about direct response marketing.
The old books from 100 years ago are relevant today. Scientific Advertising and Breakthrough Advertising will teach you all you need, but essentially here’s the formula:
- Create stuff that makes people want to buy
- Give them something to buy or have them buy the thing you’re selling
- Keep their details on file for next time
- Profit massively
It doesn’t matter what platform you use, every digital marketing campaign uses direct marketing principles when it comes to the important bit. The important bit is getting the sale and keeping the customer.
Read The Manual
Alright, you’re thinking, “Jamie, you’re boring me to tears. I just want to be a Facebook Master.”
If you don’t know how direct marketing is going to help you, then take a step back.
If you know about direct marketing and know the ins-and-outs of building a campaign, then great. I’ll let you in on another secret. This time, it’s about the modern world. It’s about the Instagram app, the Facebook Advertising platform and your AdWords account. It’s about affiliate marketing programs and YouTube videos and all of that high-tech stuff.
The secret is this: Almost all the information you need to create successful marketing campaigns in terms of knowledge required is given to you for free by the providers.
You don’t need a guru’s “10 Secrets To Facebook Ads That Kill It!” course.
Read and understand the platform. Learn how it works; whether you’re trying to work out how Instagram users can get more exposure through hashtags or you’re learning how to scale a Facebook campaign.
The dirty secret is that most online courses are essentially hashes of information that’s freely available, and for most advertising platforms, there’s extensive documentation to help you succeed on the platform.
You can get Facebook certified. You can get Adwords Certified. Somehow, you can even get AWS certified, but god knows how because that whole thing is a user-unfriendly nightmare.
Read the manual, and then move on to the next step.
Forget The Gurus And Get On With It
Some people spend tens of thousands of dollars on e-guru courses in order to feel qualified enough to work on Upwork, charging $10 for web design projects that are worth hundreds to people who are going to do their hardest to screw them out of that $10.
Those people are slightly better off than the would-be copywriters who spend tens of thousands to go to portfolio school, only to get a junior copywriting job at an agency which is so bad they throw themselves out of a high window after a 40 hour straight work binge because their job is so terrible.
Here’s the third dirty secret I’m going to reveal to you in this article.
You don’t need any of that. The best way to learn about digital marketing of any kind is to simply do it.
It doesn’t matter whether you want to learn SEO (start a blog) or be a YouTube star (Record videos on your phone) or become a professional social media manager (build a social following, change platform, do it again.)
You don’t need super-secret techniques and you don’t need to spend huge amounts of money. You shouldn’t, either. All you really need is a glossary of terms, some free time and some YouTube videos. Then you need to get your feet on the ground and start running. Start a website, make it successful. Build a Twitter following – either a personal one or a niche interest one.
Rinse and repeat.
One Platform At A Time
Social media and digital marketing is overwhelming because it’s vast. The worst thing you can do is try and learn everything all at once. You’re going to get overwhelmed if you do that, and that feeling will lead you to do stupid things like fall for the guru thing or try and get ahead with shortcuts.
Master one thing, then move on. Once you’ve learned about direct marketing, everything will make more sense. Suffice to say, each platform will have a separate audience and you have to tap into that audience and their needs. Even if they’re the same audience, they have different needs for a platform:
- Email marketing is for 1-1 communication and should be personal
- Twitter is a bulletin board of your thoughts
- Facebook is for stimulating group discussion
- Instagram is a photo gallery snapshot of how awesome you/your business/your client is
- Sales letters are for selling, websites are central hubs of everything
Important final point: none of this is rocket science.
There’s a roadmap in this post that’ll help you whatever your skills, experience or whatever else you might think stands in your way:
- Learn about direct marketing
- Read and learn about the platform you’re about to master
- Use the platform and gather knowledge of how it works
- Rinse and repeat with all the other platforms/bodies of knowledge
If you do those things, not only will you do all you need to get started in digital marketing but you’ll also be better than 99% of people who have ever worked in the field.