When considering which digital marketing career you want to pursue, it's important to explore the different avenues available.
Discover the roles and responsibilities of both generalist and specialist positions; handling various aspects of digital marketing or excelling in a specific niche such as SEO, PPC or social media.
We also break down the choice between working client side; being an integral part of an organisation's marketing team and driving their digital strategy, versus working on diverse client projects at a digital marketing agency.
By the end of this video, you'll have a solid understanding of the different types of digital marketing jobs and hopefully a strong idea of way you want to steer your career.
If you have any questions you would like answered as part of our 'So' series, please get in touch and let us know.
Our podcast, 'The Digital Marketing Podcast' is in video format on our YouTube channel. Make sure to subscribe for a brand new video podcast every week!
Transcription:
So, what are the best digital marketing jobs?
There's a really broad range of job roles which we'll talk about, but they kind of fall into two categories really, two main areas.
So, what are the two categories?
You've got generalist; “I'm a problem solver. I'm going to work out what we should be doing and I'm going to apply that” and then specialist; “I will be absolutely brilliant at this very particular type of thing”.
There are some people that manage to balance the two, which are the T shaped people, they've got this broad range set of problem solving skills, and they've got really deep knowledge in one particular area. I like the whole T shaped thing, but I think people will argue one way over the other. In my career, I think I've been a generalist, because I've tried to learn a bit about everything and think “what’s the solution to this?”, and that kind of takes you down the kind of strategy role eventually, because you can shape up which direction to take things in.
So, any idea on which is better?
Yes and no. I'm going to argue that a generalist is a good thing because you get to problem solve. Other people will argue, you will never know about enough about everything in order to do that, so you need to be a specialist. I think organizations need both.
I mean Ciaran, you've specialized in a few areas like paid search and e-commerce and things like that, would you consider yourself a generalist or a specialist? I don't know, I'm more T shaped, that's more to do with the amount of cheese that I consume and how my shape is changing, it's not quite what you were describing, but, yeah I suppose.
It is really fun being an expert in a particular area, and naturally, as you get more senior, you work on more and more projects. I suppose I never had a plan to be a digital marketer. I was sort of thrust into it, and it turned out I was quite good at it, and I enjoyed the attention, if I'm honest, so that sort of drove me forward and I haven't stopped.
What I love about it is that every day is a school day. There's always new things and when you think you've learned everything, everything changes and you've got to learn a whole bunch more.
What I find endlessly fascinating about it; it's all about people, and this is really exciting. When you go on the journey, you start looking at data and you become obsessed with numbers, and then suddenly the penny drops and realize there's actual real people behind all of these numbers and figures. And actually, there are stories to tell within that data and we can. It’s one of the amazing things about the human brain. We can foretell what we want the future to be.
So as a marketer, you've got the ability to change the end of the story and that's fun, and you like learning how to do that and learning what leavers you can pull and how you can bring in different campaign elements.
And so, I don't think I've ever necessarily followed particular things. There's things that I've had to because of the nature of my work; I've definitely specialized a lot in SEO. There’s been times in my career when I’ve had to specialize a lot in Pay Per Click. They're just things that you sort of sort of pick up, but actually when you begin to realize it all comes full circle, it's not about any of that stuff it's about the people behind it and that's when you really start to find some big wins. I say this a lot of my training courses, but try and hack the human algorithm. And that's true of SEO, it's true of Pay Per Click, it's true of affiliate marketing, it's true of all of these things. Then it becomes a study of your fellow man and how to bring the best out for them and solve their problems. And when you get to that level, anything's possible.
So, there's an element of both, but I think the thing that all marketers need to be real specialists in is people.
So, there's also agency side and client side?
Yeah, so for me, the agency side of things is brilliant for learning. I went into an agency very early in my career, and that was a really steep, but really great learning curve.
On the client side of things, clients can be quite frustrated by agencies and there's the tension between the two sometimes as well. Agencies will definitely get frustrated with their clients as well. Why have one difficult and demanding boss when you can have 20?
They're both different, and what you'll see is in the agency environment, there's kind of natural progression. You go in at a junior exec level, you might go into some sort of specialist there, you might then go to an account manager, an account director, and there's kind of a clear path that you go through.
Within the client side of things, there will be different roles. Some will just have, you know, a marketer, a digital marketer, some might have 50 Pay Per Click specialists, it depends. So there is the balance between the two. There's pros and cons to each thing.
You might like to work on one thing - great for the client side of things. Agency – I want to work on loads of things and learn. I can do a bit of both. I would say early in your career, if you can get into an agency, it's a great opportunity because you'll learn a lot.
So, what was your career path then?
I was a techie. I started off studying computer engineering and I came out of university and I applied for, I think, 15 graduate programs and I got exactly zero offers. I didn't get into any of them. I got completely rejected. I was like, okay, I'll start my own business because I have no idea what I'm doing.
So, I went off and started my own business and we were basically doing online marketing, building brochure websites back in the day. That built up, going brilliantly, then all of our clients went bankrupt literally in the same week, so I better get a job. I went in as the online marketing manager in a technology company and did that for a while. I then got offered a role in an agency and this is the early agency role. I was the third person in the agency, and it was two brothers that owned it. Within three years, I was managing director and we had like dozens of staff and it was all kind of huge and growing.
Then it kind of step stones from there and 11 years ago, I started my own business. None of it was planned and the reason I say that is that the world is changing so quickly. Digital marketing wasn't even a career back then, it was kind of a word, but it wasn't really a thing yet.
Just knowing a bit about tech and a bit about marketing at the same time was the sweet spot. So, I think if you can arm yourself with the knowledge to solve problems, to understand technology a bit, to understand marketing theory, combine those things and you'll be in really good stead.
So, I would just reassure people that if you haven't got an absolute plan, don't worry, and I will guarantee if you have got a plan, it will not go to plan. So, work out what you're passionate about, work about what you're interested in and focus on that, become good at it. I just think becoming good at something is key.
Once you get there, you can shape your career. You've got a bit more control over it. There's this never-ending route of things that will become interesting. It is an interesting career path, and it doesn’t have to be set in stone, it can change.
You can be a generalist, then a specialist, then back to being a generalist. And if you feel like you're being pigeonholed, change. You can go in another direction. That’s the key thing.