Your 10-Step Roadmap to Become a Digital Marketing Manager

By NIIT Editorial

Published on 24/10/2020

6 minutes

Digital Marketing is unlike any other field. Its sub-domains are full of employment opportunities for both data-driven individuals and creative artists. It is one of those sectors where science and design go hand in hand. But not all digital marketing roles are born equal with job profiles reaching a saturation point within a few years.

When such a time comes, the managerial position that is most suited to, and highly sought after, is being a digital marketing manager. This ROI-oriented profile demands a lot out of professionals in terms of skills, expertise, understanding, and emotional intelligence. In this article, we’ll lay out a perspective roadmap, following which you’ll know exactly the skills you need to acquire to become an inspiring digital marketing manager.

A day in the Life of a Digital Marketing Manager

This work profile is equivalent to a c-suite position in an enterprise as a result of which cross-functional domain knowledge works best. The following competency areas should give you an overview of the expectations out of such jobs in digital marketing:

Creating, executing, and supervising Search engine optimization campaigns.
Coordinate paid search engine marketing campaigns when needed.
Analyse the performance and recommend improvement measures.
Market products on relevant social media platforms.
Calculate and report direct/indirect business impact for marketing campaigns.

Although such professionals don't need to be experts in each of the above and upcoming disciplines that we are to list, yet an actionable knowledge suffices in most conditions.

10 milestones you need to achieve to become a Digital Marketing Manager

Professionals focused on their career in digital marketing experience these stages gradually. As time goes by, they expand their degree of involvement in multiple digital marketing roles and are promoted ultimately to an authoritative profile where they delegate and govern the scope of digital marketing.

Acquire an understanding of the marketing landscape
Learn advanced SEO fundamentals
Operational Know-how of PPC
Market the brand on the Social Media
Organize content marketing campaigns
Get a good grasp on email marketing
Emotional Intelligence
Learn to integrate data analytics into reporting
Follow and act on Digital trends
Validate your Skills

1. Acquire an understanding of the marketing landscape

Your team would consist of not just one digital marketing executive but a mix of marketers specializing in different disciplines. Depending upon the nature of business the team strength could vary but until you possess an overview of how things work in each sphere, it would be impossible, much less difficult, to guide others. Have a long term plan and begin by establishing an understating on the following fronts:

Search Engine Marketing
Content creation and distribution
Social media
Email campaigns
Affiliate networking
With an actionable understanding, you would be

How to become a digital marketing manager

2. Lay a strong Groundwork for SEO

Of all the online marketing jobs, perhaps SEO professionals would be required the most. SEO plays a crucial role in organically attracting leads to your website and is therefore a building block for those who’re eyeing digital marketing jobs for freshers, as well as managerial-level workers. The best SEO practices, excluding paid promotions, are mostly interconnected with optimizing website performance and uplifting the UX. As a result, it is considered entirely under the control of the marketing team.

3. Be a PPC Champion

With more brands entering the online space, SEO is harder to nail, keeping in mind limited ranking space on the Search Engine Results Page. Google wants only relevant content to see the light of day while Facebook has made it hard to organically spread consumable content on the platform. Paid promotions would have to be part of your marketing plans to gather any kind of traction. Experiential knowledge of how to run such ads would be handy. To give you an overview, you would have to reach Pro-levels in running the following kind of ads:

Product Listing Ads
Remarketing campaigns
Display Ads
Video Ads
Dynamic Search Ads

4. Learn Social Media Marketing

Each social media platform is like an online geography but with their respective rules which keep changing all the time. From Facebook Stories to Instagram Reels and Twitter hashtags, there are unique ways to reach online users and spread content. Throw in YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, and Pinterest and you know the volume of quality content required to tap into the audiences and generate buzz. With so many ifs and buts, you should be well-versed in content creation and distribution for relevant platforms. The outgoing messaging from official social handles is usually entrusted to such managerial talents.

5. Organize content marketing campaigns

Content creation does not directly fall on the heads of managers but digital marketing executives hired to write. But it is your responsibility to guide the tone, and the choice of formats the content would be produced in. The scope of digital marketing has expanded so much that leading brands are pursuing a cross-channel approach.

They are producing written articles, white papers, e-books for the website, videos for YouTube, and podcasts for Spotify so customers can stay in touch on the go. Notwithstanding the quantum of content, quality standards mustn’t nosedive. For supervising managers to have a successful career in digital marketing, they must consider implementing the following benchmarks:

Content meets user expectation
Offers a perspective
Searchable on relevant platforms
Convinces the audience and attracts leads

6. Get a good grasp on email marketing

When it comes to specialist jobs in digital marketing, an email marketing expert is often missing in companies. Therefore, not just from the perspective of managing but also for digital marketing jobs for freshers, email lead generation skills spell a competitive edge. Speaking of which you might want to go through our guide on how to become an email marketer.

While at it, listed below are the key performance indicators you should build your understanding around, to analytically measure, and recommend improvement measures.

Email open rate
Click-through rate
Conversion rate
Bounce rate
Subscription rate
Spam reports

7. Be Emotionally Intelligent

A manager is on-loaded with a variety of responsibilities. Some of them could involve hiring for specialized jobs in digital marketing, and liaising with freelance digital marketing experts. But the most important skill to have as a people’s leader is empathy. Being able to step in someone else’s shoes and think from their perspective is a gift.

Emotional Intelligence helps leaders as well as their subordinates cultivate an understanding which automatically translates into productive partnerships. Provided you have this, you would never have to ask for a favour or even dictate terms to junior team members, as your co-workers would be more than willing to accommodate some extra hours-worth of effort.

Whether you are aiming for a career in digital marketing or not, the capability to be a team player goes a long way in establishing a reputation in the corporate sector.

8. Be a Data-Driven Marketer

Till now we have discussed the gamut of skills that would help you in your quest to not only become a marketing manager but also find other specialized jobs in digital marketing, and even opt for freelance digital marketing work on the sides. Data takes a central role in the operational efficiency of all marketing campaigns. Therefore, one cannot help but stress basing decisions and evaluating outcomes from numbers. Being in a leadership position, using analytical tools such as those mentioned below, should come as second nature to you:

Google Analytics
Google Search Console
Moz, SEMrush, HubSpot, Salesforce
Facebook Insights and Ad Reporting tool

9. Follow the latest Marketing Trends

The scope of digital marketing grows with each new day along with it multiplying the variety of online marketing jobs in the industry. Platforms like Google and Facebook continue to have a dominant say towards trends in advertisements and promotions. This is evident in algorithmic updates like Penguin and Panda. Acquiring the skills will only take you so far, as response measures to platform updates matter equally.

For instance, the Google Search Engine Results (SERPs) page has evolved to take the most relevant content at the user’s fingertips. In line with this, they’ve introduced the People also search for, Videos option as well as further recommendations right underneath the business listings on the SERP.

10. Get Yourself Certified

Knowledge coupled with experience needs the final stamp of approval from a recognized authority. NIIT’s Post Graduate Programme in Digital Marketing and Branding is an all-encompassing online course that offers 400+ hours of learning. The curriculum is designed in a way, sure to establish a firm understanding of key areas of digital marketing some of which include: