There’s a general perception out there that digital marketing is an industry in which anyone can excel. It’s just a case of getting to learn the tools, right?
Wrong!
It turns out that the industry is way more technical than people imagine. If you want to add value, you have to really know what you’re doing. You can’t wing it. Everything is being tracked.
The perception that marketing is straightforward comes from the fact that it doesn’t have educational barriers to entry. You don’t have to complete a five-year course like you do to obtain a medical degree. But that doesn’t mean that once you decide to set up a company in the area, it’s plain sailing. Sorry, but it’s not.
You Have To Be Able To Write Fluently And Fast
The content side of digital marketing is exploding right now. Businesses all over the world know that if they want to maintain competitiveness online, they need to create compelling blogs that people will read.
This trend is leading to an explosion in demand for people with the skills to create such content. You would have thought that pretty much anybody would be able to do it, but that’s not true. It takes a specific type of mind.
Usually, what happens is something like this: an entrepreneur decides that the time has come to start a digital marketing business. He produces a couple of articles as examples of the type of content that he can produce for advertising purposes and then waits for the orders to roll in. At first, you are excited at the amount of interest in the service. But eventually, that gives way to frustration. Remember, the average blog takes between three and four hours to construct. So, you can usually only write two per day at a stretch. Marketers wind up spending all of their time writing, and none of it seeking out new clients and trying to wind business.
You Have To Understand Advertising Platforms
Advertising platforms, like Google and Facebook, do everything they can to make their services as intuitive as possible. Unfortunately, they can’t always simplify things or dumb them down. Almost always, you have to go deep if you want to provide clients with genuine value.
That’s leading to an increase in the number of people looking at how to become Facebook Blueprint certified. Currently, it’s the only formal accreditation from Facebook that guarantees that a person is fluent in using its advertising platforms. Similar qualifications exist for Google too.
You Need To Keep Up With Changing Knowledge
There’s a third issue that people entering the digital marketing world have to deal with: the fact that the rules are always changing.
Just look at how search engine optimization transformed over the last ten years. In 2010, you could pay for some fake links and keyword stuff your pages, and that would be practically all you’d need to do to get to the top of search rankings. Now it’s all about producing quality content that people want to consume and carefully tailoring metatags. It’s way more nuanced than it used to be.
And that’s before we even start talking about the algorithmic changes that the big search engines churn out at a steady clip. Things never stay static. You’re always learning and having to adapt. That’s partly what makes the job so enjoyable. You don’t know what’s coming down the pike for your firm next.
You Need To Compete Against Established Players
Low barriers to entry are both a benefit and a drawback of getting into the digital marketing industry. You can set up your agency in under a week. And you don’t have to fulfil any educational requirements legally or apply for any licenses.
But that comes at a cost. Once you start, you have to convince the existing pool of clients that they should pick you over the more established players. And that’s where problems start to enter the picture.
The competition for customers is fierce. And if one person doesn’t like you, there are a whole bunch of other agencies out there ready to meet their needs. It’s a minefield.
Setting yourself up as a digital marketer can be a complicated process. The trick is to present yourself as an authority and prevent anyone from telling you that you don’t have what it takes to be a success in your field. If you can, try to identify a niche that is not yet adequately served by the rest of the market. That’s the best way to get your first fifty clients.
