Marketing Career Focus: Digital Marketing
Each of these Marketing Career Focus posts will cover a specific track or specialty track within the MS in Marketing degree program. Indeed.com is a good job search site because at a glance it shows average salaries, years of experience for many mid-level positions, quantity of available jobs, as well as locations. I looked at 10-15 customer insights job descriptions from major companies and frequently mentioned skills at such employers as Neiman-Marcus, PepsiCo, American Airlines, Match.com and others.
However, there is NO substitute for doing your own searches and analyses.
What is digital marketing?
According to Hubspot,
Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all of your online marketing efforts. Businesses leverage digital channels such as Google search, social media, email, and their websites to connect with their current and prospective customers.
What does a digital marketing manager do?
These managers are responsible for all the digital touchpoints used by a company to market products or services, either by supervising experts in those areas or doing the tasks themselves.
Learn more about the MS Marketing – Digital Marketing specialty track
For a manager with three years of experience, salaries range from $40,000 to $95,000.
(Note: students requiring visa sponsorship tend to receive less money. There are not many sponsorship opportunities in this field for international students.)
What is the market size?
This area is not easy to pin down given that job titles can differ widely from SEM manager to SEM/PPC, SEO, internet marketing manager, and more. If these keywords are used in title, such as digital marketing manager, then some 21,000 open positions in USA are returned.
Typical job description
(from a Neiman Marcus job posting for “digital marketing manager”)
Description
The Digital Marketing Manager will be responsible for executing Neiman Marcus’ Digital Marketing strategy through the tactical management of all Digital channels to drive Omni-Channel customer acquisition, site traffic, conversion, and revenue for NeimanMarcus.com, LastCall.com, Horchow.com, and BergdorfGoodman.com. Position reports to the Director of Digital Marketing for the Neiman Marcus Group and will work closely with the Director of Social Media and Co-op teams.
Primary Responsibilities
- Manage Digital Marketing channels to support e-commerce and retail businesses.
- Manage programs to drive sales of our 250K products in stores and online in order to achieve direct response and branding objectives through the use of Search Engine Marketing (SEM/PPC), Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs), Product Listing Ads (PLAs), Remarketing, Affiliate Marketing, Programmatic Display, and Paid Social Media Advertising (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube).
- Responsible for turning data into actionable insights using analytics tools. Toolset currently includes Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics 360, MarketShare, Facebook Analytics, CRM data, in addition to channel specific analytics/tracking tools.
Core Competencies
- 5 years of progressive business experience at companies with a significant e-commerce presence
- Deep understanding of the mechanics behind successful digital campaigns and the technical infrastructure required to extract the most value from each channel
- Experience managing large multi-channel marketing budgets and maximizing return on ad spend
- Experience using web analytics tools and exposure to associated Marketing and Advertising technologies (e.g. ad servers, DSPs, DMPs, DS3, site data layers, tag management systems, etc.)
- Database (SQL) or web development experience not required, but a plus.
| Skill Mentioned by at least 10 major companies with this job title posting |
Courses See course syllabi for exact line up of skills as not all covered in each instance |
|---|---|
| Customer behavior | MKT 6310 Consumer Behavior Science and Practice |
| PPC/SEO | MKT 6321 Interactive and Digital Marketing |
| Email campaigns | MKT 6374 eCommerce and Marketing Automation |
| Web analytics |
MKT 6352 Marketing Web Analytics and Insights MKT 6384 Advanced Marketing Web Analytics and Insights MIS 6344 Web Analytics course is 1/3 web analytics, 1/3 PPC, and 1/3 SEO — a good choice if you want a general overview of the field. However, the course does not provide depth in any one area. |
| User engagement/UX basics and audits | MKT 6321 Interactive and Digital Marketing |
| Cross-platform management Platforms – Marin, Kenshoo, Campaign Manager | Not covered in current course offerings. If you know the basics of platforms being managed, these function as aggregators (Bing, Google, Facebook ads, etc.) so this area can be good to know. However, cross-platform management is easily learned and usually provided at major agencies. |
| HTML, CSS | I added this because a student asked about these skills. In large companies, a UX/SEM person does not implement any suggestions. That is left up to the web developers. It is good to know some basic HTML, which can be learned in a few hours for free at https://www.w3schools.com/html/ as well as CSS, which when implementing can be problematic https://www.w3schools.com/css/. I, personally, unless very simple, don’t waste time on that. It usually does not work well. However, small companies like these skills. |
Digital SEM Associations
DFW Search Engine Marketing Association: Their goal is to promote search engine marketing and increased return on investment for companies and their websites through best practices. Located in Richardson, this group has an excellent relationship with our area. It offers student membership rates.
DFW Interactive Marketing Association: Mainly for digital advertising and media planning/buying–display-focused professionals. They hold monthly events. No annual conference but they do have an award ceremony in May of every year.
SEM Software/Platforms:
- In-depth knowledge of Google Adwords, including Search and Display planner, Experiments, Automated Rules, Bid Enhancements, Excel (intermediate skills). Bing is also a good one to know after you have mastered Google.
- Web analytics — it is not just knowing all the reports and functionality but also being able to translate those metrics into actionable ROI business recommendations. There are also many complementary platforms and tools, such as Kissmetrics, Google Analytics, inPage, Crazy Egg or Hotjar that help you visualize behavior and conversions.
- SEO platforms such as MOZ, Screaming Frog. There are numerous tools used. As with web analytics, it is equally important to know how they work and to be able to deliver strategic account-specific recommendations. Applying segmentation is critical in SEO, PPC and web analytics.
- Platforms for creating and testing landing pages such as Optimizely or those provided by marketing automation packages such as Silverpop, Marketo and Hubspot.
Major Professional Certifications
Those that are free are must-haves.
- Skillshop with Google – FREE
- Facebook Blueprint Certification Exams – approx. $200
- Google Adwords Certification – FREE
- Adobe Analytics – Digital Analyst – approx. $360
- There are currently no industry accepted or widely known SEO certifications. There are vendors that offer such certificates.
Newsletters and Websites:
This is a rapidly changing area, so it’s best to subscribe to certain blogs. Some recommended resources:
Recommended Books on Digital Marketing
