The Case for Digital Marketing as a Career Path
What do you want to be when you grow up? That is the question we are all asked as youngsters. For many college students that question is still unanswered. You want a career path that you love, a career path that has future growth potential and most importantly one that will land you a job right out of school.
A Career in Digital Marketing Could Be Your Answer
Digital Marketing is an industry that has an amazing amount of opportunity, avenues for specialization, upward mobility and future growth as an industry. For the long term foreseeable future there will be companies that are going to advertising online and need people to manage those advertising campaigns.
There is a wide variety of advertising and marketing types within this industry. Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing or Paid Advertising, Social Media Marketing and Email Marketing with Linkedin Lead Generation Software are just a few of the major verticals. There are literally 1,000’s of companies and agencies looking for talented people, both entry level and experienced.
The Career Path and Potential for Upward Mobility
In a job market with increasing uncertainty and an ever changing landscape one thing is for sure, Tech jobs are hear to stay and multiplying by the thousands every year. With that being said not everybody is interested in some of the more technical trades like programming and hardware implementation. Truth be told there is a lot more money to be made in other areas. You may be able to write some really cool programs but if you can’t sell them you had better find somebody who can.
There is a huge amount of opportunity for upward mobility as well. Think about like this. The internet in its current for has been around for about 20 years. The internet as we know it today with market dominating players like Google and Facebook has only really existed for about a decade, give or take a few years. So experience in this industry is relative. There is no one out there that can really say they have 20 years of experience in building backlinks for SEO. For that reason 2 years of experience is equivalent to 5 in other industries.
The Earning Potential
Now to the subject most people consider when looking at a career path. How much money can I make? The answer to that has more of a variable than most industries. These include your experience level, are you working for a firm or an agency, what discipline have you focused on, do you have previous examples of success you can point, where do you live to and so on.Read more at WeRedesign.
A great website that can answer most of these compensation questions is PayScale.com. Here are some examples:
Digital Marketing Manager
Total Pay, $39,490 – $100,243, Source
Social Media Marketing Manager
Total Pay, $27,213 – $76,174, Source
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Manager
Total Pay, $34,602 – $71,221, Source
There are so many different disciplines, job titles and career paths under the digital marketing umbrella we could not even begin to list them all.
Think Big
In this article we have just discussed the 9 to 5 side of the equation. What if you were to come up with the next big idea for a SaaS application, niche social network, digital product or any other number of innovation possibilities? The more you know about this space the more potential for this to be a reality there is and it all starts with a a career in the industry.
Conclusion
If you are looking for a fun and rewarding career that will last long into the future I highly suggest you take a hard look at entering the digital marketing space. While you are in college you can actually be building your book of real world examples of success. Anybody can start optimizing a website, promote a Facebook page, open a Google Adwords account, ect. You don’t have to wait. So get going and never look back.
