Industry Insights: Digital Marketing by Katey Cheung
Hi, I'm Katey, and I've just completed an 8-week full-time Digital Marketing Bootcamp with WYK Digital!
There's no set definition of what marketing is, but how I would define marketing is all about getting the right product/service in front of the right person in the right place at the right time, and to make this simpler, digital marketing includes all forms of online marketing, from search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, organic and paid social media, email marketing, to content marketing and so on, with some overlaps with the public relations (PR), communications, and advertising industries too.
So to give an example, I could conduct some research to create a specific persona of my ideal customer, and then I'd create a social media strategy on how to promote a new product to my ideal customers on a specific social media platform like Instagram, whether that is through organic social media posts, paid ads, or maybe even influencer partnerships or affiliate marketing too. I could even retarget customers who have already bought from my brand before, or visitors to my website, to increase the likelihood of a sale.
Going back to my story, I already had some prior experience in social media marketing for a classical music record label, but I didn't dive deeper into digital marketing until last year, when I finally decided to take charge of my life. As a career changer, I was quite lost at first, but I've always noticed the ads when taking the Tube, so I started looking for marketing communities online, and I found Girls in Marketing. I joined their Digital Marketing Internship, started taking more online courses, and due to a recommendation from my Social Switch Project Career Mentor, I've just completed a WYK Digital Bootcamp in Performance Marketing, which has boosted my confidence and given me real campaign experience with a small business.
What I love about Digital Marketing is the sheer variety of channels, roles, and ways to build a career within this industry, which was one of the reasons I changed my career from working in education. I felt that in education, you could work in different types of schools for different age ranges, but essentially, there was only one set path you could follow in terms of becoming a teacher and working your way up to a headteacher role.
If you're interested in Digital Marketing too, bearing in mind there are many areas within digital marketing you could work in, the key skills I'd recommend you develop are:
Creativity for making assets
Teamwork to collaborate with others
Attention to detail for creating media plans and writing copy (writing for brands)
Communication for clients & teams
Organisation for asset management
Experience in specific tools depending on your channel (e.g. MailChimp, SEMRush, Canva, Wordpress, Google Analytics, Monday, Social media platforms, CapCut etc.)
Adaptability to optimise campaigns
Data analysis to draw out insights from campaign data
Presentation skills to present results & recommendations to clients/senior colleagues
And most important of all, always being willing to learn, because digital marketing is constantly evolving!
It's a very young field to work in as it's only started taking off in the late 90s, so there's so much to learn, but also you don't need to know everything in lots of detail. Just knowing the basics is a great place to start!
The challenges of working in digital marketing are the risk of burnout from having never-ending to-do lists, especially if you're a one-person marketing team.
Another challenge is that, as digital marketing is still a relatively new industry, executive-level colleagues may not understand what it is, so you can be undervalued or even blamed for poor results, especially for senior colleagues that need to know the return on investment (ROI) of any campaign you're working on.
Because there's always so much to learn and there's always something you don't know, it's also very common to have impostor syndrome.
Also, you could end up working in silos if you don't network with your colleagues, especially with the sales & finance teams if you're working brand-side, so learning "the language" of sales and finance will help get you on their side to help them understand you're working with them, not against them.
Finally, marketing in general is traditionally a London-centred industry, but luckily there are still opportunities in big cities outside London, and marketing more generally is a core business function, so there'll be something out there for you!
On the same line of thought, there are so many opportunities out there, and there's a role for everyone! You can be more creative or more analytical, work brand-side or agency-side, be more of a generalist or a specialist, learn more by working in different channels, and you can move between these roles anytime you like. It is almost expected that you'll change jobs every 2 years or so for new learning opportunities, promotions, or higher salaries, it's not seen as job hopping as long as it's not every year or so! Any expertise in marketing tech tools is also transferable, so there's so much room to grow and so many routes you can take when you're building a marketing career!
In terms of advice, what I'd say is:
Set boundaries between work & life because the to-do lists never end. Most roles in digital marketing are hybrid (2/3 days in-person), but there are also remote roles too, so either way, remember to spend time with your friends & family!
Learn how to present information differently depending on who you're talking to! Giving presentations is one of the key skills you'll need to work in marketing, and being able to adapt the amount of detail you give depending on your audience is so useful for keeping your audience engaged and knowing just the information that they need!
Finally, my No.1 tip is to make sure to network! Marketers are expected to be more social anyway, and going to after-work events if you're working agency-side, is so important for future career opportunities! Even though I'm an introvert, I've become more confident sharing my career journey online, and I love meeting people who are just as passionate as I am, so start building that support system of people in your industry who understand your trials and tribulations!
My goal now is to get that 1st Digital Marketing role, and my very last piece of advice is my passion for digital marketing & being proactive has stood out to everyone I've met! They've all said I'll get a job offer soon, so take every opportunity you can, and hopefully all that hard work will pay off!
This blog was authored by Katey Cheung, a participant of our Digital Skills & Employability Programme