Corporate or Consulting?

When going into digital marketing, or even general marketing and advertising, you have quite a few options for where you could work. You could work on the digital marketing team for a larger corporation, or you could work for a digital marketing consulting firm, similar to an advertising agency. Sometimes companies rely solely on these firms for all their digital marketing, and other times a company might just use these companies to manage their Facebook page or update their Pinterest.

Which do you think you would prefer? Do you see yourself working with one company, creating strategies around their products/services, analyzing those strategies, and repeating that process? Or do you see yourself working on different projects, working with different companies, and having to be creative enough to understand many different companies and their customer bases?

Of course, each has their advantages and disadvantages. If you really want to go into digital marketing but you're not sure which side you would prefer, you should see your school's career advisor and try to set up an informational interview with someone from each side so you can get an even better picture of what working for a corporation and an agency is really like!

Digital Marketing- What To Expect

With digital marketing being a newer field, a lot of people might not be sure exactly what is involved with it. Many people make the mistake of thinking that digital marketing is just about social media, which means it's easy and anyone can do it. Contrary to popular belief, digital marketing involves both creativity and analytics, which can actually be challenging for many people. So the basic components of digital marketing include social media, search and display advertising, and search engine optimization.

Social media involves engaging with customers though various social networking outlets- Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. When working for a company, digital marketers need to carefully choose which outlets are the best way to reach their customers and match their organizational values. For example, Pinterest is growing in popularity, but a construction company probably won't benefit from a Pinterest account. An interior designer, on the other hand, would definitely benefit from reaching customers on Pinterest. The main message here is that just because social networks are available, it doesn't mean that your company will need them.

Search and display advertising involves those ads that you see when you search for something on Google, or banner ads on your favorite websites. The best place to work on this would be through Google AdWords. Google has the largest reach on their networks, and don't forget this also includes YouTube videos. Keyword targeting and setting up ad campaigns is an essential component of digital marketing that you will need to know.

Finally, there's search engine optimization. SEO is all about having your website appear in the top results for certain keywords that your business is about. Face it, people are more likely to click the actual search results than the sponsored ads. So if your website isn't on the first page, there's very little chance that your potential customers are going to find you. If you're interested in digital marketing, you definitely need to go to a school where you can get the best digital marketing degree. A course involving SEO is essential to learn the basics that will help you be successful in digital marketing!