As we usher in the
New Year, a fresh lease of optimism is in the air. The industry bodies, the
markets, political arena and even the common man is beaming with hope of great
expectations raised by the “Make in India” slogan being heard from all quarters.
The Inflation in control, a growth oriented government, new businesses emerging
and a very conducive environment for entrepreneurs has set the perfect stage
for an all time high for a great job scenario. The job seekers can definitely
hope for some great opportunities in all emerging fields in 2015 but there are
few areas which can expect significantly more number of opportunities than any
other. Digital marketing is one such area. Lets explore the what and why of it
to understand this better.
What is Digital Marketing?
As the name
suggests- Digital + Marketing refers to marketing a product or brand digitally.
Now the digital mediums includes internet, mobile, tabs, etc. a basic
difference between tradition marketing mediums and digital mediums is that
these are instant so the marketing digitally is a whole different ball game and
hence need people skilled in this area.
Why Digital Marketing
will be a big thing for India in 2015
“Every third person in an Indian city today is a youth. In
about seven years, the median individual in India will be 29 years, very likely
a city-dweller, making it the youngest country in the world. India is set to
experience a dynamic transformation as the population burden of the past turns
into a demographic dividend…”
The Hindu, April 17, 2013 (web link)
All major multinationals and brands are aware of the above fact and have either
entered or in the process of stepping the Indian shores to gain from this
massive Indian youth market. That’s the reason why we are seeing a new
international brand in the Indian markets every other day. As internet or
social media will be the surest and easiest place to communicate with the
increasing Indian youth, the marketers in India as well are investing substantially
in building their online marketing capacities. This capacity building will continue
for few years at least to make them reach anywhere near the amount their peers
abroad are investing in online media (An average US brand spends approx 2.5% of
their annual revenue on digital marketing).
There are 243 Million internet
users in India as on August 2014 and is expected to touch 500 Million by 2018. Courtesy: CMO Council Website
Another major
reason that makes the digital marketing more relevant for India is its
increasing internet penetration. Internet and mobile has driven a dramatic
change since its inception enabling infinite flow of information,
entertainment, news and academic content. With its increasing penetration, it
has brought people closer to each other and has enabled access to the wide
range of products in the markets world over at the click of a button. With such
large target audience to cater to the Indian media, institutions and government
agencies will need to be well equipped to disseminate their information and
marketing activities online.
Let’s explore
the opportunity in digital marketing a little more closely and understand why
and how it will be one of the biggest job providers in 2015.
Career
Opportunities in Digital Marketing
Marketing a
product or brand digitally involves a number of activities and hence it
requires people of varied skill sets to make a digital marketing team. Let’s
identify a broad list of profiles and expected skills for these profiles. There
might be an entire department under these names or just one or two people
multitasking based on the size of the brand:
Bringing organic traffic through search engines with a selected group of keywords or keyword phrases. Understanding the target audience and their search preferences.
2. SMO (Social media optimization)
Managing the various social media channels and strategize to increase the post reach. Posting on relevant topics and timings to engage more and more people relevant for your product
3. SMM ( Social Media Marketing)
Paid advertising on social media platforms like Face book, Twitter, etc
4. Content writing
Content generation for various blogs and websites to increase online brand presence and get relevant links.
5. Ad words/PPC Management
Paid advertising using Google & Yahoo ads
6. Web development
The website and blog need to be regularly updated and maintained according to various changes in the industry and search engine requirements.
Quantitative
Analysis (a quick dip stick)
The changing
market scenario has forced every marketer to include digital media in their
arsenal. It’s only a matter of time that every organization will have a
dedicated digital marketing department or at least a team of few people
managing their online presence. We tried to understand the rapid growth in the
number of jobs created in the field by a quick dip stick. We searched for the
five keywords related to digital marketing and related jobs in the Delhi-NCR on
a popular job portal and the result is as below:
It shows a
whopping 15532 jobs in the searched categories with keywords- “Online
marketing, search engine executive, social media management, digital marketing
& mobile marketing”. This quick check is a testimony to the above claims of
increasing number of job options in the digital marketing arena. Similar
profiles are top on the headhunter’s radar and interestingly the pay packages
also vary from 10 k per month (for fresher candidates) to 50 thousand a month
and even more in some special cases.
The point here
is not just to highlight the large number of jobs available and to grab them by
some quick fix courses but to understand the need of the market, our own
capabilities and then equip yourself with the right knowledge and take the
great opportunity knocking at our door step.
Image Courtesy: tonicmarketing.blogspot.com, Naukri.com
References: