In the past, a solid marketing education was enough to land you a job in marketing. But with the advent of social media, the field has transformed. Nowadays, a marketing degree alone isn’t going to cut it when you’re applying for a job in cyber marketing. You need to have the skills to back up your education.

Digital Marketing Specialties Are Endless

The evolution of digital marketing has led to a wider variety of specializations than we’ve ever seen before. Once upon a time, you decided whether or not you were interested in marketing, and that was it. Nowadays, with the endless variety of tools and technologies at our disposal, there isn’t one single marketing specialty that you can follow. Instead, you have multiple options.

You can take up e-commerce marketing, which involves running sales for online stores. You can develop marketing strategies for brands using various tools, such as HubSpot or Marketo, and implement them with a wide range of marketing activities, from website design and content strategy to social media marketing and PR.

If that isn’t enough, you can also get certified in digital marketing analytics, which involves measuring various aspects of a marketing campaign, from performance to audience to ROI. Finally, if you want to specialize in e-commerce, marketing analytics, or PR, you can even become a subspecialist in digital marketing! There isn’t one single path to follow, and your specialization will depend on your goals and interests.

The Skills You Need To Grow As A Marketer

Depending on your interests, you may decide that you want to become an expert in SEO, or search engine optimization, which involves tweaking a site’s content and structure to improve its search visibility on search engines, such as Google.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you can become an expert in behavior change marketing, which aims at engaging with and motivating the audience you’re targeting through various digital marketing activities, like search or social media marketing. This is also known as “relationship marketing,” and it’s all about establishing and maintaining a conversation with your audience to convince them to take an action or make a purchase. If that’s your sort of thing, you can also get certified in behavior change marketing.

And what if you’re interested in content marketing? Do you want to create engaging articles for major news outlets, like The New York Times or The Washington Post? Or do you want to specialize in digital marketing for small businesses, such as cafés or restaurants, or non-profits? The possibilities are endless.

Where do I start?

Hopefully, this article will convince you that marketing is a field that you need to specialize in if you want to succeed in the field. But just because there isn’t one single path to follow doesn’t mean that you should limit yourself to only one specialty. Instead, you should look for jobs that interest you. If you’re passionate about marketing, then go ahead and put your degree to use. But if you don’t want to get stuck in a single area, then consider looking for jobs that are flexible.

For example, while search engine optimization is a specialization that can set you apart from the crowd, it’s not particularly easy to get a job doing it. In comparison, brand marketing is much more common, and it doesn’t require as much specialized training, which makes it much more accessible for employers. So if you’re looking for a job, specialize in brand marketing, and then go from there.