Hi! welcome to the Career Guide. Our guest for this episode is Mr. Pradeep chopra. He is the co-founder and CEO of Asia’s leading Digital Marketing and Data Analytics company, Digital Vidya. Pradeep has been a part of the internet industry since year 2000 and is among the pioneers of digital marketing.
A graduate of IIT Delhi and a recipient of Social Media Entrepreneur Award at Global Youth Marketing Forum, Pradeep is one of the most sought after international speakers on Digital Marketing and Entrepreneurship. So now let’s start with our first question.
So that’s a great question! what does a Digital Marketer do? Actually given Digital Marketing spans across various aspects like search engine optimization, social media marketing, search engine marketing, email marketing; depending on the profile of a Digital Marketer s/he, you know spends his/her time in different activities. myskywings.online
For example if you’re a Digital Marketer doing Facebook marketing for your organisation; the you’ll be spending your time on running Facebook as campaigns. Or if you’re doing search engine optimization, you may be working on how can you create great content and get that content be shared by others so that you can get your website rank on the top of the relevant keywords.
Similarly if you’re doing email marketing then you’ll be looking at what kind of content you are going to create which your audience is going to like. You maybe playing the role of an analyst. Then you are measuring data, using various tools; so the bbest part is that it’s a very interesting and dynamic domain and you really enjoy whatever you are doing in this digital marketing.
So given the number of people who are in digital media, facebook alone has close to 1.7 billion users on itself.And this number is growing, also the amount of time each one of us spending on this medium is growing; that means today for any organisation this is a very important media.
So, every organisation is looking at spending their time and money on reaching out to their customers through digital media and that is the reason there is an increasing demand of skilled digital marketing professionals. Because academic institutions are not able to teach this dynamic subject, and thus there is a huge dearth of talent in this industry; like early 2000 was a time of IT industry , this a time of Digital Marketing from a career standpoint. So intrestingly…
Digital Marketing doesn’t have too many prerequisite skills or even prerequisite educational qualification.The biggest prerequisite is your passion for this media, because your time will go on.. you know! spending on say on mobile or on facebook or on twitter; so I think that inner desire and passion for this medium is the most important aspect.
Then depending upon whatrole your are playing there are some soft skills and there are technical skills. Of course technical skills are dependent on what you are doing, for example if you’re doing social media marketing the knowledge about facebook, facebook ads, twitter, linked in all of them are important. But, there are some soft skills which really helps. One of the soft skills is communication skills.
I think since Digital Marketing is about your brand talking on your behalf through content on the medium, so how well your content is written plays a significant role. Some large brands have separate dedicated teams, some companies require a digital marketer to have a great communication skills. So that’s one.
Then, multitasking is another. Because you’re working on multiple channels, and changing it evolving it, that’s another. How can you unlearn and learn fast, because this is a dynamic field. Similarly if you’re playing a role in analytics, like you are doing web analytics, generally you will be doing some analytics. So the interest for numbers is another important skill.
Then embracing technology, you don’t need to know programming, but if you’re comfortable in understanding and embracing technology that’s going to be another skill. That’s a good question! Now the average salary of a digital marketing professional varies depending upon lot of parameters including educational qualification, including any previous work experience, including his/her knowledge about digital marketing. Someone who is a normal graduate at a fresher level with 0-1 year experience earn anywhere between 1.5 to 4 lacs in a year.
Then you move to a specialist role to a team lead role and maybe anywere between 5-10 years you move to a Digital Marketing Head role and you earn anywhere between 10 lacs to 30 lacs. Now this does not takes into consideration people with exceptional educational background, exceptional work experience and exceptional understanding of this medium.
Those kind of people, working in large corporates, working in high growth internet start ups or working in digital marketing media players or platform companies like linked in , facebook, google even in India earns even more than a crore as well, but of course that’s an exception but normally I think anywhere between 2 lacs to 25-30 lacs is what a Digital Marketer earns. [So this is indeed a very promising field] Absolutely! Ok! so how do you learn Digital Marketing! Given this is a very dynamic field and very practical field, the best way to learn digital marketing or the only way to learn digital marketing is to practice it. If you’re just learning it theoretically that won’t do any…won’t ass any value.
So you have to learn it hands on.And that is the reason academic institutions are not able to do justice to impart desired digital marketing skills. What that makes is…normally people learn it on their jobs, so some one in the organisation teach or they are trying on their own.Otherwise people who are not into this industry already, one way is that you know you can experiment on your own but, that’s easier said than done.
You don’t know which is the right content are you learning it right, are you getting feedback.So while there is so much of great content available online or there are free courses by companies like Coursera, EDx; the challenge with all of them is… because there is no one to handhold you there is no one to guide you and there is no fixed schedule, it’s like you know you should go to gym but you don’t go!
That’s the challenge with most of these online self study content available. The most relevant approach as we have seen is if you learn digital marketing over a longer period of time in a hands on practical approach, through a guided support structure and if you can earn an accreditation or a certification at the end of career is your objective that’s the best way.
And there are lot of institutes and definitely I can proudly say that DigitalVidya’s certified Digital Marketing certification which is offered in association with Vskills is one of the most recommended and respected Digital Marketing courses.And we believe that learning it hands on, learning it practical with an industry expert and in the end you earning a certification and if an institutre provides a placement support that is the best way and that what we have been doing since last 7 years.
