My career has always been a mystery for my family, my parents. Internet is very fascinating and they find it remarkable that the phone now has answers to all different queries. What they find intriguing however, is that my job involves tapping on the keyboard and staring at the laptop screen for hours, and talking on the phone for hours together. This kind of work is alien to them.
From what they understand, I just while away my time on Facebook and Twitter (a few terms they have now come to identify with) and call it my profession. And the term ‘Digital Marketer’, let\’s call it fancy nomenclature. I wonder when they will ever get to understand my profession. This however, is the case with many people I encounter day in and day out. Not many really understand what a digital marketer does.
Digital marketing sure has fancy definitions and as discussed in a recent post, it is a great career choice. A digital marketer’s role includes promotion of products or brands on the web and via mobile devices. But it isn’t just about pitching the product/service, it is about initiating a conversation with the audience and establishing a brand identity. It further extends to building trust among potential customers, sales being the eventual goal.
What does a digital marketer do to fulfil this role? Here’s an extract from my daily journal, a day in the life of a digital marketer.
Tuesday 14th November,
The Day started as usual with a routine cup of Coffee and Updating the Social Media Accounts. I made it to the office at 9:30 am and rushed in for a morning briefing with our ops team, that manages different client relationships. For all our clients, we publish our plans in advance and our teams are always under pressure to execute to that plan. That is a good way of keeping all of us on our toes.
My actual work started after the meeting. I checked the emails, responded to those that were most urgent. Based on the mails, I updated the task lists for the writers and graphic designers working on the current campaign. Then I checked the sites where the latest banner advertisements were posted and also checked for the number of clicks and leads generated so far. Having documented the data for the same, I then checked the blog pages, edit and optimize a few from an SEO standpoint.
Time for a quick tea break
After a quick break, I scheduled the posts for the day and the week. With that sorted I checked all our Google rankings for the key words and identified the ones that needed a modification in approach. Some of the landing pages also needed to be tweaked, as we were not getting the desired conversions, So I got in my web developer and told him what we need to change and make that simple so that our conversions improve.
With that sorted I got into a meeting with the design team and the content writer about a Facebook Advertisement and discussed about the ways to promote it on Twitter, Facebook and other social media portals. Back at my desk, I calculated the cost for advertisement, expected ROI and sent it for approval to the client.
Do we have time for lunch?
The first half of the day ended with a few quick calls. The lunch hour passed peacefully enhanced by friendly banter and great food.
Post lunch I had a post to be shared on LinkedIn. I scheduled the Tweets and shared a few snaps from the recent company event on Facebook. Then I conducted SEO audits with various SEO tools and checked the traffic to our website and also for some of our client accounts and blog on Google Analytics.
I also checked the results for two different landing pages, and based on the results I asked the development team to take down the less effective page.
Some more tea needed
The latter part of the evening was dedicated towards planning a new integrated campaign across emails, social and paid channels. We had several discussions related to the same. Tea and refreshments were downed in a hurry as the brainstorming progressed.
Before I wrapped up, I documented the updates on key campaigns, Facebook advertisements, Adwords, and LinkedIn advertisements and sent a copy to the related teams.
How can I miss my evening cuppa coffee
I got back home for my usual cuppa filter coffee with my wife and unwinded with some writing work (unrelated), had my dinner and that’s how my day ended.
While I do hope that my family understands my work pressures some day, I hope it clarifies at least a few misconceptions about a digital marketer’s job function.
A digital marketer’s role involves quantification of various aspects including the engagement on social media, site traffic, open rates on email marketing campaigns, page visits on blogs, click through rates (CTRs) on ads and shared links, completion rates on forms, and bounce rates on landing pages and more. While there are tools that assist in doing it all, scheduling, planning, analyzing and strategizing all come under the digital marketer’s task and while it sounds simple, handling the role requires proper certification and understanding about SEO, SEM, digital channels and devices and creativity too.
Most important, you need to make sense from all the data that you are generating and use that to modify the course of your campaigns, in a way, that can help you get the desired outcome.
So, are you interested in becoming a Digital Marketer?