If you have been keeping up with our blogs, at this point, you must have a good grasp of what is digital marketing, what the professionals do, how much they make, and what are the best certifications and degrees in the market. The next big question is, where do you get started?
To answer that, we are going to share with you some of the best entry-level digital marketing jobs in the US market. These are jobs popular with recent grads, which is what you will be immediately after clearing college. They are also the types of jobs you are likely to find easily.
Though it is not a rule etched in stone, but top managerial or even middle-level digital marketing jobs are not open to recent grads. Yes, there are some exceptional cases, but most likely, you will be finding yourself in any one of the following entry-level digital marketing jobs:
1. Content Writer
With all the digitization going on, businesses are acquiring digital assets such as websites, mobile apps, whitepapers, and eBooks among others. All these digital platforms require content, and frankly, text is still an integral part of communication. Sure, multimedia does the job of capturing attention much better than plain text, but it will be hard to replace text completely.
Thus, content writers are needed to write blog posts, press releases, website pages, product descriptions, and articles. Content writing is also the easiest entry-level digital marketing job to get because of the demand it has in the industry.
The industry demands that a good Content Writer to create highly engaging content around the topic they have been given. Putting in mind that written content needs to align itself with certain best practices, keywords for SEO ranking, grammar, ease-to read, among other things.
2. Content Strategist
The work of a Content Strategist is to come up with the direction the organization’s content marketing will take. They are the brains behind the entire operation of content marketing.
They determine the tops, keywords to be used, and how the titles should look like. They also give out the editorial guidelines for all the content to be written. They also edit the content to ensure it meets the set standards and measure the performance metrics, which will then be used to improve the content marketing strategy.
3. PPC Specialist
A PPC Specialist will be expected to know how to design and execute pay-per-click ad campaigns. This job requires a broad skillset and when executed in the right way, can add a lot of value to a company looking to grow its brand awareness and sales.
The specialist will, among other things, expected to do thorough keyword research, come up with great landing pages, come up and implement paid ad campaigns, and perform ad analysis.
The critical role of a PPC campaign is to drive up traffic towards the business’s website and convert that traffic to sales.
4. Outside Sales Representative
Yes, the dreaded sales jobs! It doesn’t seem like the starting point to any job, is often you doing the back-breaking tasks. For the digital marketing industry, an outside sales representative is the face of the agency to the outside world.
That often includes you hitting the roads to sell the agency’s services to prospective clients including cold calling. Once you have established a relationship with a prospective client, you then embark on maintaining that relationship and being the liaison person for the client towards your agency.
A key trait for a successful sales representative is presentable and the ability to easily form a friendship with anyone quickly. That means you must be a people’s persons, someone comfortable interacting with people.
5. Inside Sales Representative
Once the outside sales representative charms a prospective client to get them to commit to making a purchase of the agency’s product or service. They move on to the next prospective client while leaving them to the able hands of the inside sales representative.
This person will be tasked with maintaining the client’s accounts and ensuring their needs for product or service specifications are met. They will be doing that from the office, as they make calls, send emails, and coordinate the client’s orders with the schedule of the team’s calendar.
6. Junior Account Manager
The account coordinator will be handling the agency’s group of clients, with each client having their account. S/he will be linking the paying customer (client) with the marketing team, ensuring payments are made in good time, the customer’s expectations are relayed to the marketing team, the marketing team work on customer’s orders in good time, product or service is delivered to the customer, and the customer is satisfied.
No doubt, this job requires someone with great organization and communication skills. Getting it wrong could lead to a frustrated lot of people on either side; the agency or client-side.
7. Communications Specialist
The digital marketing agency, like any other organization, needs from time to time to communicate with the outside world. A Communications Specialist is the professional tasked with putting the concerns of the company to the outside world.
Naturally, this professional needs to be proficient in both speech and writing. They also need to have the ability to connect with people; be a people’s person. These professionals are often found in advertising, media relations, and public relations organizations.
8. Marketing Coordinator
A Marketing Coordinator helps the rest of the marketing team in matters research, planning for a project, and running analytics. They keep their eyes and ears out for industry best standards and development that could further improve the agency’s competitiveness in the market.
So often, you will find Marketing Coordinators dealing with the agency’s competitiveness in the market, running sales forecasting, implementing the campaign strategies, and compiling reports.
9. Junior Business Analyst
A Junior Business Analyst works under the stewardship of a more experienced member of the organization at a higher ranking. S/he assists in validating the company’s sales performance and manages the account systems.
This job requires someone keen to details as there will be a lot of monitoring, evaluation, and generation of reports. The reports will later be used by senior management to steward the company towards the desired goals. It is often the Junior Business Analyst who keep tabs on industry trends.
10. Public Relations Coordinator
A Public Relations Coordinator handles the media briefing, plans the organization’s events, writes the press releases, pitches the company’s stories, briefs the management about public sentiments, and contributes to social media postings.
This job requires someone with superior organization skills and the ability to build up relationships with other people quickly. Something critical as they need to have a close working relationship with reporters and editors of various media houses to get media coverage of the organization’s affairs. Being in good terms with publications and getting the right publicity is the hallmark of a Public Relations Coordinator.
11. Social Media Specialist
A Social Media Specialist is the voice of any organization in this tech-centric world. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, among others, are the platform where most people interact with one another.
The Social Media Specialist is tasked with creating an online community, engaging with them, and channeling the company’s communication to the community. This position requires you to adopt the ‘voice’ of the organization, the brand, which in itself is a unique challenge.
12. Graphic Design
There is a lot of demand for graphic designing works, and this is one of those jobs you can become an entrepreneur in it, working for yourself. Small businesses needing business cards, logo, letterheads, or artwork.
There are also a plethora of tools available online, which could help you craft a professional artwork at no cost. All that will be holding you back is your imagination. You can start creating artwork and implanting watermark on them then showcasing them online to prospective clients such as small businesses and entrepreneurs.
When one approaches you interested in a particularly art, you can send it to them after removing the watermark. Big organizations, especially those keen on going big on social media need graphic designers to curate the multimedia content. Often much of the design is done by junior staff in the marketing department with skills in graphics design.
So, where do you find these jobs
The above are some of the entry-jobs in digital marketing. When you are ready to take the plunge into this industry, the next question will be, how to get started. Well, we have listed a few tips below that will help you to get started.
Below are some job boards where digital marketing agencies and companies looking for expertise post jobs. They are as follows:
- ProBlogger Jobs (for content writers)
- Monster
- Indeed
- Crunchboard
- Mediabistro
If you want to work remotely, then the following are some of the best digital marketing jobs websites:
- FlexJobs
- freelancer
- Upwork
- Guru
If none of the above helps you to secure a job, you can try social media groups. A lot of people have successfully found jobs by browsing through social media groups. Sometimes, employers do list job openings on social media, and some of these jobs can end up into really lucrative careers.
Take, for instance, Reddit’s boards like Hire Me; there is a good number of employers looking to outsource some work in the organization. There is also the subreddit, Hire a Writer, which is also great for finding content writing jobs where you also get to work remotely.
Last but not least, you can always try cold emailing. That is where you identify a company and send the email (cold emailing) to the manager telling them your capabilities and if they might be in need of your service.
You can begin by making a list of companies using the Hubspot Partner Directory. Then come up with an email template, which you can personalize according to the given company you are sending the email.
Wrapping up
The beautiful thing with digital marketing is that as long as you have an internet-enabled device and internet connection. You can begin putting your craft into practice. Though it is true that the speed of your internet connection and the type of device matters a lot.
For instance, if you want to be a graphics designer and video editor. You will need a device with a powerful graphics processing capability. That will lead to creating a richer multimedia content, which will most likely be a beefy file size. It, therefore, follows naturally that you will need a faster and reliable internet connection to upload or download such content online.
However, generally, if you fail to secure a job at an agency, a company, or any of the freelancing platforms. You can begin promoting content about something you are passionate about. Say, if you love cars, you can start curating content about cars, which could be done through blogs or vlogs. Then start promoting those content and driving traffic to your website.
As your audience grows, you will have a baseline to approach another business and show them, ‘Look, this is what I’ve been able to do for my hobby, and I can probably do the same for your business.’ If your traffic grows so high, you might not even need to look for a gig (job). Some of these manufacturers can approach you to endorse their products. Perhaps run a review, unboxing, or a test of their product to your audience, and by doing so you offer them publicity. A good number of established bloggers get by making their income that way, and they do not necessarily need certification and degree to get to where they are.
However, for the top-level positions in digital marketing in an established agency or company, the above-mentioned jobs are some of the entry-level positions most newbie digital marketers must start from this point and climb their way up the corporate ladder as time goes by.
Article provided by, The Digital Marketing Recruiter – a recruiting firm focused exclusively on filling digital marketing positions throughout the USA
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