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How to Start A Career in Digital Marketing in India (A Step By Step Guide)

how start digital marketing career

If you are planning to start a career in digital marketing in India, you are in for a treat! It is a great career option for students of all streams and working professionals as well.

Most aspiring internet marketers are clueless about how to land their first job in the digital marketing industry. Even those who are successful in getting a job for themselves are often clueless about how to further thrive in digital marketing. No matter what camp you fall in, this guide has got you covered.

However, before we start breaking down the steps of how to start a career in digital marketing in India, let’s first see some incredible statistics.

  • International Journal of Advanced Research Foundation has said that India is experiencing a golden period of digital marketing.
  • An Indian spends near to 4 to 5 hours daily browsing the internet.
  • More than 70 percent of the Indian population is likely to make online purchases.
  • According to the SEMrush, around 34.8 percent of the Indians use the internet today, which is going to increase to more than 55 percent by 2025.
  • 13.5 percent of the world’s internet users are Indian.
  • Around 19 percent of the overall marketing budget was spent on digital marketing. And this is going to increase by 21 percent by 2021.
  • Around 65 percent of the Indian internet users will be 25 years or older in 2025.
  • More than 66 percent of retail sales occur online.
  • Global digital ad spend will reach USD 605 billion by 2020.
  • By 2020, the digital marketing industry will create more than 20 lakhs of new job opportunities.

This guide is aimed at teaching you everything that you need to know about how to start career in digital marketing with the highest chances of success.

There are seven steps mentioned in this guide, and I advise you to follow them in the same order they are written. Not only will they help you land your first digital marketing job, but they will allow you to set up an independent business as well. Here you are:

Step 1: Learn Digital Marketing from a Reputed Institute

In this age of information, you will find almost everything online for free to learn digital marketing or any other skill. You do not necessarily have to buy costly courses for that. However, the information is so scattered that it will take a ridiculously long time to connect all the pieces and gain some confidence to start your digital marketing career. This wastage of time almost always outweighs the money saved.

A paid, self-paced, online digital marketing course is a slightly better option as the training is delivered in sequential order. The only issue is that such courses are usually pre-recorded, and you do not have anyone to clear your doubts quickly, on time. This lack of human interaction often gets learners frustrated, especially beginners.

In short, I strongly recommend that you find a good digital marketing training program in your area and learn the skills under over-the-shoulder guidance from an adept trainer. The experience of the trainer and reviews by the students will help you find the right internet marketing institute for yourself.

Moreover, most reputed digital marketing institutes have connections in the industry. Thus, they can refer their students to new job openings on a priority basis. That’s an added advantage when it comes to starting a career in digital marketing.

Step 2: Set Up Your Online Presence

Once you complete your digital marketing course and your trainer shows reasonable confidence in you, it’s time for you to craft your resume and online presence. I suggest you to use Google docs to create your resume so that it always stays available online when you need it.

You don’t need to be obsessively concerned about making yourself present on every known social platform out there. The only three networking channels I recommend are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. This may sound odd, but that’s all you need at this stage.

You will be using your Facebook profile to reach out to clients directly, LinkedIn profile to get endorsements from your colleagues, and Twitter to keep yourself updated. So, make sure that your profiles look professional and decent.

Step 3: Set the Right Expectations for Your First Few Digital Marketing Jobs

No doubt that salary is an important factor, but that shouldn’t be the only deciding factor before saying yes to a job, especially for your first few digital marketing job interviews.

During the infancy of your digital marketing career, your focus should be on getting into a company that will hone and polish your internet marketing skills, turning you into an expert. This pursuit of mastery will bear good money for you in the future.

So, before joining or even applying for a job, check the reputation of the company. Also, check the level of digital marketing projects they handle, their history, and who are the members of their core team. This much of the homework will give you a good feeling about the kind of work you will be doing in the company.

Keep in mind that it is not a daunting task to get this kind of information about any digital marketing company. A quick look at the company’s website, about us page, social pages, customer reviews, and employee reviews will reveal all the required information in a few mouse clicks.

Only apply for the job when you are fully satisfied with the company’s profile.

Indian digital marketing job portals like Naukri has more than 43,000 job openings in digital marketing in India.

digital marketing jobs in india naukri

Linkedin has shown more than 15,000 job vacancies for digital marketing in India.digital marketing jobs in india linkedin

 

Step 4: Spread the Word About You

Now that you have your perfect digital marketing resume, social profiles, and expectations in place, it is time to let the internet marketing industry know about you.

At this point, you should be spending a good part of your day collecting URLs of digital marketing companies in your area (or wherever you are willing to relocate).

Once you have created the list of digital marketing companies, it is time to apply for a job. A word of caution, though; do not spam them with your “looking-for-a-digital-marketing-job” emails. It may get irritating and may even prompt them to mark your email as spam.

Instead, be on the lookout for their current and new job openings. Once you come across a new opportunity, apply immediately following their “how-to-apply” instructions.

Sidenote: This phase may take quite a while before you can land your first digital marketing job. In the meantime, continue learning and updating your skills and resume to strengthen your candidacy.

Step 5: Join Some Freelancing Platforms

As soon as you get your first job, you get the advantage of being in the company of many other smart digital marketers. You are not on your own anymore, but you have a vast pool of talented people around you to seek guidance from.

To leverage this new network, I recommend you to sign up for a few freelancing platforms and start bidding on jobs that match your skills. Pretty soon, you will land your first few digital marketing clients. The better you serve them, the stronger your freelance profile becomes, and thus it gets easier to get new clients.

Don’t be afraid of saying yes to jobs that demand slightly higher skills than your current level. Remember, you can always reach out to your network and seek their guidance wherever you get stuck.

Moreover, you are now a skilled internet marketer and can resolve most issues just with the help of the internet. So, it’s an excellent stage to believe in yourself and take on some freelance digital marketing projects.

Step 6: Get Social and Help People

This one is my favorite way to get new clients effortlessly and make massive credibility for myself. Do you remember that we had created a Facebook profile in step two? It’s time to use that.

There are countless groups on Facebook, where small business owners hang out and ask questions regarding digital marketing, search engine optimization, social media, etc. Your job is to find out such groups (a quick FB search is enough), join them, chime in every day, and make helpful comments on members’ posts. The more you help people, the more credibility you will gain in their eyes.

When a person gets engaged with you in a conversation, you can guide him further or offer a free analysis of his business. Down the road, once you create enough bonding with the person, you can pitch him your service and turn him into a paying client. You will be surprised to see how well this method works.

The beauty of this method is that, unlike freelance platforms, you have relatively less competition here, and can charge a premium price for offering your digital marketing services.

Moreover, same like Facebook, you can use Linkedin and Twitter as well to multiply the results by several folds.

Step 7: Set Up an Agency

This one is the summit of starting a career in digital marketing. At this stage, you have acquired loads of experience under your belt, built a vast network to support you, and have some good money to burn on hiring. It is high time for you to start your digital marketing agency.

It may take a few months of patience and hard work before your agency shows some serious traction, but it’s well worth it. Once you get the hang of hiring people, managing projects, closing sales, and using paid channels, you can scale your agency to the moon and back.

Moreover, big clients usually hire agencies and not freelancers — something to bear in mind.

Bonus Tip: Make Your Skills Earn You Some Passive Income

Digital marketing is not all about taking on some jobs/clients, serving them, and charging a fee for your services. There are some excellent ways to make passive money online with your digital marketing skills.

The term “make money online” is so abused that people link it to some scam, but there are some legit models as well.

Blogging, affiliate marketing, YouTubing, drop-shipping are a few examples of legit ways to make money online. Explaining them is beyond the scope of this guide, so I’d suggest you read this article that teaches how to earn online with affiliate marketing.

Over to You

You are now equipped with all the necessary knowledge you need to start a career in digital marketing. The only step missing is you taking some actions and making it work for you.

Not only you know how to enter the digital marketing industry, but you know the different stages of progress as well. If you focus on achieving one step at a time, you will experience a reasonably effortless growth in the field of internet marketing.

Besides, you must understand that internet marketing is a continually evolving field where ingenious ideas, techniques, and new digital marketing tools frequently disrupt the market. So, you must always keep learning new skills to stay two steps ahead of other digital marketing competitors.

An advanced All-in-One Digital Marketing Course.

Mentored by Mr. Soumya Roy, the Founder, CEO of PromozSEO Web Marketing Academy.

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One Response

  1. HealtHowdy says:

    Very helpful article. Informative and quality content you have shared dear. Thanks for Sharing. Sharing is caring…
    Really helpful article.

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