What are Scope and Opportunities of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is really the buzz right now. It is one of those sectors in the industry which is considered to experience an exponential growth, and this makes studying about it really interesting. In this blog, you will understand the scope of Digital Marketing in India or Online marketing.

In the next five minutes, you are going to understand the huge and wide variety of scope and opportunity of a career in digital marketing.

To check the scope of career in digital marketing, we have to study digital as a medium is growing.

Similarly, money spent by Indian Youth on Mobile is the largest on any specific medium. And this is bound to increase in times to come.

It comes next only to personal expenses.

The growth of Smartphone users: Deloitte sees India’s used smartphone market touching $4 billion by 2020

In 2019 itself it was predicted that 67% of the population has smartphones. This makes consumption of digital information rapid and hence opens a wide variety of arrays for professionals in the digital marketing industry.

According to an article by Economic Times it was reported that digital media in India will reach to 5.1 billion dollars by 2021. Today, India is the world’s second country to have the highest number of internet user after China. It is also estimated that it will overtake all other industries in terms of profit like entertainment, print, radio and others.

This is why digital as a medium is bound to increase and hence the scope and opportunity for professionals to take digital marketing as a career is humongous.

It is getting the kind of push any industry needs from the consumer end.

Any industry grows when money starts flowing into it.

GROWTH = MONEY

MONEY FlOWS INTO INDUSTRY = GROWTH OF INDUSTRY = SCOPE FOR PROFESSIONALS IN THAT INDUSTRY 

Yes, this is what is shown in the following graph as per the analysis of Deloitte. Digital advertising spends will be the highest among all types of spending in the space.

“More money shall be invested in digital advertising than even TV Ads by 2020”

Not only this, it also suggests that 22% of all media spending shall be on digital means.

But that is not enough to really understand the growth of digital industry, lets look at some more figures:

With so much money flowing in the digital marketing industry it is safe to assume that there shall be an exponential need of professionals in the industry. Hence it makes complete sense for you as an individual by grabbing this opportunity and scope in digital marketing as a career.

The above figures have clearly reflected upon the kind of money which is flowing in the industry.

Now, this will ignite and fuel a constant demand for digital marketers and hence the scope for learning digital marketing becomes even more important.

Let’s check some of the clear requirements for digital marketers by the industry:

Demand by Marketing Departments of Business: Yes, product development is important. Yes, Finance is important. But more businesses are understanding that marketing is if not the most but one of the critical factors that define the success of any business.

Rather digital marketing is the only business function with measurable ROI and more marketers are betting their money on it as shown to you already.

Hence Demand for digital marketers is growing day by day from businesses.

Demand by Political and Social Sectors: Guess what, it, not just businesses that need digital marketers, but political and social sectors as well.

The win of Narendra Modi and Donald Trump is a great example of how digital marketing can be used to influence public opinion.

Rather now there is a push from all political parties to influence public opinion through digital means.

There is this growing need for the social sector like NGO’s, IAS’s etc to highlight their social work so as to develop sensitivity among the public at large about a social problem or issue.

This again fuels the demand for Digital Marketers.

Demand by Analytics Departments: Since the nature of the medium is digital, anything you do over there is tracked. This has opened many opportunities for professionals to track user behavior.

This helps them to plan and optimise the business processes, product placement, product features.

And hence demand and scope for digital marketers have increased from the analytics and testing professionals and companies.

Demand by Product Development Departments: As pointed out above, with the ability to test, we can tap on how users are perceiving any idea or feature about a product.

This has enabled us to develop products better for the markets.

Thereby fuelling the demand for digital marketers from product development wings.

Apart from the above reason, there are some other factors which help and fuels digital marketing like:

Sustainability and less impact on environment: Unlike the other modes of marketing like Print Ads (which require extensive use of paper, colours and adhesive), TV Ads (which require extensive crew, production requirements etc), Radio Ads (again huge production requirements) digital marketing ads don’t require many resources form the environment. And hence are more sustainable.

This is the reason that they get such a push from the government, business, and social enterprises

Easy to understand: This is probably one of the most pressing points behind the scope of digital marketing. It is easy to understand from the people who do it and the people who need it.

Thus, making the adoption and entry of businesses and professionals to digital marketing industry easy.

 Flexibility: Being and working in digital marketing domain is very flexible. All one needs is an internet connection and a mobile/computer. This makes it location agnostic.

It is round the clock available, hence there is flexibility in terms of time.

There is multiple domain with the digital marketing industry which makes it easier for the professionals to choose as per their interest, hobbies and passion.

It is this flexibility that it makes the industry exciting for professionals entering digital marketing domain.

 Huge Impact: As already pointed out, digital marketing is being used to influence public opinion at large and hence, it becomes a potent way to create far reaching impact which is huge.

From political to social, from business to enterprise, people are leveraging digital marketing as a medium create a huge impact on people around their product or service.

 Small Starting Cost: One thing which helps digital marketing industry is that one can start with very small investment and check how they are doing.

This makes the adoption rate among businesses and individuals very high.

Moreover, professionals can learn digital marketing at a very low cost as compared to other professional courses. This makes entry of professionals also high and hence increase the scope of digital marketing industry.

 Measurable: Again, anything and everything you do in digital marketing is measurable. So, you can clearly identify what is working and what is not.

This reduces the fear among businesses about the unknown. They can exactly pin point at granular level to find how they can improve.

What more is that with the kind of tools that are available now-a-days, the cost of measuring efforts in digital marketing has reduced considerably.

Changing Consumer: Data intelligence companies have projected that by 2021 internet user base of India will be 635.8 million. This number will be driven largely by a new category of rural audience which will access the internet for first time. Companies are looking to this as a fruitful opportunity to have a change in their target audience while designing their campaigns.

Storytelling: It is a human nature that they love audio-visual package with good stories which can be created very easily on this platform. This format can be used for any of the political purpose, brand creation, product marketing and many others.

Now that the demand and huge scope for digital marketers in established the next question in your mind are how you can utilize that scope after becoming a digital marketing professional.

You can utilize the great scope of Digital Marketing as a Professional or as an Entrepreneur i.e. when running your own business.

Let’s take a look at both of them:

As mentioned earlier there is a huge scope of Digital Marketing in India as well as outside it is a field that has caught the interest of all businesses. Businesses are interested in getting themselves online and introduce their product/service online.

But this is easier said than done. It requires a special set of skills, experience, knowledge, and application to strategize, plan, create, execute and measure digital marketing campaigns.

This is where the real value in digital marketing lies. And this is where there is huge scope in becoming a digital marketing professional.

Let evaluate the different domains of digital marketing.

One can work in the digital marketing industry in various capacities. Digital marketing has primarily two parts, Organic Digital Marketing and Inorganic Digital Marketing.

Organic Marketing is something where we promote our content to reach our audience, for our product and services, without paying the platform/website/application.

However, Inorganic Marketing is something where we actually pay the platform/website/application to promote our products/services/content.

Each field in digital marketing might fall either in Organic Marketing or Inorganic Marketing or might be a mix and match of both.

Specific Domains of Digital Marketing (In the sections that follow, I have also highlighted the scope of digital marketing in specific domains as well):

1. SEO Expert: An SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Expert is focused on making sure that any website ranks well on Search Engines i.e. to improve the ranking on Search Engine.

But the role of a modern SEO is just not this. His/Her role is to increase traffic to Website.

2. SEM or PPC Expert: An SEM (Search Engine Marketing) or PPC (Pay per Click Expert is a digital marketing professional whose role is to manage to advertise on various search engines.
3. Content Expert: A Content guy’s major role is to find ways on what kind of content is required on any digital assets i.e. Website, Social Handles etc. There are three different departments or roles in Content Writing:
   a. Blogger: Writes Blogs on Website
   b. Content Writer: Writes Content for Website i.e. for Products and Services
   c. Copywriter: Writes Copy for Advertisements, Email etc
4. Email Marketing Expert: Email Marketer’s job is to market any product or service via sending Emails

It helps businesses to connect with their audience personally and directly.

5. SMO Expert: SMO (Social Media Optimizer) Expert role is to generate traffic, interest, and engagement with a product or service through Social Media Channels.

They are responsible for putting the right content on the right time before the right audience so as to promote any website/product or service.

6. Web Analytics: This is relatively a more technical role. This is where a person needs to understand numbers and reports well. The job is to study and analyze the performance of the entire digital marketing effort and then to suggest relevant suggestions to improve the digital marketing efforts.

This is the person who helps in identifying the various areas where and how we can improve or start our efforts in order to reach our digital marketing goals.

7. Conversion Rate Optimizer: This digital marketing professional’s role is to identify areas on the website and the digital campaigns where we are losing visitors and potential customers.

Then they need to suggest accordingly on how to improve the conversion of those visitors into customers in those areas.

8. 8. Youtuber: This is a person who is very good with Youtube and creating Videos. His role is to develop Videos which can help a brand/product or service to get their message across to audiences.
   9. Become a Professional Blogger:Their role is to generate income with advertising and affiliate marketing strategies.There are different kind of blogs also like corporate blog, personal service blog, affiliate blogs, niche blogs and many others. It depends on one’s choice that what kind of blogging one has to do.
   10. Social Media Specialist: With many businesses going on social media there is a heavy revenue generating business on social media in such case their role is to plan, implement and monitor the organisation’s social media strategy.This will help to increase sales, improve marketing efforts and brand awareness.
   11. SEO Link Building Specialist: Their role is to ensure that the online content is getting higher rankings on search engines.They work with web designers and web developers; they help in boosting web traffic to raise the repo of the company or any specific product.Join Free Digital Marketing course or Paid Course to become SEO expert, SEM or PPC Expert, Youtuber, Web Analytics, content Expert or Email Marketing Expert

There is a huge growth in Digital Marketing career so jobs are being created at a rapid pace. You can check at various places i.e. Job Sites like www.Naukri.com, www.monster.com, www.indeed.cometc and will come to know the various kind of jobs that businesses are uploading to get the right digital marketers for them.

In the following images, I have shown you amount of Digital Marketing Jobs which are being posted by businesses from diverse industries and locations

Now to become the right option for the businesses to hire, you need to tap into this demand and make the best use of the humongous scope in digital marketing.

It, not just amount of jobs in digital marketing industry or entering into digital marketing industry which is amazing, it is actually the kind of growth which one can have in digital marketing.

Let us take a look at how the growth of an individual’s profile and position occurs in digital marketing.

 Entry Level:

• Internship: The best part is that you can enter digital marketing industry without any prior knowledge of the industry by joining as an intern at any company. You can ‘learn while you earn’ in this position. You can understand various aspects of digital marketing during this phase. We at Growth Pixel have an ‘Earn while you Learn’ programme which helps the interns learn digital marketing along with stipend as well.

This is best for people who are already pursuing a course in any other field i.e. they are in college or even studying in school. This phase normally ranges from 3-6 months

• Fresher: This is a person who is a graduate and is starting his career in the digital marketing industry. This person joins under a domain of digital marketing like SEO Trainee, SMO Trainee etc. This is where a person understands the specific domain of digital marketing that he/she is working on. This phase normally stays up to 1 year.
• Executive: This is a person who has one year of experience in working on a specific domain of digital marketing. This person has understood the concepts and aspects of that digital marketing. This person can start executing the domain-specific digital marketing campaigns. Here the designations are normally SEO Executive, SMO Executive etc. This phase normally stays up to 1-3 years depending upon the expertise on execution.

Mid-Level

This is normally the phase, where real growth starts happening. Here the person is responsible for planning, creating and executing domain-specific digital marketing campaigns.

Here a person understands concepts of a digital marketing domain well and they can plan and execute the campaigns accordingly. The person is also responsible for managing manpower for that domain as well.

Normal designation during this phase is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation Manager, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) or PPC (Pay per click) Manager, SMM (Social Media Marketing) manger etc.

People in this phase of growth also learn Team building, work management etc. as they tend to manage 2-3 Trainees and Interns below them.

Most of the people in Mid-level have an experience of approximately 2-5 years depending on expertise and certifications.

Senior Level:

In this phase, one needs to understand all the domains of digital marketing and needs to have deep knowledge of at least 2-3 domains of digital marketing.

Here the digital marketing professional is responsible to plan and execute digital marketing campaigns w.r.t to business goals.

Here the digital marketing professional also learns about business, campaign RoI, workforce management, work schedule etc.

Professionals in this phase manage teams up to 15 members and have a clear business objective to fulfill like sales, website visitors, app downloads etc.

They have an experience of at least 5 years.

Senior Level and Beyond:  

When a person crosses beyond 10 years in digital marketing, then the person normally moves to a management role where he/she is leading some business objective and the team below is executing the same.

This phase requires exponential managerial skills and control.

The image above clearly states the kind of salaries that digital marketing jobs in US, Australia, Singapore, UK, and India have to offer on various positions i.e. Entry Level, Mid-Level and Experienced Senior Level.

But to give you a better snapshot from Indian Perspective;

Entry Level:

• Intern: An intern normally gets 2 thousand – 7 thousand per month depending on skillsets
• Fresher: A fresher can earn anything between 8K-12K per month depending on skillset and the kind of company one is joining.
• Executive: An Executive earns anything between 8K-15K per month depending on his profile, skills and the kind of company or organization one is working on.

Mid Level:

Once you get certified, with enough execution experience as well, you get anywhere between 20K-60K per month.

One can exponentially increase the salaries if they can show results from the kind of campaigns they have executed and the kind of digital marketing knowledge one possesses.

Senior Level:

Once you have got enough experience, one can draw anything on the higher side of 70K i.e. 100K or 200K per month depending the number of responsibilities and the kind of company that one is working in.

Not only this, one can get a lot more than the above, if they add more skills in their offering like programming, analytics, testing etc.

One great thing about choosing digital marketing as a career is that it is filled with excitement.

Once gets to talk to potential customers real time.

The excitement of being able to work in various industries and understanding various products or services is great. This helps in understanding different perspectives and give us a sense of growth in our personality.

Also since the field is rapidly changing one has to update and train themselves regularly. This gives a sense of achievement every day.

It is not all the rosy. Sometimes you will that your campaigns are not working. While other times the campaigns will do amazingly well. This is what brings life to whatever you are doing in digital marketing and makes it interesting, exciting and takes away all the boringness.

Also, you get introduced to various technologies which again helps you to develop yourself in this age of information technology. YOU ARE NOT LEFT BEHIND!Period

This is one area which I want to highlight more to you since numbers are something where I give special emphasis to.

The return on investment on choosing digital marketing is the best among many other professional courses chosen.

This is not just limited to the kind of money you spent on learning digital marketing but also to the kind of time you invest.

Choosing digital marketing as a career helps you to get back whatever you have invested in a very short time or around 6 months.

Below is a comparison is shown by DSIM between the various kind of course that one can go for on the basis of duration, fee, no. of jobs, Job Seekers, Average Monthly Salary, and placement after doing a course.

The last row is that digital marketing, it clearly shows that choosing digital marketing as a career has great scope and will give you the best return on investment of your time and money.

Another lucrative part of Digital marketing is that once you learn digital marketing, then the avenues and opportunities of having a business and becoming an Entrepreneur become even more evident and lucrative.

Knowing digital marketing is one of the best skill one can have if looking to take up entrepreneurship as a profession.

One can have the following opportunities in Entrepreneurship after learning digital marketing.

1- Digital Marketing Agency: One can have a digital marketing agency. One can take up projects on behalf of other companies and execute their digital marketing campaigns.

 There are various groups on Facebook where these businesses are posting their requirements. Some of such requirements are given here.

Not only Facebook, even places like Instagram and LinkedIn, businesses are looking for digital marketing agencies.

One needs to know digital marketing thoroughly to understand this. However, if a person is not comfortable with digital marketing as such, then one has niche digital marketing agencies like an SEO Agency, SMO Agency, PPC Agency, Analytics agency etc.

2- E-commerce: Another opportunity that we have is to launch our E-Commerce business. The biggest glitch of selling your products is taken care of since you know how to digitally market your business and take it forward accordingly.

Also, you understand the technologies for developing the platform, accepting payments and customer service when you learn digital marketing.

What more is that, unlike having your own website, you can put up your products on marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart.

This gives you an amazing opportunity to establish your own business.

3- Consultancy: The least cost intensive thing to start entrepreneurship after learning digital marketing is to start your own consultancy.

All you require is in-depth knowledge of the digital marketing field you are consulting with solid credentials.

Then all you have to do is start accepting projects from references and seeking out the right candidates. The benefit is that being a consultant you can focus on your work more and be less hassled by the other business management stuff.

4- Freelancer: This is one of the most lucrative opportunities that one can have. One can be a freelancer to any service of digital marketing to startup and then slowly push it up.

One can go to various Freelancing Project sites (like Upwork, Freelancer etc.) to get projects.

The best part is that these websites are filled with projects related to digital marketing as shown the image below from Freelancer.

5- Digitally push your own business: Lastly, one can have any type of business and can push and promote their business online after learning digital marketing.