Podcast Transcription

Berns San Juan: Let’s talk about careers, specifically yours, digital marketing and so this is a bit of a, you know, shameless plug, digital marketing is a very in-demand career for those of you that, that weren’t aware and there are lots of jobs that you can apply for, and I’m going to talk about some of them in this podcast.

Did you know that the total number of vacancies in digital marketing and digital marketing-related jobs in the Philippines alone is in five digits? Amazing. And that’s also because you know, five digits worth of vacancies. And not a single graduate, not a single person will graduate BS social media, BS community manager, BS SEO, right?

Not a single person will graduate from college with a diploma in digital marketing. Yes, you can get certifications from outside, but nobody will graduate from college with a digital marketing degree. As of the last reading I used to say there were about 160,000 digital marketing vacancies globally, I think the figure has been updated to about 230,000 digital marketing vacancies globally. That’s insane. And digital marketing as an industry continues to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of about 32.1%, all the way till 2028. So, from today to 2028, it’s estimated that the industry will still grow by 32.1%.

In the Philippines alone, if I’m not mistaken, in 2022, I think it grew by about 16%. And the total number of internet users is expected to balloon to 6 billion by 2027. So, the demand for skilled digital marketers is soaring. In this episode, we’re going to talk about some of the top digital marketing careers that are out there.

What is Digital Marketing in a Nutshell?

So digital marketing is one of those fields that is super-fast growing, right? It’s extremely fast-growing. I’m not even counting, by the way, the number of vacancies, I’m not even counting the total number of freelance jobs that are available out there. And it’s huge and it’s one of the fastest growing because, during the years of the lockdown, I must have seen at least six Australian companies enter the market. I’ve seen a lot of global brands take their digital marketing arms to the Philippines and put their digital marketing operations into the Philippines. And I’ve seen, you know, the competition for Truelogic.

We’ve never had so much competition. Yet, although there are more competitors in the field, we never feel nervous about our position because it seems like what we used to talk about seven years ago is still true today.

The demand in the market is just so much larger than the total number of professionals can address, and this is why it’s such a fast-growing field. With a growing number of jobs in digital marketing. And it’s a seemingly limitless number of opportunities. It’s in my opinion, it’s a great career choice. And of course, I’d say that, but. Let’s talk about it in depth in this episode. Digital marketing in a nutshell is about bringing online customers to your clients or your customer’s actual physical establishment or their online establishment.

It’s about audience generation and customer generation. That’s digital marketing in a nutshell. And you do this through multiple channels. You can do this by making people relevant on search. You can do this through display Ads on Google’s network. You can utilize the Google search network.

You can utilize social media like Facebook and Instagram. Not too sure how good LinkedIn is at this yet. YouTube is another channel that you guys can tap. So, these are just examples of the things that we do in digital marketing.

Is There High Demand?

The estimate is that up until 2028 the digital marketing industry will have a compounded growth of about 32.1%. I think that’s larger than most industries. And then the other thing to take to, to take note of is that the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, digital marketing jobs are projected to grow 10% year on year from 2021 all the way to 2031.

This is faster. Then the average growth rate for most occupations. LinkedIn says that digital marketing is also one of those top skills to learn in 2023 to boost your career. Like just savviness in terms of, I think we used to say on resumes, we used to say internet savvy Today, we don’t say that anymore.

Because I think millennials are, you know, they live on the internet. Gen Z specifically, live on these guys and don’t go online. They live online, right? So there are a lot more people online and therefore the need to attract attention, grow an audience, and build a customer base, is all going online.

The term digital marketing specialist is one of the Top 10. Most in-demand search roles are searched on LinkedIn and some of the most searched-for specializations or roles tend to be SEO specialists, social media managers, community managers, content strategists, data analysts, analytics specialists, and more so in the Philippines alone.

If you went to Glassdoor, you would find 4,300 listings for digital marketing and digital marketing-related jobs. If you go to Indeed, you’re going to find 6,200, about 6,195 to be precise as of last night. So Indeed, has about 6,100 job listings for digital marketing jobs in the Philippines.

If you go to Job Street without typing in the other specializations, just digital marketing, you’re going to find 1,900 job listings. If you go to Kalibrr, you’re going to find 1300 job listings. Clearly, there is a huge demand in the market, and now the beauty about it is that nobody graduates BS digital marketing, BS SEO, or BS AdWords manager because nobody graduates with these courses, with these diplomas from college, it means that whatever background you took, you are able to pivot it into a digital marketing career.

In my experience, the two most useful ones, the ones that have had a leg up so far have been I would say AB like writers, people that come from a writing background tend to get a portion up because a majority of marketing is content.

And then the other one is computer science because the content doesn’t matter if it doesn’t sit on a channel, right? So just putting it on your website, implementing it on your website, and so on and so forth. So computer science students and journalism students tend to do really well when it comes to digital marketing.

Why Choose a Career in Digital Marketing?

1. No specific degree is required

There is a degree of common sense required, but there’s no specific degree required. So that’s one. Two, you can start on your own. There are a lot of tutorials on YouTube. You can go to Udemy, you can look for resources and study it yourself and see. Does it tickle your fancier, right? Are you curious enough to try to learn this? You can even read freelancer stories online. You can even read entrepreneur stories online to find out what their digital marketing journeys were like next.

2. Huge demand in the market

Whenever I have a vacancy for a social media specialist, that vacancy remains open for three to six months. Sure, I’m a bit picky as an employer, but three to six months. That’s a long time. That’s how hard it is to find. Really good, experienced people in the field of digital marketing.

I can have an SEO specialist role open for half a year. And you know, when I say open, I don’t mean it’s posted in the void of the internet somewhere, right? This thing is promoted, has a budget we spend for it on Facebook, we spend for it on LinkedIn. We spend it on Indeed. And even with all the budget, making it visible to a potential audience. Nada no candidates for like no qualified candidates, no hires for three to six months. Finding the right candidates for these roles is extremely hard.

3. You don’t lock yourself in a specific specialization.

So digital marketing is not accounting. It’s not accounting, it’s not bookkeeping, which means, you know, if you are in accounting, then you are in receivables or payables or control or finance. Like you’re sort of, you’re sort of locked in terms of your career. If you come from a content background and you go into SEO, it’s easy to convert that into AdWords management. You just need to learn how to manage the platform and the way the AdWords algorithm works, it is easy to convert that into social media because that is another discipline.

In another channel, you have the ability to tap. So, your organic specialization can be converted to paid media specialization and can be converted to social specialization, so you’re not really locked into one role. And then you can also, by the way, choose to be a very good jack of all trades, a generalist or you can choose to be. A specialist in one specific discipline, one specific channel.

4. Diverse job opportunities and a good salary package

Next reason aside from the diversity in job opportunities because you can move from one specialization to another. There’s a good salary package. If you know nothing about digital marketing, it’s still not unusual to get a starting salary of 25, 28K. So that’s good, this is for somebody that doesn’t know anything, right? With the only expectation being in three to five months, you ought to be good enough to be able to execute certain types of campaigns on your own. So, the salary package is good. If you’re starting out, you’re probably looking at a range of 25K, give or take 30K.

If you are good, you’re probably looking at six digits in a digital marketing role. So, it’s got a good salary package in my opinion, it is marriage material right next. Providers of digital marketing services tend to be very progressive. They tend to be very progressive before remote work.

I remember for us, remote work had been a thing for the last seven years, mostly with our writers, but remote work had already been a thing for us. We didn’t really require 100% of the workforce to all be in the office. Granted, I think that there are some roles that need to be in the office because I believe that serendipity happens in offices.

But you never really need 100% of your staff in an office all the time. So that allows you to maximize the square footage of your space, right? Where you might have an office that can fit 40 people comfortably, but you might have a complement of a hundred employees, and if you rotate them through the week, then that means A, you’re not contributing to traffic.

B, your smaller space can accommodate a larger headcount. So remote work has always been. An option for digital marketing work. Before remote work was cool, digital marketing companies had already been doing remote work for years. We were probably ahead of COVID-19 by half a decade.

5. An ever-evolving industry

It’s not for the uncurious, it’s not for the faint of heart. If you are the type of guys that like permanence, like the same thing, like the same discipline, like the same role repeatedly. If you love routine work, then digital marketing is probably not for you. It is, it never stays routine for six to 12 months. Every six to 12 months there is a big change.

Facebook changes its algorithm; AdWords changes its algorithm. The Google search engine changes its algorithm. It’s an ever-evolving industry. If you thrive on change, if you like a little excitement, if you’re great at adapting, might be for you.

6. Immense learning scope

If you pride yourself in having a great learning curve, if you don’t want to be stuck in a job where you’re doing the same thing repeatedly, and you just want to get better and better and better, better is sort of like the bedrock for what this industry is built on. Because here you get better or you die, right?

That’s all there is to it. You improve, you get better, or you die. And that’s all there is to it.

Top Digital Marketing Careers in the Philippines

1. Digital Marketing Assistant

For us, the most entry-level role is called a digital marketing assistant. This is where you get to learn HTML. You get to learn CSS. I know that for Gen Z and for millennials, you guys probably encountered this in school, not in my day. You start off as a marketing assistant and marketing assistant, essentially data enters digital marketing platforms, right? That’s what you do. And that’s where we help you figure out; do you specialize in organic marketing. Do you specialize in social media? Do you specialize in AdWords? Do you specialize in paid display ads? But you grow your specialization from this foundational baseline.

2. Content Writer

And when you’re a content writer the difference between this role and writing for a publication is you’re not writing articles. You are creating content that satisfies a motivation. If it is content for social media, then you need to understand the people that follow you, and your audience on social media.

What stage of the funnel are they in? Are they in the preference or consideration phase? Therefore, you need to make highly emotional content for them. If you are in search, are you creating informational content? Transactional content, commercial content, branded content, what kind of content are you producing?

So you’re not really producing 500-word articles, 700-word articles. You are creating content that satisfies a motivation. This is for the content writer, or you might be a content strategist.

3. Content Strategist

A content strategist is essentially a couple of legs up from a writer, and your job is to find out what is the brand. Who does it talk to? What problem do they solve for their target customers? And then you create a schedule of content. You create a plan that, that sort of says, because you’re talking to an audience. A, the messaging we have in mind for the next four weeks, eight weeks, and 12 weeks, is A, B, C, D, E.

This makes the brand relevant for these keywords. These are the channels where we intend to publish it, and these are the channels where we will promote them, right? This is what a content strategist does.

4. Graphic Designer

Another entry-level role is a graphic designer. Before you become a web designer or start offering web design services, you start off as a graphic designer, and a graphic designer is a person that creates elements that the web designer implements throughout the entire layout of the site.

So graphic designers and entry-level role progress to web designers. And when we expect our web designers to not just be artists, we expect them to know front-end code, right? So lucky for you if you’re a millennial or a Gen Z, you then, you know, easy peasy transition for you. But a web developer a web designer is somebody that we expect will create designs that solve a functional problem for a brand or a business.

5. Social Media Manager/Community Manager/Social Media Specialist

These are people that specialize in creating content to be consumed on a social media channel. And are great at optimizing not just the budgets, but the audiences that see the content. So social media managers are people that create messaging, not just ads.

So I don’t like to call them all ads because some. Some content is really messaging, but these are people that create disciplined messaging around your brand and your value proposition, and your audience’s stories. And their job is to make sure that they’re always chiseling in getting you the best bang for your buck and getting the right eyeballs to look at your content.

So that’s what a social media specialist is. And then, of course, growing your audience base. So that’s what a social media specialist is. For the advanced ones, these are the people that are good at getting you leads coming from social media channels, right? So those are social media managers and community managers.

6. SEM specialists/Paid Media Managers/ PPC specialists

These are people that are experts at managing the Google ad platform. So you’re talking about the Google Search Network, the Google Display Network, YouTube app, the app network if appropriate, but most of the time, really mostly those three.

And what these guys are good at is creating ads that compel a person to action. And this is where it drastically differs from SEO. SEO is about casting a wide net. So, you can capture as many motivated audiences as you can over to your website, which is ultimately your platform. But for AdWords, because you’re paying for the audience, you want to pay the least amount.

For the best customer. And this is what they’re always striving for. And depending on what your goals are, they will recommend the display network, they’ll recommend the search network, or they’ll recommend YouTube based on what the brand’s goals are.

7. Digital Marketing Manager/ Digital Marketing Strategist

These are two different things. And a digital marketing manager usually exists in a brand not usually so much with an agency. A digital marketing strategist will usually exist with an agency because the strategist’s job is to make sure that the SEO, the AdWords campaign, the social media campaign, and even the website.

All are aligned with the identity of the brand, the motivation of the customers, and the value proposition, the problem they’re trying to solve. And so the digital marketing strategist decides what kind of content to produce, when to release it, and what channels to release it to. A digital marketing manager is usually a person that sits in a brand and holds vendors accountable.

This is the person that knows to understand top-level metrics like impressions and brand searches and traffic and engagement. And acquisition and sales and return visits and cross-sales and cart recoveries, right? So the digital marketing manager is the strategist who usually sits in an agency.

The digital marketing manager usually sits in a brand. And for the last two jobs, these jobs never pay less than six digits. So if you want to get married, maybe you should give yourself a five, eight-year goal. To get to that job title, that’s a job title. That’ll give you six digits, which is enough to have kids or, so I hear, I wouldn’t know.

Technical Skills Required to Become a Digital Marketing Expert

1. Writing

One of the skills that I’ve always found useful and, you know, luckily, I think I have a talent for it. I wouldn’t say I’m skilled at it. I would say I have a talent for it is writing. Because 80% of the marketing is content. And so this matters, right? Your ability to create content, not your ability to stuff keywords inside an article, like anybody can do that, but your ability to create content that compels somebody to action, your ability to communicate a value proposition to an audience, your ability to move somebody to a logical action for a product, a service, or a brand up next, if you hated math.

2. Data Analysis

You’re gonna need to learn to love it because analytics and data are sort of like they’re the heart and soul of digital marketing. One of the things that I used to tell people when they ask me why I got into digital marketing, you know, and why not? The softer forms of marketing.

Why not brand activations? Why not out-of-home ads? Why not display ads? Why not TVCs? And for me, it was simple. Aside from the fact that you know, I come from a background in web with digital marketing, you can see the customer journey from start to finish in data points. It’s not, these are not, oh, I feel the campaign did well.

The campaign objectively did well, or objectively did not do well. The campaign objectively succeeded or objectively failed. When we run marketing campaigns, I like that sense of black and white and I like the ability to look at the data point and adjust the strategy. So that the goals of the business can be achieved, right?

So if you didn’t like math or if math didn’t like you, you better start dating it. You’re going to need it for digital marketing. You don’t need to be a master at it, but you’re going to need to learn to appreciate it.

3. Front-end coding HTML and CSS

JavaScript is a great plus, but if you’re going to be serious about, if you are creating ads for social media, if you are creating landing pages for your ads, if you are optimizing websites for SEO, the best feeling in the world is the ability to execute your campaign from start to finish without saying.

I’m helpless. I don’t have a dev. There are a lot of tools by the way, that, that make this so common sense to execute, let’s say, HubSpot, you could build landing pages just like that.

So I would say front-end coding, absolutely essential. You don’t have to be AB advertising or BS advertising. You don’t have to take up advertising arts, to get into this field. But an appreciation for the concepts of advertising really does help. One of the things that I used to tell people that I work with I used to have a boss.

I started as a graphic designer. And I had a boss that could not draw a stick person to save his life he could not draw a stick person to save his life. But this guy created the most beautiful layouts. Like when he put webpages together, it just made sense and it they were gorgeous to look at.

They were always gorgeous to look at. And so, I, you know, I always wondered how could a guy that could not draw a stick figure to save his life come up with layouts that are like this? And he says, Oh, no, that’s because I’m not a, I’m not an artist. I took up visual communication, and he just says, I just follow a couple of core principles when it comes to putting things together.

I just try to visually communicate what a brand wants to say and what a customer wants to see. To me, I thought that was, like, that was amazing. That was just that’s one of those broken-glass moments for me. So HTML and CSS. Some visual communication or some basics in design.

If you see great design, you need to know great design when you see it. And you need to know, you need to be able to recognize bad design when you see it, right? You need to be able to look at a piece of design and say, yes, that solves a problem. Or no, that doesn’t solve a problem. So this is an essential skill.

Soft Skills Required to Become a Digital Marketing Expert

1. Openness to learning something new

You will get exposed to a lot of tools. You will get exposed to scheduling tools, analytics tools, and design tools. Desktop publishing tools. Email automation tools CRMs, you’ll get exposed to a lot of tools. So your learning curve for learning something new has to be there, right?

And again, you don’t graduate from college with a degree in openness to learn. But you do have to have a quality and openness to learning if you’re going to succeed in this industry. And so, with that, those are probably going to be the skills you need to develop on the side.

2. Analytical and Problem-Solving Skills

The reason digital marketers have jobs is that brands have problems, and your ability to solve those problems is what makes you valuable. Your ability to translate a brand’s abstract problem into a concrete gap, into a concrete metric that you can hit or miss, is why you will get paid.

Your ability for analysis and problem-solving is critical. Regardless of your job level, you could start off as a marketing assistant or a writer, it doesn’t matter. The problem-solving begins on days one, and two because the industry changes a lot.

3. Adaptability and flexibility

You cannot be, you cannot be fixed in your ways, if you are, this is probably not the industry for you. Curiosity is what will determine whether this job is enjoyable for you or not. If you are a genuinely curious person, you’re going to love it. You’re going to love it from day one, you will never stop loving it.

4. Communication

I think one of the biggest senses digital marketers have is this, and I think marketers like precisely. To communicate in jargon and one of the most, one of the most useful tools that you need to develop is accessibility. You need to be able to explain the concepts you’re working on, and the activities you’re working on in a way a fourth-grader can understand.

Content to make it accessible to everybody that listens to you is a precious skill enough, I think, to differentiate you from everybody that you compete within the market.

So hopefully with that, I covered all of the ground that was needed in order for you to figure out, you know if digital marketing is for you.

In a later episode, we’re probably going to talk about in a previous episode we already talked about, you know, agency versus brand. But I think that’s worth exploring more, like when is it time to take the next step for your digital marketing career? But until that conversation, I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode of the Truelogic DX podcast.

I want to thank our friends at Podmachine for powering the podcast and for those of you that continue to listen to these conversations, thank you very much. Give us a shout-out on social media if you can. If you’re interested, subscribe to our Spotify, Google, and Apple accounts

If there is anybody you want us to talk to or a topic you want us to explore, reach out to us there. We listen. Thank you very much and see you on the next episode. Cheers.