How to Become a Digital Marketing Specialist in 8 EASY Steps: A Step-by-Step Guide

Ever wondered how businesses all over the world are getting so successful that you see them everywhere?

How do you see brands all around you, whether it’s your social media feed, your search results when you search for something, or even your email box or inbox of your WhatsApp messages?

That’s the magic of digital marketing!

And it’s only possible in this industry if you learn how to become a digital marketing specialist.

So if you’re here, you’re probably curious about how to become a digital marketing specialist and start your exciting career, which not only pays you a high salary but also comes with great career growth.

You can even start your digital marketing agency business after learning how to become a digital marketing expert.

The demand for digital marketing experts is at an all-time high, and it’s increasing every year.

Even after there are multiple AI tools to do the work for businesses. Businesses still need a digital marketing specialist to handle all these tools and how they work.

Companies are always looking for skilled digital marketing professionals who can help them grow online. 

So, whether you’re a student, a job seeker, a working professional, a housewife, or a business owner, this guide will help you understand everything you need to learn how to become a digital marketing specialist.

You can start your choice accordingly, as we have mentioned the step-by-step process to learn how to become a self-made digital marketing expert.

Let’s begin with an introduction of who is a digital marketing specialist!

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Who is a Digital Marketing Specialist?

Let’s talk about who is a digital marketing specialist—a digital marketing specialist is someone who creates and executes online marketing strategies to help every kind of business across the industry.

Their work is to figure out how to do the distribution for a particular product or service for any business, whether it’s a small business or a big brand.

And this distribution is always done with the help of different digital channels like SEO, social media, websites, email marketing, etc.

These digital marketing strategies help businesses attract, engage, and convert customers to increase sales using these digital channels. 

It’s a must to learn all the types of digital marketing channels that a digital marketer uses. These digital marketing channels are:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Content Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
• Email Marketing
• Analytics and Data-Driven Marketing

A digital marketing specialist’s job is to make sure the right people find the right content at the right time on different platforms or divisions and turn them into paying customers.

If you want to make a profitable business or help other businesses in this digital era, it’s a must to learn how to become a digital marketing specialist.

Must Check: Digital Marketing Course Duration

How to Become a Digital Marketing Specialist: Complete Guide

We are mentioning a step-by-step process to learn digital marketing from the basics and become a digital marketing expert with the help of various tools and platforms.

Step 1: Understand the Digital Marketing Landscape

To learn how to become a digital media specialist, you need to learn the basics of digital marketing and get familiar with the different areas of digital marketing.

These basics will help you understand how different digital marketing channels work and what you can achieve using one particular channel.

Here’s a breakdown of the most important ones:

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO technically helps your website, blogs, brand, etc., to rank #1 on Google. In SEO, you get to learn about how to optimize your website and its content so it appears at the top of search results.

To learn how to become a digital media specialist, you must be aware of how keywords work to rank your website, what kind of keywords, and other necessary stuff you need to do the complete SEO of your website, like link building, interlinking, site map, etc. 

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Content Marketing

“Content is king!” If you are on your phone and laptop, you’re surrounded by content, whether it’s blogs, videos, social media posts, etc.

They all fall under content marketing.

So to become a digital marketing specialist, your job is to create valuable, engaging, and shareable content that catches viewers and customers’ attention and increases the distribution of any company’s products or services.

Social Media Marketing

Ever wondered why some brands go viral and how they go viral or achieve a status of trust among others digitally or all over the internet?

Well, social media plays a big role in that. Social media marketing helps businesses engage with their audience on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

And it helps brands to create trust among customers to increase their overall revenue.

As a digital marketing specialist, you get to learn how to make viral content and engage with the audience for a brand to maintain its brand image.

Paid Advertising (PPC)

Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and YouTube Ads—these are all examples of paid marketing that help businesses get instant traffic and leads.

As a digital marketing expert, you have to learn how to create such ads by reading the customer data, brand value, customer needs, etc.

A good ad can make millions for a brand if it’s done right with good marketing and the right strategies.

All this paid advertising on different platforms falls under paid advertising, whether it’s a website ad or a social media ad. 

Email Marketing

Emails are one of the highest-converting marketing channels, and almost all big brands work with the help of email marketing. It’s the most owned phase of a business or individual.

Many influencers or small businesses are also turning to email marketing. Suppose you want to learn how to become a digital marketing specialist.

In that case, you must learn the tactics of email marketing, how to write emails that people actually open and act on, and how to create different email marketing strategies for different brands, businesses, or customer bases.

Analytics & Data Marketing

Digital marketing is not just about creativity—it’s about data.

If you are into learning how to become a digital marketing expert, you must learn how to use tools like Google Analytics to track and improve performance.

It’s a data-based tool where you get ad data, website data, lead data, etc.

Even social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram have different insight options to get the data on which type of content is working or not.

Data helps you understand and eliminate the bad parts of your business and figure out what would work for it.

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Step 2: Get the Right Education

When you understand the basics, the second step in learning how to become a self-made digital marketing specialist is to choose the right education.

There are many options for getting the right education; you just need to choose what suits your interests and goals. 

You can choose formal education like a diploma in digital marketing or a good online digital marketing course. A digital marketing degree is helpful, but it’s not necessary to become a digital marketing expert.

Many top marketers are self-taught through online courses.

So you can choose either to self-study your core digital marketing skills or choose a digital marketing course with many benefits from any top digital marketing institute.

Best Online Courses & Certifications:

• Google Digital Garage (Free)
• HubSpot Content Marketing Certification
• Facebook Blueprint Certification
• Google Analytics Academy
• Udemy & Coursera Digital Marketing Courses
• AADME: online digital marketing learning platform 

You can choose AADME to learn how to become a digital marketing specialist, and you will get other online courses free with their course, such as Google Digital Garage, HubSpot course, Facebook Blueprint, etc., along with many other benefits like a paid internship, placement assistance, lifetime mentorship, lifetime LMS access, 100+ tools training, practical training, etc. 

AADME’s chief faculty, Mr. Alok Badatia, has 16+ years of experience in this industry. His experience will help you become the best digital marketing expert in just a few months if you keep practicing and applying his experienced strategies and tactics. 

Go check it out – AADME’s DIGITAL MARKETING COURSE.

By taking these courses, you can build a strong foundation in digital marketing without spending thousands on a degree. And if you keep applying these skills and strategies, you can become a self-made digital marketing specialist in no time.

Step 3: Develop Essential Digital Marketing Skills

The next step in learning how to become a digital marketing specialist is to develop skills that are required in each digital base, whether it’s SEO, social media marketing, data analytics, PPC, or content creation.

You learn the basics; now it’s time to learn all the required skills to work with each digital channel.

Here we are mentioning some of the key skills of each digital marketing skill in the process of learning how to become a good digital marketer.

Must-Have Skills:

• SEO & Keyword Research:
  To understand SEO, you need to have an understanding of how search engines work.
  
  What do you need to change to make it work, what are the keywords, and how do you optimize your website and content to rank it higher on Google?
  
  All these things are essential to learning the SEO part of the skill.
• Content Creation:
  Content creation sums up many things, such as writing, designing, and producing engaging content.
  
  It helps you be aware of content types according to the brands and how you can apply those types in your own business.
• Social Media Management:
  Social is not just about knowing what works on each platform.
  
  You have to be aware to experiment and see what works for you and how you can build your brand presence with the distribution of different types of content across all social media platforms.
• Data Analysis:
  Every platform has its own insights where you can read the data to interpret metrics to improve results.
  
  You will get website data on Google Analytics, which helps you understand your website’s performance.
• PPC Advertising:
  For some businesses, it’s essential to run successful ad campaigns to promote their products or services.
  
  You need to understand how PPC advertising works.
• Email Marketing:
  To become a digital marketing specialist, you need to learn the essentials of writing emails that convert leads into sales.
  
  Email marketing is still one of the best lead conversion skills that marketers and businesses use.

To become a digital marketing specialist, you can start by learning one skill deeply and then expand to others. Once you start learning the essentials of each skill, you will get to know that each skill is interconnected.

And that will help you learn all the digital marketing skills faster.

Step 4: Gain Hands-On Experience

If you want to learn how to become a self-made digital marketing specialist, then theory is not enough. Digital marketing is such a kind of field where theory doesn’t matter the most until you have done practical training. 

Practical training is a must to learn how the market behaves for your business; the more insights you get from the market or audience, the more you will be aware of what’s working and what’s not.

Companies prefer someone who has already worked with the tools and tech and has practical experience with each skill. So if you are into learning how to become a digital media expert, it’s essential to gain lots of hands-on experience.

Here is how you can gain experience without a job:

• Start Your Own Blog:
  You can gain practical experience by starting your own blog or blog website. It will help you apply SEO, content marketing, and email marketing in real-time and get the audience’s feedback.
  
  It’s a good way to get experience in many skills with just one website. Consider building a website if you want to learn how to become a digital marketing expert with skills.

• Manage Social Media Accounts:
  If you’re interested in learning social media marketing, you can start by managing the social media accounts of your friends’ businesses, and you can offer free social media marketing to small businesses or influencers.
  
  It will be beneficial for you, and you can showcase their results in your portfolio or in your job profile.

• Run Paid Ads with a Small Budget:
  If you want to learn advertising and how to become a digital marketing expert in advertising, you can learn how to set up Google Ads and Facebook Ads by experimenting with small campaigns.
  
  You can also offer your advertisement services for small businesses for free, just with the campaign budget.
  
  PPC advertising is a good way to start learning how to become a digital marketing specialist, as it requires less time to set up. Just by data analytics, you can run your own ad campaign.

• Freelance on Fiverr or Upwork:
  Start small projects to build your portfolio.
  
  You can try freelancing for one of your digital marketing skills on various freelance platforms, or you can try cold emailing to grab some projects from small businesses or small business owners.
  
  These small projects will help you become a digital marketing expert.

Case studies and personal projects make your resume stand out. You can showcase those projects in your portfolio, resume, or job profile to grab the eye of business owners.

And if you are capable of driving good results with any particular skill, you can reach businesses across industries and offer your services.

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Step 5: Build Your Digital Marketing Portfolio

If you want to land high-paying clients or jobs, you need a killer portfolio that showcases your skills.

Without a good portfolio, it’s hard to attract clients or jobs, as digital marketing is a field where you have to showcase your skills.

Skills are as important as education in learning how to become a digital marketing specialist.

You can learn to build your digital marketing portfolio if you want to learn how to become a digital marketing expert who can easily qualify for client rounds or interviews.

Here is what to include in your portfolio to become an expert in digital marketing. 

• You can include your best SEO-optimized blog posts in your portfolio to showcase your copywriting skills as well as your SEO skills.
• You can showcase your social media account or any successful social media campaigns that you have worked on for a couple of months and always keep the screenshot to showcase before and after progress.
• You can also include Google or Facebook ad campaigns you’ve managed to showcase your PPC expertise.
• Email marketing campaigns with conversion rates. It’s a great way to showcase that you not only handle modern digital marketing but also traditional marketing as well.
• Any freelance or internship project is always a plus if you include it in your portfolio to showcase your expertise presented in the market.

Always remember that your portfolio should be visual and results-driven and show real stats and success stories to establish your authority by your work and experience.

Don’t include fake projects that you haven’t worked on and don’t know how to build. It can create a negative impact on your job profile. Always learn in a good way to become a marketing expert.

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Step 6: Network & Stay Updated

Digital marketing is constantly changing. Google updates its algorithm, new social media trends emerge, and strategies evolve. To stay ahead, you must keep learning!

But how do you do that?

That’s where networking comes into play in learning how to become a digital marketing specialist. You can get easy industry updates as well as futuristic updates about the digital marketing field.

How to Stay Updated?

• You can follow top industry blogs, such as Neil Patel, Moz, and Backlinko. They update their content regularly about the digital marketing industry and where you should focus while learning how to become a self-made digital marketing expert. 
• You can also join digital marketing groups on LinkedIn & Facebook to network among other digital marketing experts to share and receive industry insights.
• Always attend webinars & conferences organized by top coaches, as you will get to meet new members of the community, and it can help you bring new clients to the table. 
• You can network by engaging on Twitter & Reddit and following digital marketing influencers there to get updates and network among people who are interested in learning how to become a digital marketing specialist.

Pro Tip: The more connected you are, the faster you’ll grow! You can apply this to digital marketing and increase your growth chances by 99%.

Networking is a good way to learn how to become a self-made digital marketing expert, as you get to meet other experts and can leverage networking to learn everything about the industry. 

Must Check: Digital Marketing Course Fees in India

Step 7: Apply for Digital Marketing Jobs

Now that you’ve built your skills and portfolio, it’s time to get hired by top companies or clients.

You can’t become a digital marketing expert until you work on real industry projects where you get to analyze real-time data and build some fresh strategies for your projects, whether it’s an email campaign, ad campaign, or social media account growth. 

You can apply for jobs or projects on many different platforms; some of these platforms are: 

• LinkedIn Jobs
• Indeed
• Fiverr & Upwork (Freelance)
• Marketing Agencies
• Remote Work Portals (We Work Remotely, FlexJobs)

Getting a job is not an easy task.

You have to spend months before getting your first good job, so always prepare yourself accordingly. 

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Step 8: Advance Your Career & Specialize

Learn how to become a digital marketing expert and advance your career by learning new skills. Digital marketing holds many skills you can try, and become an overall marketing specialist over the years. 

Once you’ve mastered digital marketing basics, you can specialize in areas like:

• SEO Expert – Master search engine rankings.
• PPC Expert – Become a Google Ads specialist.
• Social Media Manager – Manage influencer brands.
• Email Marketing Specialist – Increase open rates & sales.
• Affiliate Marketer – Earn commissions by promoting products.

Digital marketing specialists earn more than generalists as companies work on different types of skills. Some like to include paid ads, while some work on organic content growth.

You can choose your desired skill and learn how to become a self-made digital marketing expert in no time. 

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Conclusion

Becoming a digital marketing specialist isn’t rocket science—it just requires consistency, practice, and a willingness to learn.

You can always scratch from the start and get basic knowledge about the skills digital marketing includes, choose your desired skill, and keep learning until you learn how to become a digital marketing specialist. 

Here is what we have introduced in this article to learn how to become a digital marketing expert: a kind of recap of what you need to do to become a marketing expert.

• Learn Digital Marketing Basics
• Get Certified (Google, HubSpot, Facebook)
• Gain Real-World Experience (Blogging, Freelancing)
• Build a Strong Portfolio
• Network & Stay Updated
• Apply for Jobs & Specialize

So, what’s stopping you?

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Start today and build a career that gives you freedom, creativity, and unlimited earning potential!

Apply all these steps and keep learning. 

FAQs About Becoming a Digital Marketing Specialist

How long does it take to become a digital marketing specialist?

It depends on your learning pace! With consistent effort, you can become job-ready in 6 months to a year. If you want to become an expert in specific skills like SEO, PPC, or social media marketing, it can be done in 3 months, depending on your learning pace.

Do I need a degree in marketing?

No! While a degree helps, skills and experience matter more in digital marketing. Many professionals are self-taught. Digital marketing is a kind of field where skills matter more than education, although having any diploma in digital marketing from a reputed digital marketing institute like AADME is always a plus. You can learn digital marketing industry insights and a complete roadmap on how to start to become a digital marketing specialist. 

How much does a digital marketing specialist earn?

Beginner salaries range from ₹3L – ₹6L per year in India, while experienced specialists can earn ₹10L+ per year. However, it also depends on other factors like individual skills, location, company budget, client budget, etc. 

Can I do digital marketing without coding?

Yes! You can learn digital marketing without coding, as it’s not required. While coding knowledge (HTML, CSS) can help build a website on platforms like WordPress, it’s not mandatory.

That’s it! You now have a step-by-step roadmap to becoming a highly paid digital marketing expert. Start today, keep practicing, and watch your career take off!