Thanks to our weekly #DigiJobsHour Twitter chats (every Thursday at 3pm in case you were wondering!) and our monthly Hangouts (12pm, the last Friday of every month!), here at Bubble we’re constantly being asked how digital marketers can improve their chances of getting a job and move up in their careers – and one answer we always fall back on is professional courses.
As you can see from the Courses page on our Digital Marketing Career Zone, there are lots of digital marketing courses available – and each tends to offer something a bit different – so the right one for you will obviously depend on your individual needs, your learning preferences and your budget.
In terms of how digital marketing courses can help you, earlier this month we caught up with the Squared Online team who run an online digital marketing course in conjunction with Google to find out exactly how their course and other courses in the sector can help to boost your digital marketing career prospects.
1. Providing You With Up To Date Industry Knowledge:
A lot of the digital marketing courses that are available, such as Squared Online, are taught by key figures within the digital marketing industry (including Google) – and, due to the fast-paced nature of the digital industry, they’re constantly being updated to ensure they’re up to date and relevant (Squared Online have just updated their campus and all the content within it!).
This means that you’ll not only be given a broad overview of the digital marketing industry and how key elements such as branding, social media, analytics, SEO and mobile contribute to the overall customer journey, you’ll also have the most up to date knowledge – all of which is bound to improve your skillset, impress your existing/potential employer and may just help to bag you that new job or promotion.
Don’t believe us? Ninety percent of those who took the Squared Online course said they feel more confident about digital strategy, while 72 percent went on to progress their career in the industry within three months of graduating.
2. Improving Your Networking Potential – Now & In The Future:
When you sign up for a digital marketing course like Squared Online, in addition to the lecturers and guest speakers who you can network with during the course and beyond, you also get to meet lots of other professionals who are currently working in the marketing industry or are looking to break into the digital marketing sector. Obviously, throughout the duration of such a course, you’ll get to chat to these guys about your experiences and learn from theirs during your group activity work – but at the end, you’ll also end up with a whole new network of professionals who can act as a bit of a support network throughout your career.
Thanks to established LinkedIn groups for course graduates, you can ask other graduates for their advice on any campaigns and processes that you’re working on/with and you can even get the lowdown on any new digital marketing jobs that might crop up at their companies, giving you access to the sneaky but oh so valuable world of hidden digital marketing jobs. This means some courses can continue to pay off and help you out years after you complete them!
3. Providing A Collaborative Learning Environment:
Squared Online is a unique online course because it offers a collaborative, interactive learning environment – and unlike some other academic courses, on this course you actually learn by working on real campaign briefs, giving things a go, taking a risk and learning from your mistakes – something which you can’t always do in the real digital industry. This means that when you graduate, you’ll have some great experience to draw on which you can then utilise throughout the rest of your career – essentially giving you the upper hand over other employees or candidates who haven’t got the same experience to draw on.
What’s more, these collaborative environments can also give you the opportunity to ask key questions about digital marketing best practice and how to apply key principles to a particular campaign from an established figure within the industry – again, something which you’d probably never get the chance to do in the real world.
4. Showing Your Commitment To The Industry:
When it comes to the ultra-competitive digital marketing industry, there are always lots of talented candidates going for the same roles – so employers normally look for candidates who can show that they’re truly committed to the industry and completing a course outside of standard working hours can be a great example of this. With a course like Squared Online, you generally have to put around eight hours of work in a week over six months (including one live class per week) – and you end up with a great qualification which you can stick on your CV for life – and which employers are actively looking out for.
Think you can’t afford a digital marketing course? Most are pretty reasonably priced and some can even be part-funded by your employer. The best bit? Some even offer scholarships for the best, most talented candidates.
5. Helping To Shape Your Career:
The majority of the digital marketing courses that are available provide a pretty complete strategic overview of the whole digital industry – and touch on key issues such as content marketing, social media, branding, email marketing, display, mobile, PPC, SEO, analytics, business regulations, and strategy. As we mentioned earlier, this means you’ll walk away from them with a broad knowledge – but it also means you could walk away with a whole new career focus which you’d never have discovered if you hadn’t taken the course. For example, you could discover you actually really love the data and analytics side of marketing and decide to take a further Google analytics course and move into this sector – something you’d never normally have considered but which could lead you to a really successful career.
So there you go; five ways a digital marketing course can help to advance your career.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: 5 Ways A Digital Marketing Course Can Boost Your Career
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