Digital Horizons
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Digital Horizons
How To Get A Job In Digital Marketing
How can you stand out in the bustling world of digital marketing and land that dream job? This episode promises to equip you with innovative strategies and insider knowledge from our experiences as agency owners. Discover how creating unique TikTok video applications can make you memorable in a crowded job market and learn the essential digital marketing skills that not only boost business revenue but can also elevate your personal financial game. We'll explore the rewarding aspects of working within an agency environment and the specific skill sets that are in high demand right now.
We’ll also dig into the vital importance of passion, practical experience, and commitment over traditional educational backgrounds. Whether you're into data analytics, campaign management, or content creation, we have valuable insights into the diverse paths within digital marketing. Get ready for actionable tips on crafting personalized job applications, from using company-branded colors to strategic follow-up communication. Through our personal anecdotes and professional guidance, we aim to help you navigate and succeed in this competitive and ever-evolving industry. Tune in and transform your career prospects today!
The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:
James Walker - Managing Director Walker Hill Digital
Brian Hastings - Managing Director Nous
We had someone recently that actually did create a TikTok video. It was them applying for the role on top of their application.
Speaker 2:Why not use it for yourself to get ahead of the other applicants? It's almost a mini first interview.
Speaker 1:Well, it's an ad, isn't it? They're putting an ad together for themselves.
Speaker 2:All right, this week Digital Horizons. I'm Brian, this is James. Welcome back, cool. So today we're talking about how to get a job in digital marketing and the career of marketing and advertising. Specific focus on digital marketing.
Speaker 1:It's such an important subject. I mean something that I mean we're both in our roles. We're hiring, continually hiring. I think I hired three people within the last few weeks and so it's such a key part of our business. But we get so many applicants, and so I guess the reason why we thought this would be a really good topic is, if this is an industry or if this is something that you're really interested in, then maybe we can provide a bit of insight into what it's like from our side of things when we put a job ad up on a job board online, get a whole bunch of applicants and why we're choosing some over others, and a bit of guidance in terms of, well, how can you get to that point where you're the one that's being selected in a role when you're looking for a role that you're really excited about in digital marketing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, hopefully we can dispel some myths for those who aren't in the industry, try to make it a little bit easier to understand what it is we look for. As agency owners even share some of the differences between what people look for when we were going for jobs to what is appropriate now, but the industry itself it's a fantastic place to work. It's a great industry to be a part of if you're in it for the right reasons and you truly want to help businesses and help people in their marketing and advertising. I've found it to be an amazing path for me when I landed in the digital marketing path and now I've transferred into branding a little bit more, but digital marketing is still very much a big part of my career. It's just a really interesting and engaging industry to be a part of, where you can really make a difference for lots of businesses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean digital marketing for myself has changed my life. It's something that I taught myself and, over the years, progressed into different businesses and then into the role that I'm currently at with Walkio. By being good at digital marketing, you can generate income for yourself because you're learning how to sell stuff and generate leads and do different things online, and you could be doing that for yourself, or you can be doing that and so that will help you personally financially, or you could be doing it for other businesses and by doing that you are then and we've seen this for all the businesses we work with it transforms their lives, so you're doing something that's quite meaningful in terms of you're able to help people generate revenue. And then there's the other area where you can go work in the house or work in the agency and in the agency role again, so many perks to it.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's a fun environment to work at, but because the role is really focused on generating leads, generating money, which then translates into businesses being more successful, that's really valuable, I mean, and that's something like we've found that wages have exploded because there's so much demand for people who are good at what we do, because when it's done well. It translates to more money, and so people are willing to pay for that. So I think that it's a really valuable skill to have, but it's a very rewarding skill as well, because you can actually have a very big impact on your own personal life, but also for businesses, as well and there are some specific skill sets within the digital marketing and advertising sphere that are in really high demand and some that are still in a normal amount of demand.
Speaker 2:But I think something you touched on there is really important. The advertising and marketing, specifically the digital marketing industry, is low barriers for entry for sole operators. So a lot of clients have had an experience with a low quality operator and it can sometimes give the industry a bad name. But when done well, when done right, you become such an important part of a business or a client's team and if you're doing it from the client side in the marketing side, you become so important to that business because you're helping generate more revenue, more traction, more growth. It's all of a sudden you're the most important person to that business owner. So it's a really important industry to me.
Speaker 2:We also see so many candidates coming through looking for roles in our agency and I think today, if we can dispel some of those myths around what it is we look for, what sort of education and training you might want to do to set yourself up and also how to go through the process, what to highlight in your application and whatnot, might give you some tips and a good chance of presenting yourself your best foot forward. Covering off briefly the industry itself, we've talked about why we are passionate about it, but what is it Like? What sort of roles are we talking about here? We're focusing specifically on digital marketing today and that, as James said, could be client side. It could be in an agency, but within an agency there's a couple of different paths you can take.
Speaker 2:You could be more data and analytical, with a focus on paid digital campaign management, such as Google search or meta advertising performance ad placements. Or you could be on the more content and creative development side of things designers for ads, video content creation, content strategies and content development, copywriting but there's a level of care that I would take if you're heading down the copywriting path of the AI capability that's building nowadays. So it doesn't mean choosing one of those paths excludes you from being creative, or choosing a creative path excludes you from developing those analytical analysis of campaign performance and campaign management. Sometimes people who are good at both are our best performers.
Speaker 2:The industry as a whole. There's a lot of jobs in advertising and marketing we're not really going to delve into, such as traditional media buying and planning, creative graphic design paths, UX designers, website development. There's a whole myriad of potential of where you could end up in a marketing or advertising agency, and I think this focus for us is going to be on those who want to get into that digital marketing space, because I think it's probably changed the most in what we look for and probably in the highest demand when we look at what people are hiring for.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I mean, I don't, even if you've got university experience, that's a bonus, but I don't think it's a must have anymore. And, as we were saying before, when we went through and we're applying for jobs at our uni, or even early days, it was almost like a must have to work with some of the better employees or better agencies only because you could learn a lot of uni in uni.
Speaker 1:That was really relevant. But I'm finding that the speed and pace that our industry changes I don't know if and maybe I'm wrong, but from our experience over the years it's not keeping up well enough, and so I'm sure it gives the baseline of sort of the theory behind a lot of the concepts that we're working on, but in terms of the actual hands-on experience in executing performance campaigns and stuff like that, it's not really a deal breaker anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I think my sentiment on this has changed dramatically over the years.
Speaker 2:It used to be the proof point that someone's committed to an industry.
Speaker 2:If you're willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars and four years focusing on a bachelor of business with a major in marketing and advertising, then you are committed to this industry. You're not just dipping in and dipping out, but that's such a big cost, commitment and time commitment only to show to the first job that, yep, I kind of want to be in this industry. Yep. So my perception on that being a automatic filter has been removed. Now I don't necessarily need to see it. If there's a gun straight out of school who's shown experience in this area or tried to get some real experience and done some direct courses maybe Google's Garage course or some Moz courses to understand SEO a little bit better, or even just gotten some hands-on experience and trying to build their own stuff or run a family members campaign and that's led into maybe some internships, that's really going to prove a drive and desire for the industry that you don't need to spend 60, 70 grand on and four years of your life developing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a hundred percent, like I'd value. I mean, I guess it depends on the person, but I would value someone who's come built that experience. As you said, they've done the internships, they've even just tried to help out a family member. They've done something or created their own product and started selling it. Maybe they haven't had a huge amount of success with it Otherwise they probably aren't applying for a job but they've done something that is showing I think it shows just as much commitment in that term in the ability to be able to teach and learn themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there are some elements of a business course that are of value that you know. Especially, I look at Queensland University of Technology. It's where I studied the periphery things that you know learning accounting, learning public and professional ethics all those sorts of side things to the marketing majors are helpful for giving you context to what a business thinks like and focuses on, and it also helped to give me the ability around developing a strategy and a marketing plan. That was pretty helpful. But I feel like if I worked at an agency and I worked with someone to do one marketing plan or one strategy, I would have been way more ahead than, if you know, the six months I spent trying to do it in a degree. So there is a place for it, there is value in it.
Speaker 2:But if you can get that same level of experience that broad and wide stretching experience and understanding of how business works with your hyper focus in a niche of digital marketing or paid campaign ads or content creation, you can get that in a lot of ways. So I think there's a niche of digital marketing or paid campaign ads or content creation. You can get that in a lot of ways. So I think there's a combination of free online courses, a lot of them offered by Google, which I respect and can see that as a level of commitment combined with trying to just get a really great understanding of how business works. You're going to set yourself ahead a few steps and be more appealing to someone, even at least getting an internship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as we're recruiting all the time and typically got a pretty short time to look at each individual applicant, I guess we just want to give some, I guess, actionable advice if you are listening to this and you are actively trying to find a job in digital marketing of what to do to get noticed, thinking about making sure there's a cover letter.
Speaker 1:If you're not putting anything personalized into your resume or into your application, then it's not going to get noticed. It's just going to be thrown away, no matter how good your application is. I feel that something that when this is done, I'll give the time of day to anyone, regardless of their experience. But if there is a customized video cover letter or if they film a video introducing themselves and explaining why they are suitable for the role, I'm going to pay attention and I think, just because that extra effort's been done, if I'm looking through 100 applications and two people have filmed a video response, that means they've put more effort than the other 98 people in that pool of applicants and they're the ones who I'm going to probably spend more time actually paying attention to the resume.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it shows that they understand the product that they're going to be working amongst as well. Video cuts through. Video helps build trust and engagement quickly. Why not use it for yourself to get ahead of the other applicants? It's almost a mini first interview.
Speaker 1:Well, it's an ad, isn't?
Speaker 2:it.
Speaker 1:They're putting an ad together for themselves and that's sort of something that, if you're applying for a role ideally be in a social media advertising role or something like this that's a key thing is just create a TikTok video. And we had someone recently that actually did create a TikTok video, posted it on TikTok, tagged us in it, and it was them applying for the role on top of their application and just doing stuff like this that's going to help get you noticed If you are really passionate about the company that you want to work with or the role that you're applying for. Just thinking about these extra steps it's going to get you noticed in this pile of all these different applicants, especially when you don't have a whole bunch of experience in the industry.
Speaker 2:That's a great tip. I had someone deliver a plant once, which was really nice to try to get noticed, but this plant is the most needy plant I've ever had.
Speaker 2:It's sitting on my desk and it droops after two days if it hasn't had water. Unfortunately, that person wasn't successful in even making it to the interview stage simply because there wasn't a proven commitment to the digital marketing industry. This was a role focused in the digital marketing department in our business, so it wasn't a great alignment. But if it was proved with a video or a video provided it would show that understanding. So when someone has made it through the first filter and they're going to have the interview, there's two things I look for is a deep understanding of what the expectations around you are going to be in the role. Learn that from the job ad. Try to understand what it is that they're asking in the job ad and how your skills apply. What I look for is someone who gets what the expectation is. It's not all going to be long lunches and agency drinks and the glitter and fun stuff. There's going to be pressure. There's going to be an expectation that you're good with clients and can explain our strategy and some complex processes and advertising principles easily. You're going to have to be able to present All of these things. They're written in the subtext of the job ad. So firstly, I want people to understand what is expected of them and be able to get my confidence that they can do it. More importantly, that they get it. They get what is going to be expected of them in the job.
Speaker 2:The second thing I really look for is a strong desire to understand the culture of my business. You can get a lot from our social our organic social feeds to understand what we do, how we get together on our free time, how we celebrate the work that we've done. You can learn who our clients are, that we've done great work for. If you have done your homework, I should get the feeling like you think this business is the perfect one for you. You've been stalking it so deeply that you know when a website deployed a month ago, but also where we went to for our Christmas party. I want to know that you really seek to become a part of this team, so much so that you've been ogling it, looking at it, walking past the building and going. I want to walk, I want to work there. Those sorts of things combine your understanding of what the role is and the expectation of you with a good cultural fit. You've seen what our culture is, you understand it and you want it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, I mean to tie into that.
Speaker 1:Something that has caught my attention, even in the application process, is people putting their resume or cover letter on our branded colors, so it's almost like they're sort of saying, yep, look, I feel like I'm a part of this sort of thing and this catches attention because when you're looking at a whole bunch of black and white resumes or stuff that you've seen built on Canva and you're flicking through them and then you see something that's on your own branding, it kind of captures attention too and it shows that extra layer of commitment to trying to make a personalized application for the role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thing that our candidates may not usually expect but we do now it's a great way of getting a good feel for someone's experience and ability to communicate is in the first interview.
Speaker 2:We have a typical interview where we understand someone's background and history and how that applies to the role, but then we explain another level of detail around the role that might not have been in the job ad and we set a challenge for that candidate to come back and present to us what they took away and what they would do in their first three, six and 12 months in the role and to present back to us how their skills will fit with the requirement of the role.
Speaker 2:Present back to us how their skills will fit with the requirement of the role. It gives us the opportunity to see someone pull a presentation together to see them present that under pressure. You've got to walk in, plug your laptop in, connect it to our TV and go to a panel of two or three people, and sometimes that might be a little hectic for some. We don't do it for our entry level roles, but we do have that expectation of people coming in as an account manager or an account director or into a senior specialist role. We want to see your understanding presented to us in a way where we don't have to eke it out from you, and that's been really helpful for finding that ability. That matches the experience that we've been told. That's there, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think after then say you've gone through this application process actively following up and this is just from an experience that we've had recently with someone that we're going to look at hiring is we went through the interviews and then we had a handful of them, or whatever, during a week and the next day we've got a very detailed email from the applicant who we met with explaining how much they enjoyed the conversation, giving us a bit of an overview of sort of what we talked about and if we had any further questions for them as well. Again, it's sort of just such a simple extra step to take after the process that gets you a little bit more notice than the five other people that we met with that did not do that, and so I guess these are just small little things that you can be doing to tweak your process. As to what you're going to do to get further, I guess, notice within the stack of applicants.
Speaker 2:That's a great tip. It bubbles you back up to the top of the consideration set. It's a reminder that they did really want this. If it didn't come across clearly enough or someone might have took the wrong feeling out from the interview that you're umming and ahhing about whether you want to be in this industry or this role, that follow-up to say what I heard in this interview is exactly what I'm looking for. Your business and the role you described is perfect. I want this. So please let me know. If there's any other requirements or questions, I'd be happy to answer on a call. That's a great tip.
Speaker 2:It's that moment afterwards where we're left trying to make the right choice from sometimes a few good candidates and you're balancing experience how quickly they're going to get up to speed. Will I be confident that I can leave my clients in their hands in two to three months? Are they going to fit with the culture of this business? Are they going to reflect the values? So that confirmation back, even if it's in a text message, if you've got their phone number or an email, if you've got their direct email just to say that you've heard what the role is and the culture and appreciate it and that is what you're looking for would really help elevate you Further to that, I think in that interview process, if you aren't asked to do a presentation, don't be shy in being forward with what you would expect you would need to do in the role.
Speaker 2:Maybe ask for permission in the interview. Would you mind if I took you through what I would like to achieve in my first three months or six months? That sort of proactivity where the interviewer can go, oh, okay, and sit back and maybe have some of their burning questions answered by your proactivity can really helps me feel like you would have what it takes to take charge in a client meeting and to build confidence quickly in a client meeting.
Speaker 1:Yep, all right. Well, I hope this gives you quite a bit of an idea as to how to approach to try and get a job in digital marketing. As I've said, and as Brian knows that we've both been working in this industry for about 10 or so years now, and so that may be longer Seven to 15 to 17.
Speaker 1:Sorry, 15 to 17 years now, and it has been life-changing both for us in terms of, you know, ability 17 years now and it has been life-changing both for us in terms of ability to do more within our own careers, but then also financially and everything else that that brings along with it, and the ability that we've been able to have to help people and, I guess, now build a team and then working with teams that we really enjoy working with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Also travel. These skills are transferable, internationally, directly transferable. If you build up a good skill here, you can move overseas, do your two years in London and get a good job rather than just waiting tables or something.
Speaker 2:So, give it a go. Try to get that internship space. Try to get into that space where you can get some good experience. Take it off your own back and do some online training so you can build up the skillset in a specialization within digital marketing and then interview well, prove that you want it to the skillset in a specialization within digital marketing and then interview well, prove that you want it to the people that you're applying to send in a video. Hopefully, if you apply these things, mix all these things together, you'll bubble to the top of the list and we'll see you in the industry soon 100%, and we're always looking to work with the best people in the industry.
Speaker 1:So if you are looking for a digital marketing role and you do feel that you are extremely good at what you do, feel free to look up Brian at NowS or me here at Walker Hill and send us through an application. We always got new roles coming up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, that'd be really appreciated actually Thanks for listening today.
Speaker 1:We hope this has been a useful episode. Yeah, cheers. See you later.