Marketing
9 min read

Growth & Digital Marketing Specialists: who are they, what do they do, and how much do they earn?

Written by Talent Garden Talent Garden
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Do you dream of reaching your target? And generate lots of leads? So, this is the article for you. In fact, you will discover everything about the professional figure that companies will not be able to do without in the next 3 years: the Growth & Digital Marketing Specialist.

What exactly is a Growth & Digital Marketing Specialist?

The Growth & Digital Marketing Specialists is a professional able to take advantage of all the main channels of communication and digital marketing, able to tackle the tools and best practices. The Growth & Digital Marketing Specialists is also capable of applying methodologies and frameworks to analyze the results of campaigns to continuously optimize them in a continuous improvement process. This professional aims to reach as many users as possible and to stimulate their creativity, triggering those long-awaited viral marketing and buzz marketing mechanisms to which all brands aspire. Therefore the Growth & Digital Marketing Specialists must be able to design a digital strategy and translate it into an effective digital marketing plan according to the different business objectives or KPIs.

What are the skills of a successful Growth & Digital Marketing Specialist?

In order to master this process holistically, a combination of these 8 skills is ideally required:
  1. Programming & Coding: A Growth & Digital Marketing Specialists doesn't have to be a programming genius but have a basic understanding of coding, and web languages like HTML, CSS, and PHP are definitely recommended.
  2. Design Skills: Design aspects can significantly affect the performance of a website or advertising campaign. You should be able to understand the graphical representation possibilities and also have an eye for improvements.
  3. SEO: What is the use of the most beautiful website if nobody finds it? This requires knowledge of technical SEO. This includes aspects such as ensuring that title tags and meta-descriptions are present on all pages, as well as traditional techniques such as keyword research.
  4. Copywriting: Whether it be a new landing page, fantastic blog posts or larger content marketing projects - the ability to write strong headlines and exciting copy are decisive for success as a Growth & Digital Marketing Specialists.
  5. Outreach: The Internet is full of websites, blogs, and influencers that have a large reach and can, therefore, serve as a springboard for your business. Finding and contacting websites is done through a process known as outreach. This is where Growth & Digital Marketing Specialists can excel because only the best deals lead to the desired result.
  6. Social Media Marketing: SuccessfulGrowth & Digital Marketing Specialists are known to bypass traditional forms of advertising, but it is essential to know them first. There are different ways for how social media can be used successfully, from the development of profiles over regular updates to paid advertising.
  7. Data & Analytics: Tools like Google Analytics present the most important website data on a silver platter. As a Growth & Digital Marketing Specialists, however, you need to understand this information and take appropriate optimization measures. With solid analytical knowledge, you can immediately see what works and where there is potential for continuous growth.
  8. A/B Testing: Not difficult, but still essential - A/B testing allows you to evaluate the performance of different versions of a website, an advertising button, or an app and thus further improve their performance.

How much does a Growth & Digital Marketing Specialist earn?

According to Payscale the average annual salary of a Growth & Digital Marketing Specialists is between 25 and 30 thousand euros gross for a junior figure, between 65 and 75 thousand for a senior figure. In addition, as much as 69% have experience in the sector between 1 and 4 years, 19% between 5 and 9 years, and 13% between 10 and 19 years.

How to become a Growth & Digital Marketing Specialist?

Top of the job market, companies scaling, bonuses, and a high possibility to earn a nice salary - the job profile of the Growth & Digital Marketing Specialists could definitely be worse. But there is another small problem: First, you have to become a Growth & Digital Marketing Specialist, and that's easier said than done. As always, there are essential basics for this.

1. Read the latest books

There are only a few shortcuts on the way to becoming a successful Growth & Digital Marketer, but reading is essential.
  1. The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company. It all starts here. Author Steve Blank teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford University and is considered the driving force behind the Lean Startup movement. This book is for anyone who wants to understand and apply growth phenomena in the startup scene.
  2. 100 Days of Growth: You’ll get valuable advice on how to implement the knowledge shared in the book, what tools to use, and where you can go if you need support. More inspiration in a smaller space is not possible.
  3. Startup Growth Engines: Sean Ellis, the inventor of the term "Growth Hacking", presents a total of ten case studies in his work, showing how companies like Uber, Square, Hubspot, etc. have been able to win millions of users. Just the thing for every Growth & Digital Marketer.
  4. Traction: Even more practical inspiration. Based on more than forty expert interviews, Traction explains the complete 19 communication channels for continuously building a relevant customer base. Here everyone can learn something new.
  5. Contagious: Why is there more talk about some products and ideas than about others? Why do some articles make it into the big mailing lists and why do some YouTube videos go viral? On 244 pages, author Jonah Berger provides very well-rounded answer.

2. Follow the right experts

By networking with other Growth & Digital Marketers you will quickly determine what experience you need and from what experts you can learn the most. In any case, you should pay some attention to these industry pioneers: Sean Ellis: The founder and CEO of growthhackers.com is a leading authority on growth hacking. He invented the term "Growth Hacking" to describe the growth-oriented approaches of successful companies like Facebook, Airbnb, and Amazon. Neil Patel: The co-founder of KISSmetrics and Hello Bar is considered a rock star in the Growth Hacking scene. After KISSmetrics he founded Crazy Egg, a company specialized in the creation of website heat maps. He also runs two blogs and he gives tips on conversions, marketing technologies, and much more. Alex Schultz: Facebook has grown tremendously over the last 12 years, and the responsible Growth & Digital Marketer is... Alex Schultz. You don't have to say more than that?

3. Learn to use the best tools

A Growth & Digital Marketing Specialist always strives to reduce the cost per acquisition as much as possible. Instead of placing paid ads, we first recommend exploring the infinite variety of tools that affect every dimension of Growth & Digital Marketing. Buzzsumo is a keyword-based search engine that displays the most viral content and influencers on specific topics. Hotjar is an optimization tool for website usability and user experience that offers heat maps, visitor records, and much more. SEOprofiler is a cloud-based internet marketing tool that helps websites achieve high search engine rankings. With CrowdTangle you can search the web for viral trends, and it covers the social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit. Another practical tool is SimilarWeb. With a single mouse click, you can call up detailed statistics on hits and engagements for each website. CrazyEgg is a heatmap tool that shows exactly what areas of your website are "hot or not". With Qualaroo you can create targeted website surveys that can pop-up in the user-journey at any time, and these are just a few of the most common tools you can use to gain insight into successful Digital Marketing.
Article updated on: 09 August 2023
Talent Garden
Written by
Talent Garden, Digital Skills Academy

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