Emerging Roles in Digital Marketing

This is an exciting and vividly unfolding time for creatives in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape. The COVID downturn dramatically affected the marketing industry, but a surprising set of hopeful opportunities resulted from that difficult period. Technology is driving a profound evolution in marketing roles as creatives track the hiring outlook and chart their career over the next decade. Let's look at that emergence.

Existing Roles 

As early as the mid-1990’s, there were spurts of experimental online advertising. But it wasn't until the serendipity of the social media revolution of 2004 and the rise of e-commerce giants like Amazon that digital marketing took its modern form. These online experiences influenced marketing patterns as dramatically as radio and television did in the early 20th century and the Industrial Age in the 19th century.

Over the past 20 years, traditional marketing roles — marketer, designer, copywriter, and analyst — have adapted to the digital paradigm. David Ogilvy's 360-degree branding theory from the “Mad Men” days of the 1960s continues to inform modern marketing practices. The notions of inbound and multichannel marketing grew out of Ogilvy’s ideas, offering richer opportunities to connect with online audiences through various channels such as search engines, email, online advertising, mobile, podcasts, streaming video, affiliate relationships, and influencer-driven social media.

Despite rapid changes and technological advances, the foundation of effective marketing remains constant. Marketing must always keep at its center how to communicate emotionally with audiences through powerful brand stories and drive conversions through strategic messaging, market adaptation, and campaign assessment. These are tools that will always be at the foundation of effective marketing in any age.

Upskilling

For digital marketers, future-proofing your career involves upskilling on top of a solid foundation. High-demand roles include content strategists, social media managers, and search engine optimization specialists. To stay competitive, focus on enhancing skills in areas already driving the industry: AI-powered marketing, e-commerce optimization, and data-driven storytelling

AI-powered marketing

In a nutshell, AI-powered marketing refers to a variety of activities including programmatic ad buys; sales forecasting; chatbots for sales and customer support; campaign automation; product merchandising and pricing; personalization; lead scoring; social-media planning; and offline placements. 

In his Entrepreneur article, Dmitrii Khasanov highlights the six ways AI is driving digital marketing’s future including personalized content, AI chatbots, machine learning algorithms, AI-powered content creation tools, automated tagging, and fraud prevention. 

E-commerce optimization

E-commerce optimization fine-tunes online stores through price experimentation and improved user experience. A case study of e-commerce optimization demonstrated how onsite notifications and engagement strategies led to an extra $65,000 in revenue during product launches. 

The strategy for OddBalls, a clothing and accessories company, was to improve sales and maximize awareness and engagement with new products. During a recent product line launch their Facebook announcements did not deliver enough engagement. They then tried onsite notifications. That generated nearly five times more emails. Additionally, they dramatically improved sales through a new strategy using small extra discounts promoted among website visitors.

Data-driven storytelling

Data-driven storytelling translates raw data into compelling narratives using data visualization, infographics, dashboards, and other visuals. Kolawole Ayedero in his superb LinkedIn newsletter emphasizes that storytelling has evolved beyond traditional narratives to include data, helping marketers make intelligent decisions and enhance audience engagement. “Storytelling has evolved beyond traditional narratives in today's digital age,” Ayedero writes. “It’s no longer just about words; increasingly, it's about data."

Consider these three emerging areas for digital marketing. Upskilling offers a rich variety to satisfy the natural skills of a generalist or specialist and the front end or back end areas of technology that best support those talents. These emerging roles lend themselves well to working on a team within a company or agency or working independently as a freelancer.

Career Outlook

The COVID downturn affected the marketing industry, leading to dramatic losses. Freelancers lost gigs, agencies lost contracts, and in-house teams suffered major cuts as budgets were slashed. However, the shift to remote or hybrid work and the gig economy answered this unique environment of isolation and seeded many career opportunities for creatives.

With historically low unemployment rates around 4%, the U.S. job market is robust, signaling a strong demand for marketing professionals. Advertising and marketing services are populating much of the job listings for the top ten industry categories. 

83% of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are ready to rebuild their teams in late 2024 and early 2025. CMOs are seeking candidates with skills in brand marketing, digital content development, email marketing, marketing analytics, social media marketing, and search engine optimization. Additionally, 56% of CMOs are looking for expertise in AI-powered marketing, e-commerce optimization, and data-driven storytelling.

Wrap Up

Despite the challenges posed by COVID, digital marketing jobs are among the most in demand. The digital marketing industry is projected to be worth 1.5 trillion dollars by 2030, with a higher-than-average growth rate of 6% by 2032 fueled by emerging technologies. This is a clear sign that AI will not render these jobs or the humans occupying them as obsolete. Instead, AI will complement and advance them. 

Whether you're new to marketing or looking to enhance your skills, consider enrolling in a certificate in digital marketing in a premier educational environment like Emory University Continuing Education. You can start fresh or beef-up your skills in only three months.

Then upskill that foundation with the area that excites you most: AI, e-commerce, or data-driven storytelling.

Please share your thoughts on this topic and any experiences or predictions you have about the future of digital marketing roles. Leave us a comment here to kick-start the conversation.

Thank you for your time and interest. If you have questions or feedback, let us know:

Click here to contact our program advisor Marilia Perottoni to discuss your educational pathway.

→ Learn more about the Emory Digital Marketing Certificate. 

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Join us for our next FREE INFO SESSION: Thursday, August 15, 2024, 12pm ET – Join a free online info session about the Emory Digital Marketing Certificate program to learn more and share your questions.

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