If you’ve ever looked into a job in the tech/digital space then you will no doubt have come across countless acronyms which are often used to make things seem more complicated or more technical than they actually are. In reality, these terms are just used because they are a much shorter version of the long-winded term they stand for. For example, Search Engine Optimisation takes far longer to say than SEO, and someone who isn’t familiar with it may think that sounds complicated – in reality however it’s just about getting your site to rank highly on a search engine. When you start looking into digital marketing in particular you’ll see terms such as SEO, PPC, ROI, ROAS, HTML, JS, CSS and many more terms thrown around – with a simple explanation though it all becomes much clearer and much easier to understand.
An Introduction To The Main Terms
Before we delve deeper into the digital sector and careers in digital marketing, it will be useful to look at the main terms that you will come across, so everything makes a bit more sense! When you know what they stand for, it makes life much easier.
SEO – this stands for search engine optimisation. As discussed, this simply refers to the process of getting your website to rank higher for different keywords when people search for particular keywords. There are around 360 things that can contribute to how well a website ranks, so in SEO, people manipulate as many of those things as possible and aim to do it better than their competitors!
SERP’s – this one is very simple, as it simple stands for search engine results pages, which are the pages that appear when you type something into a search engine like Google, Safari or Bing.
Keyword – a keyword in relation to digital marketing is a term that a user searches for in a search engine when they are looking for something. For example, this could be a term like “womens handbags” or a question, like “how do I clean windows properly”. Google will then look for the most relevant websites to answer the users query and show them higher in SERPs.
PPC – this stands for pay-per-click. PPC is a form of advertising where you target particular keywords so that when they are searched, your advert will appear at the top of the search engine. Everytime someone clicks on the advert, it costs a particular amount for that click which is different depending on the competition of the keyword. In order to decide which websites should appear, the relevancy of the advert and the cost of the bid you are offering are taken into account.
The Digital Sector
The digital sector around the world is growing at a rate of knots, there are more jobs than ever before with options to work for agencies, in-house at a business or as a consultant which is kind of a hybrid of the two. You may choose to go down the web development or app development route or if you have an interest in marketing then digital marketing may be for you. Many of us spend countless hours each day trawling through social media platforms or Googling various search terms but often people don’t stop to think about how these platforms work, why are you seeing what you see in terms of adverts and what kind of data is being collected about you. When you get into digital marketing the whole world starts to open up, you realise what goes into seeing that website rank first on Google or why those specific items of clothing are being shown to you on Instagram and it helps you to understand just how effective this new wave of marketing actually is. Gone are the days of newspaper advertising and radio ads where you can show little to no proven return other than overall sales, we are now in a time where everything can be tracked, to the smallest detail, which is brilliant for both marketers and the companies who use them as they can invest in what is working best for them.
A Career In Digital Marketing
If you’d like to embark on a career in digital marketing, no matter how old you are, it is easy to do. There is so much information online, with lots of videos, eBooks and websites that explain all aspects of it to you, you can easily get a quick introduction to find out what it’s all about. The problem with this is though that most people learn best in person, not just reading from a website, as it is very hard to translate what you have read into practice if you have never done it before. The Red Cow Academy has been set up to introduce people to this modern form of marketing with their digital marketing courses. The Red Cow Academy is part of Red Cow Media who are an international, multi-award-winning digital agency, they are aiming to help train up the next generation of marketers. At the moment in the industry there is a major skills shortage, there are too many jobs for not enough people and therefore many agencies are desperate to hire new staff putting people who are looking to get into the industry at a major advantage. Whether you are looking to add a new skill set to your existing repertoire, or you’ve just graduated university and are looking for a career path to go down, digital marketing is certainly a great option.