Is digital marketing a good career? That is the topic of this article. We’re going to be talking about all the most important things associated with digital marketing, like salary, job satisfaction, demand, and other factors. By the end of this article, you are going to have a very good idea of whether digital marketing is a good career and specifically a good career fit for you or not.

What exactly is digital marketing?

So first of all, let’s answer the question: What exactly is digital marketing? It refers to the use of digital channels in order to market a product to a customer base. So, if you see an ad pop up on any video, for instance, or you see an ad pop up on Facebook or Google when you’re searching, that is digital marketing.

Let’s talk about the education needed in order to break into a digital marketing position. Now, in the past, in order to get a marketing job, you would have to get a marketing degree. But in modern times, because of the fact that digital marketing changes so fast, colleges have not been able to keep up with the changes. So, if you’re trying to go into digital marketing, a lot of the time colleges are going to teach you stuff that maybe worked 20 or 30 years ago but doesn’t work now. So, a college degree is not needed to get into digital marketing, and that’s why it’s one of my favorite careers. It’s really great for people who either want to switch careers or they want to skip college.

Are digital marketing jobs in demand?

Alright, so let’s talk about demand. Demand is probably the most important thing when it comes to evaluating a career because typically everything else tends to stem from demand. So, if something has high demand, you’re likely going to get paid better, you’re also likely going to get treated better, and so you’re going to have higher job satisfaction, and there’s going to be more opportunities. So the factors are going to be higher, etc. Now, BLS doesn’t have a lot of statistics for digital marketers specifically, but they say that marketing managers are growing at about 10% over the next 10 years, which is higher than average, so that’s pretty good. Now, if you look at digital marketing specifically on LinkedIn, you will see that there are 252,000 job postings for digital marketers.

 Even if you look at job postings for entry-level careers, there’s still 123,000 for digital marketers.

 That is absolutely bananas. That is a ridiculous amount of demand, and because of that, this one is going to get a score of 10 out of 10 for demand.

Are digital marketing specialists happy?

Next on the list, we’re going to talk about job satisfaction. This is basically how much you enjoy doing your job on a day-to-day basis. Now, this is by far the most subjective section, so take it with a grain of salt, but I will talk about a few things just in case it helps you out. According to PayScale, when you look at job satisfaction, it shows there is a meaning score of 44, which is basically how much you think your job positively impacts the world, and the job satisfaction is 70. So, 70 is definitely well above average, and keep in mind this is for marketing managers. They didn’t have anything listed for digital marketers. However, the meaning score is a little bit below average, so make sure this is something that you’re passionate about and you actually enjoy. But overall, I think a lot of this has to do with flexibility, and the great thing about digital marketing is it’s just a valuable skill in general. So, if for whatever reason, let’s say you go into pay-per-click digital marketing and you don’t like it, you can very easily switch over into a different type of digital marketing, or you can just switch into something else. Your skills that you learned as a digital marketer will be valuable in many different roles. Just from my own personal experience talking to a bunch of different people who are looking at a bunch of different career paths, digital marketing is one of the most flexible when it comes to a lot of different people being able to go into it and enjoy their work. So, I’ve seen people who are extremely analytical, for instance, have a lot of success in digital marketing, and at the same time I’ve seen people who are very artistic really enjoy digital marketing jobs as well. Depending on your skill set, you might go down the social media marketing route, the pay-per-click route, the SEO route, etc. But the big thing here is that it’s very flexible, and that leads to you having higher job satisfaction.

Another thing that factors into satisfaction is how much you risk going into it. If you look at a career like a doctor, for instance, you need to be absolutely 100% sure that it’s something you can see yourself doing for a long period of time because you have to go to school for at least eight years, and then you’re going to do a residency that’s three to seven years, and you might even do a fellowship after that. So, if you get through all of that and then you decide you hate your career, you’re kind of out of luck. Whereas with digital marketing, you can get into it relatively quickly and inexpensively, so if you don’t like it, it’s not that big of a loss. So, in my opinion, that does factor into job satisfaction as well. So, overall, I’m going to give this one a 9 out of 10 when it comes to satisfaction.

Is digital marketing a high-paying job?

Next on the list, we’re going to be talking about salary. Now, BLS bunches together all different types of marketers. Unfortunately, they don’t have statistics specifically for digital marketers, but marketing managers make about $133,000 a year,

 and you can also see the specific salaries of people who go into different marketing skill sets, so I’ll put that up on the screen. There’s information, professional, scientific, etc.

 If you compare marketing managers to the average salary of all people in all different occupations, it’s $135,000 versus $45,000. So again, very nice. A marketing manager is something you could become, but the typical digital marketer, according to Glassdoor, makes about $76,000 a year, which is pretty good. But again, you do have the option to move into a lot of those more lucrative roles, and you also have to keep in mind this is $76,000 a year for a career that you can get into without having to go to college or have previous experience. So for that reason, I’m going to give it a salary score of 8.5 out of 10.

Factors for success of digital marketing.

Next, I’m going to be talking about X factors, and this is basically anything that doesn’t fit into the other categories but is still important. So, there are only a few types of skills out there where you can use your knowledge, what you know, to reach millions of people. Off the top of my head, the only ones I can think of are digital marketing, sales, content creation, and coding.

So, you basically have infinite leverage when it comes to digital marketing because if you get really good at it, you can pay money to advertise your products and make even more money. It’s like you put one dollar in and you get two dollars out. It’s basically like a machine that prints money.

 So, a very, very valuable skill set, whether you’re working for a company or whether you decide to go off on your own and start your own business.

Now, as to the question of whether digital marketing is going to be able to be automated or outsourced, I highly, highly doubt it. Part of it will be automated, just like in every industry things are automated, but it is one of those skill sets, especially the artistic side of it, that is never going to be able to be automated. Or if it is, nobody’s going to have to work because robots are just going to be doing everything for us. Marketers also have to have a very good intuitive understanding of their market, so it’s very difficult to outsource something to another country because they don’t understand the market that you would be marketing to. So overall, when it comes to factors, I’m going to give this one a 10 out of 10.

So overall, this one is going to get a 9.375 out of 10. It’s a phenomenal career path for you to go down. What makes it especially good is if you’re somebody who doesn’t want to get a college degree, or you’re somebody who got a college degree but you’re not happy with it, or if you’re somebody who’s in a career that you’re not happy with and you don’t have any experience in digital marketing, you can still relatively easily transition into it. Now, if you’re somebody who is set on going to college, this one wouldn’t be as good.