8 Digital Marketing Career Paths

8 min read

Education & Career Trends: November 3

Curated by the Knowledge Team of  ICS Career GPS


Several paths lead to careers in digital marketing, each offering a wide range of opportunities for individuals to use specific skills to achieve a range of goals.

  • Excerpts are taken from an article published on online.hilbert.edu.

Digital marketing connects prospective customers with businesses in an online environment. It’s a career path that involves understanding what drives people to engage with a social media video or why they decide to buy one product over another on an e-commerce website.

Digital marketing entails engaging with customers through a range of channels, including social media, websites and blogs. For companies, digital marketing is critical, as it provides a direct connection to customers who are spending more of their time on social media platforms.

For all of these reasons, companies need digital marketing professionals with the education and skills to stay on top of trends, develop high-quality content, and create engaging digital marketing campaigns that increase leads and sales. For those who love this area of marketing, it can be a rewarding career field.

Several paths lead to careers in digital marketing, each offering a wide range of opportunities for individuals to use specific skills to achieve a range of goals.

Digital Marketing Careers

Digital marketing careers range widely, often focusing on very specific skills and requirements within this larger field. Some people work in careers that encompass more than one of these areas, while others focus more narrowly. Many careers in the field focus on management, technology or creative components.

Others involve working hand in hand with companies to develop overall effective marketing campaigns. Some also combine advertising with digital marketing, creating strategies for companies to let customers know about them and their services.

1. Content Strategist

  • A content strategist is a professional who develops and executes plans for content production.
  • They create a unified message for their organisation, ensuring that every touch point and channel of reach receives the same message.
  • They work with others in a company, including social media strategists, designers, marketing professionals and graphic designers who create various types of content.
  • Because many tasks in this field overlap departments, communication skills are crucial.
  • Content strategists may also work with clients to understand their products and services so they can develop relevant marketing strategies.
  • They monitor the industry and emerging trends in digital marketing, as a component of their work is to come up with new ways to interact with and engage customers.

2. Content Manager

  • Content managers edit content to ensure it fits the tone and appropriate style for the client, subject matter and audience.
  • These rules are often predetermined by content strategists and others working to meet the client’s needs.
  • In some situations, content managers have a staff that helps produce written, video and audio materials.
  • Some work with freelancers and third-party agencies to create the desired outcome.
  • Content managers are often guided by strategists to ensure that produced content matches messaging plans.
  • Some content managers work with editors in a variety of aspects, often contributing content, updating goals and managing projects.
  • Some work in smaller organisations, where they focus on the creation of content themselves, whereas in larger organisations, they may have a singular role of managing the production of content through other people.

3. SEO Specialist

  • Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of using various marketing methods to help a website rank better in search engines.
  • An SEO specialist is a professional who applies those skills to company websites and blogs to help increase traffic.
  • SEO is a wide-encompassing field that often focuses on both technical and organic methods, such as the use of keywords, meta descriptions and analytics.
  • An SEO specialist’s job is to help a company rank highly in search results by using specific keywords that consumers type into search engines to find different products and services.
  • SEO specialists work with content developers and digital marketing coordinators to provide the data to help companies rank in search engines.
  • Their work does not usually involve the creative components of the process, though some provide those services as well.

4. Email Marketing Specialist

  • An email marketing specialist is a professional with a very specific area of expertise.
  • They create email marketing campaigns to encourage consumers to purchase a product or take some other type of action.
  • Digital marketers work to build email lists of prospective or previous customers. They then produce emails for those customers intending to build a brand, sell a product, communicate about a product or otherwise engage the customer.
  • Email marketing specialists work heavily with written communication.
  • They also use tools including email automation software, newsletter tools and graphic design tools to create visually interesting and high-quality emails that people want to read.
  • Their work is very much sales-oriented, but instead of crafting a traditional sales message, they work to build up the brand’s image and gain the trust of customers.

5. Marketing Assistant

  • They help with multiple tasks in the field and may also work to support the needs of one professional or another based on timelines and goals.
  • The duties of a marketing assistant in digital marketing change often.
  • They may fulfil some administrative tasks, such as organising data or gathering research. They may also handle market research on a product or service to determine a company’s competitors or develop target personas for a specific brand.
  • They may update databases to provide information to other members of the marketing team as it becomes available.
  • This may include writing content for a company’s website or social media accounts and completing revisions.
  • Some also work to develop blog topics or help create content ideas.

6. Digital Marketing Specialist

  • A digital marketing specialist designs creates and delivers various types of digital media to be used in digital marketing campaigns.
  • The goal of the specialist is to determine what type of marketing best suits a company based on factors such as target audience and budget.
  • Specialists in this field become experts in their client’s products and services so they can direct campaigns to sell those products most effectively.
  • This tends to involve social media, website development, web advertising, graphics and much more.
  • Digital marketing specialists have a comprehensive view of the industry.
  • They provide insight and guidance in areas including social media creation, video creation, public relations and press releases, as well as creating engaging content for websites and blogs.
  • They may also help to develop presentations, newsletters, email marketing campaigns and brochures.

7. Digital Marketing Manager

  • A digital marketing manager is a marketing professional who helps to develop, implement and manage digital marketing campaigns for their clients over some time.
  • These campaigns typically aim to promote a company—and its products and services—through highly specialised advertising, brand development and content creation.
  • A person in this position usually oversees others who handle the content production for a blog or social media account.
  • They often work with SEO specialists and digital marketing specialists to provide these services.
  • As a manager, they may oversee those who will be creating the content, such as those creating videos, emails, social media messages, and content for blogs and websites.
  • This often requires having good leadership and communication skills.
  • They may also need to work well in teams, as most digital marketing campaigns involve services from various professionals.

8. Digital Marketing Coordinator

  • A digital marketing coordinator oversees, supports and optimises digital marketing campaigns.
  • The role requires these professionals to have ample skill and insight into various aspects of digital marketing.
  • Digital marketing coordinators may help to track campaign progress and successes, or they may help to develop digital marketing materials including social media, email and website content.
  • Coordinators may also work to source images and digital graphics for use within the content.
  • Depending on the organisation, digital marketing coordinators may help support a broader scope of marketing initiatives while also helping with product launches.
  • Because of the variety of work a digital marketing coordinator may do, they often need a solid understanding of social media, CMS, copywriting and copy editing.
  • They also may need to have strong presentation skills and a good idea of how to use web analytics.


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(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)

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