Most businesses and brands are beginning to grasp the opportunities of digital business models. The age of digital marketing has come to stay. With more online businesses popping up every day, it is understandable to note that the demand for digital marketing skills is on the rise.
But before you give away your hard-earned cash to various digital marketing academies popping up, here are a few factors you should consider.
AIM for Practical Value
Like most Nigerian higher institutions, some of these training fill your heads with theories rather than relevant practical skills. What you learn in these classes are statistics, acronyms, definitions, and shallow practical lessons that have nothing to do with real-world digital marketing skills. If you want the right training materials, there are plenty of those if you search the internet.
Basics are FREE, Strategies are PREMIUM
All you need is the will and the right guidance. You can learn all the basics for free but learning and implementing proven strategies doesn’t come cheap. That’s why you often need to pay an expert or agency to share from their experience.
For a novice, Google offers a free introduction to digital marketing class with a Certificate upon completion. If Google offers free training, why should you pay someone else for it? Visit Google digital garage and you can begin right away. For more advanced Digital marketing classes, you can undergo free training with Google analytics academy for analytics, google Adwords training for Search, display, shopping, and mobile advertising. All the classes are free.
Notwithstanding, does this mean you should throw between N5,000 to N200, 000 for digital marketing training? It depends. There are millions of materials out there to get you started and turn you from a novice to a digital marketing Samurai or Ninja (Whichever you prefer).
Only Practice Makes Perfect
The only way to be perfect at something is to do it repeatedly. Because most of them are more concerned with profits rather than what value you actually get, they spend so little time giving you relevant practical skills.
Setting up and managing a social media account for a small business affords you the opportunity to practice and perfect your social media management skill.
Determine to Be Specific
If you really want value for money, pick a niche.
You should pick a digital marketing niche and split the course content into reasonable time periods to afford you the time to practice what you are learning. Just ramping everything into one content makes no sense at all.
Digital marketing is just not one profession.
You have Social Media Management, Social Media Marketing, Digital Advertising Campaign Management (divided into four; search, mobile, display, and shop), Search engine optimization, Email Marketing, E-commerce Analysis, etc
So, tell me which will you settle for?
In summary, you can also read on how to get digital skills that make you instantly employable. There are dozens of materials out there to crank up your digital skills.
