Ten essential skills every digital marketer needs to know

As the digital workplace grows and changes every day, the global demand for professionals with strong digital marketing skills continues to skyrocket.

Boise State University’s online Bachelor of Arts in Digital Innovation and Design (DI+D) emphasizes the human skills needed to navigate new and emerging technologies and adapt and thrive in the career field.

As a student in the online program, you will enhance your digital marketing skills with stackable certificates and professional credentials with a focus on innovation.

In addition to the required first-year Certificate in Innovation and Design, you will choose three certificates from subject areas, like user experience design, digital project management, creative content creation, cyber operations and data analysis, to align with your interests and goals.

After one year, you will earn your first certificate and gain skills that will immediately increase your marketability.

What should you learn?

As you build toward a career as a digital marketer, there are many competencies you will need to have to be successful. Here are 10 of the essential skills to learn as you move forward:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM): The most essential of all digital marketing skills, understanding the fundamentals of SEO and SEM is vital to running a successful digital marketing campaign.
2. Content marketing: The creation of quality and SEO-friendly content is another of the more important digital marketing skills. Not only do you have to engage and convert audiences with content, but it has to be applicable to several forms, like emails, social media, blogs, e-books and videos.
3. Data and analytics: A big part of any strategy, tracking data and using analytics is essential. Digital marketers should understand how to gather and use that information to make better data-driven decisions.
4. Video marketing: Perhaps the biggest way of reaching an audience nowadays, video marketing connects with people on a personal level. There are numerous tools, like Camtasia or CapCut, to help add creating videos to your digital marketing skills.
5. Email marketing: An important tool for any digital marketer, email marketing allows you to communicate with and influence a captive audience by delivering personalized messaging. You can also build email lists to target audiences with specific messaging and information.
6. Understand design thinking and planning: Design thinking is a way of approaching problems from a user-centered perspective that encourages a human-centered way when solving complex problems. Successful digital marketing focuses on planning for optimum user experience.
7. Social media: The use of social media for marketing is an important element for any 21st century professional. Finding the right channels, such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and X, and audiences to market to is equally important.
8. Highlight your digital marketing skills: Whether you thrive in video marketing, social media or SEO strategy, don’t be afraid to use your best skills to your advantage and establish your niche as a digital marketing professional.
9. Be persuasive: In addition to having strong people skills, you should be able to build innovative marketing campaign ideas through persuasion and influence to make people want to purchase your company’s products.
10. Tech savvy: Because of the technological nature of digital marketing, having a basic knowledge of tech is a key to success. Learning the basics of web coding, using Content Management Systems, AI tools and data privacy issues is a good idea.

Boise State’s DI+D program can help you gain these and other digital marketing skills to lay a strong career foundation.

You will also benefit from the DI+D faculty and staff’s industry and real-world experience and commitment to creating a positive and meaningful experience in their online classrooms.

Learn more about the digital innovation and design program

Earning an online Bachelor of Arts in Digital Innovation and Design from Boise State University can open doors to new opportunities and a brighter future — and we’re here to support you every step of the way. Whether you’re exploring if an online degree is right for you or need help transferring credits, connecting with a student success coach is the perfect first step.

Ready to learn more? Attend one of our online information sessions or contact a student success coach today.