Start by learning what digital marketing is. If you’re trying to get an entry level role you don’t need to be an expert, but you should learn some basics.

What are the basics?

All of these skills can be learned to a basic level in for instance Udemy but the best teacher is doing.

• Content creation and copywriting. Write daily till you become good.
• Data analysis. Especially figuring out what it means and how to tell people what you found.
• Social media. Go deep on learning a single platform first, the one you think will bring you the best results.
• SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing). Learn how to write with search engines in mind first and test out how it works on a blog you write (or Medium, Wordpress, or some other free tool to setup). SEM requires that you pay, so set aside a small budget and test the same keywords you’re trying to optimise for. What did you learn?
• Email marketing. If you’re writing daily, email marketing becomes easier. However a free tool like Mailchimp or the free versions of hubspot, convertkit or others will get you started.
• Graphic design. You need to learn enough to be able to optimise your images as images in digital marketing are important. You can do a lot with AI and prompt engineering in Midjourney, but some excellent free tools exist like Figma or Canva.
• Web analytics. Google (GA4) is free for your own websites so you can set that up to begin with. In order to learn you might want to start digging into the free demo account. My book has some examples of how to do that - but the free demo is in the 2nd comment. Learning how to do segments and flagging data is key.
• A/B testing and conversion optimization. Once you’ve learned enough about the above then start getting to grips with the basics of testing. Tools like VWO have free tiers up to 50K visitors a month.

Start looking for entry level roles.

Once you have spent a month or two on the above start looking for roles that are low level. You can’t expect to start at the top when you’re just starting out and there is a lot more to digital marketing than just understanding the skills listed. Look for marketing assistant kind of roles and highlight the ones that are interesting.

Tailor your application.

I received 1000s of CVs when I was a hirer and I’d say 90% of them were poor. You don’t need much to stand out. One of the most important things to do is understand who you are writing too. Research the actual person who will read your application and look at their LinkedIn profile. What have they done? What do they write about? Is there anything you have in common? Then the first paragraph needs to be about why you want to work for their company, what attracts you to them. Make it about them as much as you can. Find out about the company. In your CV list the most relevant experience first. If you have none, list what you learned and why you think it will help. Your job with the CV is to get you to the interview. That’s it.

Rock the interview.

Go in prepared. Learn as much as you can about the services offered, the companies customers, the kinds of things you might be doing, dress smartly and turn up 10 minutes before you’re due to start. Have a prepped list of questions. Your job is to get the interviewer talking more than you are because that’s who interviewers remember.

When you’ve got the job

That’s when your learning starts. Don’t be the employee who thinks you’ve done enough when you beat all the other applicants. It’s just the beginning of learning all the skills I listed above.