What Can You Do With a Digital Marketing Degree?

Keren Dinkin

Written by Keren Dinkin

Senior Technical Writer & Content Strategist

Updated & Fact Checked: 10.28.2024

What Can You Do With a Digital Marketing Degree?

A digital marketing degree opens up a world of opportunity for students of all ages. The qualifications earned can set you up for a highly successful career in a field where the median U.S. salary is roughly $68,000 a year, according to a recent survey.

But there’s more to it than that. A digital marketing degree lets you add a select list of specialized skills to your CV — including expertise in driving traffic to a website, engaging with target audiences, and positioning a brand for long-term success. 

In this increasingly interconnected world — and an ever-expanding digital landscape — these skills are highly-coveted by companies across a wide range of industries.

Sure, people succeed in marketing without degrees all the time. But in this article, you’ll see how much of a difference the right qualifications can make.

What Careers Can a Digital Marketing Degree Launch?

Digital marketing is a broad term that describes the use of any online channel to promote a product, service, or brand. Given its scope, you’d expect that such a professional is expected to have a diverse range of skills, as well as immense knowledge of marketing practices, and how the online world works.

It’s a career that relies on continuous learning, as well as one that can take you down various paths. Here are some prominent jobs you could consider: 

Digital Marketing Manager

A marketing manager is responsible for developing, implementing, and managing both long- and short-term campaigns for clients, with the goal to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to landing pages, and boost sales.

As the title suggests, the manager also coordinates between various departments to ensure their team is working with the latest tools, analyzing campaigns on the right metrics, and crafting newer growth strategies.

It’s also a lucrative profession. The average US salary is as high as $120,000. But to get to this stage, you may need to have several years of experience.

What a Relevant Degree Gives You:

  • Familiarity with various digital marketing tools and channels
  • Solid network of like-minded leaders
  • Experience in web-design, SEO, CMS management, and web analytics
  • An overview of advanced marketing tactics, techniques and strategies

Web Content Strategist

No digital marketing campaign is complete without content. Whether it takes the form of a comprehensive blog, a viral social media post, or an effective email, content tells a brand’s story and promotes its goods or services to like-minded audiences.

A successful content strategist is one who understands the market, is adept at targeting specific audiences, and is creative in the way they present ideas and opportunities. Ultimately, those who provide the most value, drive more sales.

The estimated average salary of a content strategist is $79,000.

What a Relevant Degree Gives You:

  • Training on how to use language to persuade audiences
  • Understanding of various demographics and what appeals to each
  • Technical skills that allow you to create a wide range of multimedia content
  • Familiarity with SEO practices to make content more visible

Social Media Manager

It wasn’t too long ago when the average social media manager was a young graduate on an intern’s salary who’s only job was to be on social media. No longer.

Today, almost every organization commands massive dedicated social media teams. A manager is responsible for overseeing this team of copywriters, graphic designers, and advertising professionals as they strategize and execute social media campaigns. 

Social media professionals may also nurture influencer collaborations — and use various tools to decide what content to post, how often to post it, and more.

Overall, they maintain a consistent voice across all social media platforms. This could involve responding to negative feedback, taking steps to enhance brand credibility, and engaging with customers to make a company appear more personable.

The average social media manager’s salary is $59,000 a year.

What a Relevant Degree Gives You:

  • Familiarity with various tools that help study and analyze campaigns
  • Insight into user habits across social media platforms
  • Ability to stay on top of trends in a very dynamic landscape
  • Skills to carry out market research and maximize paid campaigns

Pay-Per-Click Specialist

Pay-per-click is a form of advertising that encourages users who look up specific queries online to click on an ad. It is an effective strategy that helps a company’s web page show higher on search engines. But it only works when a user actually takes the bait and clicks.

This is where a PPC specialist steps in. These professionals are experts in leveraging keyword research, content designs and formats, behavioral psychology, demographic targeting tools,  and more, to ensure the highest possible returns on a paid campaign.

The average salary ranges around $63,000.

What a Relevant Degree Gives You:

  • In-depth insight into platforms like Google Ads, Bing Ads, Meta, and more. 
  • Data analysis and interpretation skills
  • Familiarity with SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) best practices

SEO Expert

An SEO professional isn’t just an expert at engaging with potential customers, they’re also adept at communicating with search engines. The main task of this professional is to put in motion a series of practices that help a web page rank higher on Google.

This could include overhauling the website to include phrases used in local searches, re-writing title tags and descriptions to include relevant keywords, and creating content that customers find valuable.

There’s also a technical aspect to SEO. A professional must also improve a webpage’s responsiveness, loading times, and accessibility to get more organic traffic. For their efforts, an SEO expert is paid an average salary of $64,000.

What a Relevant Degree Gives You:

  • Learn fundamentals of SEO, including various tools and practices
  • Understand consumer and market behavior better
  • Ability to devise and execute better SEO strategies
  • Tools that help research keywords and monitor performance

UX Designer

One of the fastest-growing professions over the last few years, a UX designer is responsible for the development and streamlining of websites and applications.

While they’re usually experts in various technical fields — including development and coding — a degree in digital marketing can also be beneficial.

With this qualification, a UX designer can implement features and capabilities that take into account various sales and marketing considerations. This can be crucial for companies who want to improve their web offerings with a specific focus on getting in new customers. Besides that, as mentioned earlier, improving factors like page responsiveness and accessibility already impact SEO efforts.

UX designers command an average salary as high as $124,00.  

What a Relevant Degree Gives You:

  • Understanding of how to maximize design for commercial purposes 
  • Familiarity with marketing demands 
  • Insight into how web design and user experience impacts sales 
  • Access to tools that track campaign effectiveness and analyze user behavior 

Coming Soon: AI Specialist

In digital marketing, AI is currently leading a revolution.

In the near future, we can expect AI tools to offer more accurate market research, automate time-consuming tasks, and bring more insights from customers. 

An AI specialist will accordingly be expected to use advanced tools to test, measure, and refine campaigns — and keep their clients at the forefront of marketing innovation. It’s an exciting field, and one that many digital marketing degrees explore in more detail.

What a Relevant Degree Gives You:

  • Working knowledge of creating AI-driven digital marketing strategies
  • Insights into the opportunities and challenges posed by AI
  • An edge over peers who haven’t invested in their future 

This is only a compilation of some of the most promising careers for digital marketing graduates, and is far from an exhaustive list. Many professionals also go on to have long and successful careers in fields like public relations, graphic design, or even as owners and proprietors of their own businesses.

Planning Your Education

Currently, undergraduate and Master’s degrees for each of these specializations are rare except for the more general digital marketing role. So, if you want to market yourself as a degree holder, you can set your sights on earning digital marketing qualifications such as these:

If you’re planning on becoming a specialist in PPC, UX, social media, etc., research the topics covered by digital marketing degrees. Since they cover a wide range of lessons, many of them include these niches in their programs.

Supplementing Your Degree With Focused Training

Another route you can take is to earn a general digital marketing degree and supplement your education with specialized non-degree training. After finishing your degree, you can enroll in specialist courses like:

By combining a general digital marketing degree with targeted, specialized courses, you can build a versatile and comprehensive skill set that sets you apart in the evolving digital landscape.

What Kind of Digital Marketing Degrees Can You Get?

Digital marketing professionals can have many different kinds of arts degrees — including in journalism, communication, mass media, or even psychology.

And while it’s perfectly natural for people with such expertise to gravitate towards marketing, it’s always more ideal to opt for a specific degree once you’re sure about your desired career path. Fortunately, there are several digital marketing degrees, programs, and certification courses that allow you to progress at any stage of your career.

Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees

Many specialized bachelor’s degrees in science or business focus specifically on marketing. These degrees are exactly what a young student hoping to have a long and successful career in digital marketing needs — as it familiarizes them with the various practices, tools, and techniques that go into maximizing online channels.

Master’s degrees are similarly comprehensive and show employers that you are extremely knowledgeable when it comes to your craft.

Marketing Certifications and Courses

If you already have a few years of experience under your belt, and are looking to specialize in a specific subsect of digital marketing, you’ll benefit from seeking out an appropriate certification course or program.

There’s no age limit on when you can apply for these programs and most have flexible schedules — making them ideal to advance your skills, without having to take much time off work.

Marketing Boot Camps

A boot camp can help a professional diversify their skills, add to their CV, or simply keep up with a new trend. These courses are short (usually about 18 weeks), highly specialized, and focus more on practical solutions rather than theory. For example, several universities have now begun offering AI digital marketing boot camps, allowing experienced professionals to add a new feather to their cap with very little investment.

How to Know if Digital Marketing is Right For You?

At the end of the day, digital marketing careers are promising for people of all groups. If you have a natural aptitude for written and verbal communication, a burning desire to stay up to date with the trends, and a natural predisposition to sell — it can be a goldmine.

If you’re looking to kickstart your career with the right course, browse through the resources on our website, or shoot us a message with a more specific query.

References:

Hyperlinks: 

Follow us on:

© 2024 Digital marketing Degrees

Privacy Policy | Terms of Condition | Sitemap