Generalist or Specialist Digital Marketer?
Generalist or Specialist Digital Marketer?
There are various options for a digital marketer. You can be a generalist with broad knowledge and skills in many or all areas of digital marketing. Or you can be a specialist digital marketer focused on a very specific area, like SEO, social media marketing, or mobile marketing.
The Digital Marketing Institute addresses this, as it offers both generalist and specialist certification courses. DMI offers what it calls foundational digital marketing courses like the Certified Digital Marketing Professional (CDMP) for marketing professionals.
It also has specialist courses like the Certified Social Media Marketing Specialist for social media marketers, the Certified Search Marketing Specialist for SEO and PPC specialists, and the Certified Digital Strategy and Planning Specialist for strat planners, agency heads, and heads of digital marketing departments.
How about you? What kind of digital marketer do you want to be? Which digital marketing course should you choose? Consider these factors to make your decision:
1. Your skill level
If you’re a beginner or have very little background in digital marketing or digital selling, definitely choose a foundational digital marketing course. The Certified Digital Marketing Professional (CDMP) is your best choice if you’re a marketing professional, business owner, or fresh graduate with zero or minimal digital marketing skills.
On the other hand, if you are already an experienced digital marketer, you may want to consider specializing in a more specific area. However, if you’re highly advanced in just one area, like SEO or social media marketing, but weak in other areas, it will certainly benefit you if you take a generalist digital marketing course so that you develop broader skills and have a more holistic perspective of digital marketing.
2. Your career path
What you pursue as a career is also a key factor to consider. If you want to be a generalist, able to run social media, search, email, and mobile marketing campaigns for a brand or at a digital agency, take a generalist digital marketing course.
But if you are already sure that you want to specialize in SEO, because you love SEO and you find social media or mobile marketing not your cup of tea, then go for a specialist course. Your career will be deep rather than wide.
3. Your occupation
If you’re in marketing, say a product manager, corporate communications manager, marketing communications manager, brand manager, and the like, and either want to shift to a digital marketing career or simply just want to upgrade your skillset, stick to a generalist digital marketing course. If you’re a business owner who wants to run your own digital marketing campaigns or want to work better with third-party agencies or freelancers for your campaigns, do the same. If you have a startup or work for one, the same thing. It doesn’t make sense to specialize in these cases.
But if you’re a digital marketer and want to specialize, then consider taking the foundational digital marketing course if you need to broaden your knowledge and then pursue a specialist course.
In the Philippines, DMI has appointed Learning Curve (through its DMHQ division) as its Education Partner. Currently, we offer the Certified Digital Marketing Professional (CDMP) course as a 10-week, live classroom or online training program. We also offer DMI’s specialist programs as online digital marketing courses for the general public and live in-house training programs for corporate clients.
Find out more with our Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Best Digital Marketing Course.
