This question will never cease to pop up in your mind, Hahahahaha or maybe I should cry ” Why am I not successful in my digital marketing career?” it is frustrating, especially when you go on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc, and see so many reels, sponsored ads of people talking endlessly on how digital marketing changed their lives, or how much they are making out of it, they go as far as hosting webinars. You are tempted to know this secret, but at the end of the day, you realize you already know so much. Then what are you not doing right?

Why do we struggle as a new digital marketer?

Lack of passion in the niche you are marketing: online marketing is an interesting path to venture into, so when you don’t pick a niche that suits your interest, there will be a lot of struggles with your effort and result, it is best to enjoy what you are doing, it increases your patient and willingness. Eg, if you love buying and selling, you should look at e-commerce, if you love writing, you should look at content writing, blogging, etc, then narrow down more to what interests you.

Lack of Research: Research keeps you updated, gives you knowledge, and exposes you to a whole new excitement. It also tells you what your competitors are doing and helps you create your target audience and persona. Find problems your niche has, offer solutions, or develop products that can. This is where affiliate marketing becomes great because it helps you offer solutions without creating your own.

Lack of patience: Lots of expectation and not sitting to wait on its manifestation. In digital marketing,  not just your efforts that count, is the algorithm that speaks. When you lack patience it creates self-doubt, no consistency, and frustration and then you give up. Allow the process, it doesn’t end to your expectation.

Efficient content creation: Content is the beauty of digital marketing, what you give out determines the engagement, the conversion, and the response. Some content is educative, entertaining, informative, emotional, etc it could be images, videos, text, news, audio, or anything. How well do you organize your content? How attractive is your content? Does your content follow the rules and guidelines of the medium you are pushing it out to? So many questions to be asked. Whatsoever you do could be the reason you are not successful in your digital marketing career.

Lack of Finance: In my experience, finance is a deal breaker in digital marketing, the CPC, Facebook, and Instagram ads, LinkedIn, Pinterest ads and so many others. As a newbie, you have to push yourself out there for the world to know you, it requires money, to create awareness, Conversions, traffic, lead generations, and Google ads. Money is the key. Having the mindset of making money from your new skill will help keep your focus on the skill, but you also need to invest money.

The right mindset: Making money is a goal mindset for me in digital marketing; how do I generate revenue for myself? How do I generate revenue for my client? Now curiosity steps in, you have to start looking and searching and thinking out of the box, you need to think about how to make it right. The second step is problem-solving: what solution am I proposing for the problems I found out? How do I multiply their income?  is not about followers, or engagement, is about the right conversion, about the sales, about the revenue.

Make. More. Money.

If everything you learn and everything you do is guided by the North Star of “make more money”, either for yourself or your client, then you’ll always be moving in the right direction. Too many people obsess about impressions, followers, and other metrics that don’t matter. They can be guiding lights showing progress, but they’re not KPIs.

Curiosity shows that you’re always questioning whether one way is the best way of doing something. It opens new opportunities for different ways of executing a certain task that you can do faster or better.

Problem solving ties into curiosity, but with one bigger difference: that you’re really good at finding solutions that take you one step closer to where you want to go. Problem-solving for me is always tied to progress. If I’m making progress, then I’m succeeding, no matter how slow I’m going.

Proactivity is about always pushing forward. Are you coming up with new ideas for your client, the company you work for, or your own company? If you’re not showing initiative but become merely reactive, then you’re slowly losing.

… that turns into money being made

Now that we’ve spoken about some common misconceptions about what it takes to have a successful digital marketing career, keep in mind that it’s always tied to making money.

If you keep everything that you’re learning about or doing in the lens of increasing revenue, profits, or both, then you’ll always be a successful digital marketer.

Because that’s the ultimate proof that you’re doing something that brings value.