How I Would Learn Digital Marketing (If I Could Start Over)
14 years ago, I started my
career in digital marketing. And throughout that time, I've built and sold
a handful of online businesses, consulted for small shops to celebrities to the Fortune
500, and I've been recognized in business magazines like Forbes and Inc as an "SEO expert." To top it off, the United States government
considers me to be in the top 1% of my field. Now, despite any success I've had in digital
marketing, I've also made a ton of mistakes along the way that cost me
valuable time and money. So today, I'm going to show you how I would
learn digital marketing if I could start over and I'll also share some of my
biggest failures along the way.
Alright, so the very first thing I'd do is to choose
just one area of digital marketing to focus on. And this is the opposite of what I did. So for context, in 2009, I started my first website
and I basically spammed forums and classifieds. That eventually slowed down,
so I tried paid advertising. And well… I wasted my money because
I had no idea what I was doing. But then social media was blowing up so
I pivoted to that and tried to go viral with coupon codes. Boy was that embarrassing! But still, I was making like a solid
$2,000 a month. I was officially a business man. So I decided to hire a search engine optimization
company because this is what we do! And that was the turning point for me
when my fire for SEO was ignited.
They scammed me for everything I had. The good thing that came out of that though
was that it fueled me with rage so much so that I committed to focus on learning just
SEO and to get really good at it so I wouldn't have to hire another company. And by around 2011, my company was worth over
7 figures and the main reason is because of SEO. Now, by definition, digital marketing is just
marketing that happens over the internet. So you can choose to focus on just email marketing,
pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, social media marketing, etc. Digital marketing is just so vast that it's
impossible to become a master of all areas. It's best to focus on just one area of internet
marketing and to get really good at it. Now, after you've chosen the area of digital
marketing you want to focus on, you need to make a mental commitment
to learn as much as possible. Now, while there isn't a single "right" way
to learn digital marketing, what I've found to be helpful is to learn in 3 stages.
So, for illustration purposes, let's say
you chose SEO as your focus area. Now, stage one is to focus on
understanding the fundamentals. So in SEO, that would include things like why
and how SEO is important for businesses, how search engines work, and the main ways
SEO is done – so that includes keyword research, link building, technical SEO and
on-page SEO to name a few. Fundamentals may not be exciting, but they're
absolutely critical to learning, whether you're learning an instrument, a new
recipe, or digital marketing skills. Stage two is all about making connections
in how the fundamentals work together. For example, you should be able to make
the connection in SEO that content creation is reliant on keyword research and that on-page
SEO is connected with both your content writing and keyword research. Finally, stage three is all about learning how
these techniques are executed – more specifically, you'll want to get an idea of workflows
and tools that you'll need to do your job.
For example, you should at least know that
keyword research is done with a tool like Keywords Explorer. And the way people find keyword ideas is by
starting with a broad seed, going to a keyword ideas report, narrowing in on keywords with
a set of filters, and then analyzing the search engine results pages to understand
if it's possible to compete. These three stages are typically
how courses are taught. And for that reason, I think it's worth taking
a reputable beginner's course on the area of digital marketing you've chosen –
like our free SEO fundamentals course. This is something that I was too young and
arrogant to do when I was getting started with online marketing. I went with the unguided route and literally…
anytime someone said "advanced", I was like Pavlov's dog and I'd give them all my attention. I wasted tons of time and money because for
some reason, I subconsciously thought it would be more rewarding to figure it out on my own. Now, as you go through this learning stage
and consume content, there's going to be a time when you feel like, "yeah,
this all makes sense!" But I can guarantee you that when you
actually get to doing it, it's not going to feel so straightforward anymore.
And that's why the next thing I recommend is to
commit to actually practicing what you've learned. In my opinion, there's no better way to learn
digital marketing than to get first-hand experience. And the best way to do that
is to create your own site. This way, you'll have a safe place to
practice whatever and however you want. Now, as you commit to actually doing
something, I highly recommend doing two things. #1. Cut yourself off from all new content.
You should have already consumed enough
through a course or whatever resources that you used to have a high-level view of what it looks
like to execute on the marketing area you've chosen. By cutting out new content, you'll be able
to stay laser-focused on actually practicing the fundamentals that will be an
essential building block to your career. And #2 don't obsess over things that
aren't moving your progress forward. For example, if you decide to build a hobby
site so you can practice SEO, don't spend hours trying to fine-tune your logo,
fonts or blog layout. As an SEO, you're going to want to focus on
driving organic traffic through high rankings in Google.
Now, if you're able to actually put all these
things into practice, you will learn very quickly how to actually get results with SEO or social
media or email marketing or whatever area you chose to focus on. Now, if you want to know the fastest way to
accelerate your growth and to put this "doing" stage into overdrive, then I recommend
getting a job or internship at an agency. When you work at an agency, you get the unique
experience of being able to work on a diverse group of projects. Not only is the exposure great, but it forces
you to stretch that creativity muscle and to apply your learning in various scenarios. Now, perhaps the biggest advantage to working
at an agency is that you get to be in the trenches with people who are ahead of you
in their digital marketing career.
You can ask them questions, watch them solve
problems, and in some cases, people may be willing to mentor you. Thriving agencies are usually fast-paced
environments, which obviously make them a great place to learn digital
marketing fast if that's your goal. Now, while you obviously want to learn
new skills as fast as possible, don't make the mistake of taking
shortcuts to get there. And I'm talking from experience here. Early in my career, I took an SEO
shortcut that cost me seven-figures. So my first company was an ecommerce store and
I was driving the majority of its traffic through SEO. Now, one of the hardest, but most important
parts of SEO is getting backlinks to your pages. And back in 2010 and 2011, backlinks were
pretty much all you needed to rank a page high in Google. So I came across a private blog network called
Build My Rank where I could buy virtually an infinite number of backlinks. And without fail, throwing a handful of links at
each product page would boost it to the top of Google for queries that were converting into
tens of thousands of dollars every month.
The thing is, buying backlinks was and still
is against Google's webmaster guidelines. Now, while I was making a healthy
living, I was getting ready to cash out. But without warning, I lost like 85%
of my traffic and a ton of revenue. So when I sold the site a few months later,
instead of getting a low seven-figure buyout, I ended up getting, much, much,
much, much less.
Now, had I focused on learning link building
so I can build backlinks whenever I want, not only would I have had a much nicer exit,
but I would have been able to apply those skills to pretty much every other
SEO-driven business I created. Bottomline: avoid shortcuts
because they can be costly. And you'll only really realize that in hindsight. Now, another thing I would do differently
is to actually build relationships with people. So, for like the first 8 years of doing SEO,
I literally didn't talk to anyone about what I did because most people just didn't understand. And it was lonely and I was really just
stunting my professional growth. So what I would do differently if I could start
over is try and network with two different groups of people. So, Group 1 would be like-minded people who
are trying to learn the same area of digital marketing as you. They're basically a safe place where you can
share your ideas, experiences, and insights without fear of judgment.
And not only can you learn from each other,
but you'll also find motivation from each other to get better at your craft. In fact, this is what Mr. Beast did with a group of
friends in his early stages of his YouTube career. And in interviews, he frequently attributes
his success to having this group of people to grow with. And the second group of people I'd network
with are people you respect in your niche. All it really takes is an email or a DM saying,
"Hey, just wanted to let you know that I really admire your work. Thanks for all that you do!" Now, that might sound weird, but at the end
of the day, we're all just regular people. In fact, in 2017 when I started sending these
kinds of emails, I reached out to Tim Soulo, CMO at Ahrefs, to just say that I respect what
he's doing as a marketer – no agenda whatsoever.
To which he replied: "You've made my day!" Fast forward one year, and
I ended up working at Ahrefs. Relationships in digital marketing are important. In social media, these are people
who can help amplify your work. On YouTube, these are potential collaborators. And in SEO, they're a critical part to link building. Now, as you continue to build your own
sites, work at agencies or other companies, and network with like-minded people, you're going
to come to a crossroad where you need to decide what's next.
And I see three ways this can work –
none of which I think are wrong or right. So option 1, you can continue to
stay a generalist in your focus area. This means that you'll continue to build your
knowledge and experience in most areas of your specific field in digital marketing. The pros with this is that generalists often
become managers and leaders within companies because they get more or less
every part of what's being done. The con is that you never really become an
expert in anything, which obviously has its own set of limitations.
Option 2, is to niche down further
in your focus area. So as you gain more knowledge and experience
in your focus area, you're going to realize that there's too much information to
become a true expert in your field. And for that reason, you may want to consider
niching down further because each digital marketing strategy breaks down quite a lot. For example, if you've chosen to focus on
social media, you may decide to focus strictly on Facebook marketing. Or perhaps you want to go more niche and choose
Facebook group marketing for software companies. Now, the pro of niching down is that it's
much easier to become recognized as a niche authority because there's less competition. And if you're viewed as "that" authority,
your reputation will likely be lasting and you can typically demand higher wages. The con is that there's usually less demand. And option 3 is to expand into
other areas of digital marketing.
And this is kind of the route that I've gone. The way I recommend doing this is to expand
into areas where your skills are complementary and transferable. For example, starting from SEO and expanding
to content marketing is complementary and the skills from SEO are totally transferable. And even something like going from SEO to
search ads would also be complementary and some of those skills are transferable too.
Now, being 14 years into my digital marketing
career, I can confidently tell you that I'm still learning all the time. And that's largely because I'm practicing a
lot of the things that I just shared with you. I work with a ton of smart people at Ahrefs in
various departments who I love learning from. I've had the opportunity to meet really smart
people at conferences, through social media, and even from random cold emails. And I go through seasons of intentional
learning, followed by intentional doing. Now, while I've screwed up in many ways,
I don't look at anything as a waste of time because it helped me to get
to where I am today.
I'm definitely not the smartest, richest, most
recognized, or most successful digital marketer in the world. But this is a long journey that I've embraced
along the way and I hope it's one that you'll enjoy or are currently enjoying too. Now, if you want to start your digital marketing
career in SEO like I did, then I highly recommend watching our SEO course for beginners which
will teach you how to get free organic traffic to your site from start to finish. I'll see you there..
