Skill Up: Carve Your Digital Marketing Career Path

Jun 11, 20217 min read

I walked across the stage in a small, humid gymnasium to accept a degree in creative writing almost 20 years ago. I completed a Master's-level writing program three years later. Looking back on my career, I can see how those degrees helped shape my future. They jump-started my professional network, served as leverage in salary negotiations, and gave me a strong storytelling foundation. But college didn't fully prepare me for work in the marketing and communications fields. Over the last two decades, my digital marketing career path has included on-the-job training in content management systems, search engine optimization, email campaign strategy, and more.

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Training gaps like mine aren't unusual. But you don't have to wait like I did to learn everything you need for digital marketing success. The Marketer Career Path from Salesforce - a curated library of learning content in a variety of formats to build your skills in digital marketing and help new professionals find their digital marketing career path - can bridge the gap.

Research from the Salesforce State of Marketing report shows that marketers are striving to overcome gaps in digital marketing knowledge. Marketing leaders around the globe cite creating cohesive customer journeys across channels and devices and sharing a unified view of customer data across business units as two of their top five challenges.

When I started my journey with Salesforce, I didn't have a lot of support. Most of my learning came from trial and error. I used Trailhead to ramp up on my skills. The combination of hands-on work along with my certifications propelled me in my role.

Trailblazer Lakesha Holloway, senior CRM and personalization strategist at Atrium Health

But reskilling opportunities aren't pacing with demand. Salesforce surveyed 600 U.S. knowledge workers and learned that 60% of employees believe companies aren't making workforce training a top priority.

Read on to learn how the Marketer Career Path can help you start or grow your digital marketing career.

What's your digital marketing career path?

Reskilling is critical to grow in the job you have, plan for the job you want, or upskill your team. With the Marketer Career Path, you can access a library of how-to learning resources focused on relevant skills you need today. The majority of the content is product-agnostic and spans a variety of learning formats, including educational modules, coaching and instructional videos, interactive guides, and more.

And because it's hosted on Trailhead, our gamified online learning platform, you can learn at your own pace anywhere you have an internet connection, at no cost to you.

Marketing practitioners can learn in-demand skills and get a pulse on industry trends to drive the best work of their careers.

Marketing executives can rely on these resources to upskill their teams quickly for the digital-first era.

Resources in the Marketer Career Path focus on these five areas of interest:

1. Asipring CMO: You're obsessed with customer experience and you want to drive sustainable growth as a Chief Marketing Officer or other member of the C-suite.
2. Marketing analytics: You enable all business functions with data insights and reporting, optimize campaigns to maximize every dollar, and measure your team's impact on customer experience and growth.
3. Data science and operations: You seek new solutions for building unified customer views, align internal teams around those views, and accelerate digital transformation.
4. Email marketing: You design compelling email campaigns that land in subscribers' inboxes at the right time to move them to the next step in their customer journey.
5. Demand generation: You're a B2B marketer who nurtures and qualifies leads, works arm-in-arm with sales to identify target accounts, and develops personalized campaigns that engage every buyer.

Expand your digital marketing career

Each category offers two learning paths tailored to progressive levels of experience. There are 10 learning paths to choose from. Identify the category that best matches your interests, then take the learning path that covers the skills you want to grow. Here's the full list:

If you're an aspiring Chief Marketing Officer

Explore the Marketing Landscape

Dive into marketing trends and assess the maturity of your digital transformation efforts. Develop your marketing roadmap and governance plan with confidence.

Lead an Effective Team

Learn to guide high-performing teams with empathy, practice inclusive leadership, and use inclusive marketing principles to create a culture of equality.

Find a career in marketing analytics

Marketing Analytics Manager

Explore the latest research and gain insight into how marketers collect, analyze, and use data to optimize marketing activities.

Marketing Analytics Director

Immerse yourself in marketing intelligence trends and unpack real-world examples of businesses that use analytics insights to flex on a dime.

Further your knowledge in data science and operations

Data Science and Ops Director

Learn data fundamentals and customer-centric data strategies. See how customer data platforms (CDPs) can help you overcome your biggest data challenges to provide more personalized customer experiences.

Data Science and Ops Vice President

Deepen your CDP knowledge and dive into change management best practices for integration. Examine use cases for each stage of maturity and for getting buy-in across your organization.

Learn more about email marketing

Email Marketing Analyst

Learn how to plan, design, and deliver campaigns that build long-term customer relationships, meet deliverability requirements, and scale across your business.

Email Marketing Manager

Explore strategies and tools for creating personalized content. Reach customers across channels and devices, and use first-party data and marketing automation to scale your efforts.

Build your skills in demand generation

Demand Generation Specialist

Explore lead generation and lead nurturing best practices and tips for aligning your marketing, sales, and service teams around the right accounts for your business.

Demand Generation Manager

Dive deeper into account-based marketing strategies, marketing automation tips, and data fundamentals to close deals faster and show the impact of your work on the bottom line.

Skill up on Trailhead

Salesforce has a long history of breaking down learning barriers. Around three million people have skilled up with Trailhead - we call these learners Trailblazers - since it launched in 2014. And momentum for marketing education is growing. This spring, Trailhead reached the two-million-badge milestone for marketing content.

In response, Trailhead is tailoring learning content to digital marketing career paths for the first time. The Marketer Career Path is where the next generation of marketers can get job-ready skills without educational barriers like cost and location.

Trailhead helped me learn what I needed so I could provide valuable input in those initial meetings. It gave me the confidence I needed to move forward in my Salesforce career.

Trailblazer Kaelan Moss, Marketing Cloud program director at Revolent Group

We've also launched a marketing Trailblazer collaboration group where marketers can support and inspire each other. Use it to stay up to date on Salesforce Marketing Cloud, unpack how Salesforce can help you solve your daily marketing challenges, ask questions, share experiences, and meet other marketers.

You can also connect with this group on social media using #MomentMarketers. We chose this hashtag because marketers create so many of the moments that make up our days, from the ad that led you to the perfect gift for a friend to the email that announced your favorite restaurant's reopening. We hope you'll take advantage of these opportunities to join with other marketers and fuel even more of these moments for your customers.

Trailblazer Lakesha Holloway, senior CRM and personalization strategist at Atrium Health, has spent her entire career in marketing and most of the last eight years in health care. In her current role leading digital engagement strategy and campaign management, knowing how to use data to personalize patient interactions is a must.

'You need to say, 'I see you, I understand you, and I have something here that will truly improve your health and wellbeing,'' Holloway said.

'When I started my journey with Salesforce, I didn't have a lot of support. Most of my learning came from trial and error. I used Trailhead to ramp up on my skills,' she explained. 'I was able to clear three certifications in one year. The combination of hands-on work along with my certifications propelled me in my role.'

For Trailblazer Kaelan Moss, Marketing Cloud program director at global talent organization Revolent Group, Trailhead helped him join conversations about the Salesforce ecosystem early in his career.

'When I first began my Salesforce journey, I wanted to learn how to navigate Sales Cloud. I needed to know how it was set up and how everything worked together so I could help design business solutions with my team,' he said. 'Trailhead helped me learn what I needed so I could provide valuable input in those initial meetings. It gave me the confidence I needed to move forward in my Salesforce career.'

This Sales Cloud knowledge has also proven invaluable in his marketing career. 'Marketing is the sibling to sales. When you understand both, you see the big picture of how they work together,' Moss said. 'Knowing Sales Cloud helped me become a better marketer because now I understand the sales process that a business goes through when working to convert a lead into an account.'

Start your learning journey today

When it comes to job-specific training, Marketer Career Path is just the beginning. Over the coming year, we'll expand our marketing resources and launch new learning opportunities for other disciplines.

Register for the Marketer Career Path.

Already active in the Trailblazer community? Take a look at the latest Trailhead innovations.

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