Why Pursue Digital Marketing?

Why have I chosen to pursue a career in digital marketing? Is it really worth my time?

I cannot think of two more salient questions to ask yourself before fully diving into this field. These are questions I’ve spent much time considering for myself. I’ve oscillated back and forth between ecstatic optimism and skeptical pessimism, but eventually, I’ve reached a place where I am certain this is the path I want to follow. Here are the strongest reasons why:

1. Transferable Skills

2. Work Autonomy (Location, Time, Project)

3. Scalable Monetization

1. Transferable Skills

I come from a background in the highly specialized neuroscience, which does not lend itself to much transferable knowledge outside its own domain. There are few jobs within this field, and when searching for a job outside of it, it is very difficult to convey how the skills you've developed are transferable to other roles. This greatly limits career flexibility over your lifetime and is a major reason why I’ve decided to shift out of the field of research. Brains and science are immensely interesting, but what I value most is flexibility and adaptability to shift with changing economic landscapes over time.

This is the first reason I decided to seriously consider digital marketing. The skills you learn in digital marketing are broadly applicable to nearly any industry you can think of.

• Interested in physical therapy and fitness? Why not help local personal trainers or physical therapists create social media content to grow their personal brands?

• Passionate about new technology or video games? You can help companies create SEO-optimized blog posts teaching people about the topics that interest you.

• Have a knack for numbers and love quantifiable metrics? Helping small businesses build up their email marketing and paid advertisement campaigns is very possible.

The point I’m emphasizing is that the skills you'll develop in this field can be beneficial to any business model in any other field, allowing you to focus not only on which specific areas of digital marketing you want to specialize in but also which domains you want to serve. The possibilities are truly boundless with the right skills.

2. Work Autonomy (Time, Location, Project)

This is a really big one for me. In most roles, you have very little autonomy in when you work, where you work, and what you work on. Needing to drive into an office every day to work long, predefined hours on whatever I am told to do is not the life I want to live forever. Once you are established enough in digital marketing, work autonomy begins to be returned to you. This field, by definition, can be done entirely online. So even early on in your career, finding remote or hybrid work options should not be much of an issue. Being able to work from the comfort of my own home without needing to spend so much time and money traveling to an office every day is a very exciting prospect for me. This couples nicely with the time freedom that digital marketing can grant you.

Digital marketing is a very project- and results-driven industry. It’s not so much about busy work and needing to do certain things at a certain time. It’s more about managing larger projects and executing them to get the best results for your clients or business. From everything I've read about this industry, if you get results, you will be rewarded. Many digital marketing agencies and freelancers are compensated on a project basis rather than an hourly wage. This is the first step in untangling your income from how many hours you work. Instead of being paid $50 an hour to perform a full SEO audit, why not be paid a few thousand dollars for the audit itself, regardless of how many hours it took you to complete? This project-based compensation model is especially leverageable for people looking to start their own agency or freelance business, which is something I am definitely looking to do eventually.

3. Scalable Incomes

When working in a standard hourly or salary-based job, you are hard-capped on how much money you can ever make. Even in well-paid, specialist roles where a person has spent decades with a company and risen through the ranks, there is only so much they will ever be able to make—maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. This is undoubtedly good money, and for most people, it will be more than enough. But were the decades of work, time, and loyalty really worth it? Personally, I don’t think so, especially when I consider that top TikTok and Instagram influencers can easily make that amount in a few months. This economic structure is not set up to make average salaried workers rich; it’s built to make those who create their own value and develop their own income streams rich.

What does this mean for digital marketing? As previously stated, digital marketing is, by nature, not tethered to a stationary location nor does it need to be compensated at an hourly rate. By applying these principles, it is very much possible to start your own small, project-based agency while leveraging the digital marketing skills you’ve learned to scale this business and exponentially increase your earning potential over your lifetime.

But with digital marketing, you are not just limited to this freelance/small agency model. You are also equipped with all the skills you need to build your own brand and grow your own audience, which is where the real leverage is attained. Having an active audience—whether through Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, or a newsletter—will open up new income streams through affiliate sales, promotions/sponsors. You might even one day be able to leverage your audience by selling a product you build with your skills and knowledge. The income channels possible through proper digital marketing are diverse and quite lucrative when scaled.

In all, I’ve learned that I greatly value freedom in my time, environment, and projects, and I believe digital marketing is a path where I can earn my autonomy back. I also realize the limitations in traditional employee wages, and I hope to eventually build streams that will give me an income I could only dream of with traditional roles.

Achieving everything above through digital marketing will take a lot of time and work. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme by any means. But the fact that these doors can even be opened through digital marketing is enough to convince me to dedicate my time to pursuing it. Hopefully, you feel the same way and want to embark on this journey together.

Reply to this and tell me what has gotten you into pursuing digital marketing!

-Joseph