The Importance of Lifelong Learning for Digital Professionals

“Lifelong learning is no longer a luxury but a necessity for employment. Jay Summit

Digital marketing aims to improve the digital presence of a business and support the brand across different digital outlets. Statistics show that the digital marketing

industry is booming worldwide. In 2020 the global digital marketing market reached a value of nearly $305 billion and is expected to rise to $807 billion by 2026. This industry is

constantly evolving with new trends and best practices. As a digital marketer, the road map to your career is highly influenced by understanding how vital it is to adapt to these changes. In this article we’ll be examining two trailblazers in the Digital Space who both have a massive following on their podcasts and blogs and lastly we’ll look at The Tom Ferry Podcast Experience.

Firstly, lifelong learning is essential for digital marketers as it enables one to improve their skills, update themselves and keep up with digital trends. Neil Patel is New York Times bestselling author, featured on Forbes top 10 marketers in the world, President Obama recognised him as top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30, he was also declared top influencer on the web and ranked by the United Nations as top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35.

Neil Patel

Neil has a Marketing School podcast that generates over 1 million listens per month, a YouTube channel about marketing that has over 31 000 000 views and 765K subscribers. His marketing blog generates over 4 million visitors per month, his Facebook fans are over 1 million and 372K Twitter followers. Neil partnered with DMI Digital Marketing Institute and offers an online Search Marketing Course (Professional Diploma) at the cost of $1955. Offered modules include:

● Introduction to Digital Marketing

● Content Marketing

● Social Media Marketing

● Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

● Paid Search (PPC) using Google Ads

● Display and Video Advertising

● Email Marketing

● Website Optimisation

● Analytics with Google Analytics

● Digital Marketing Strategy

Generally analytics I researched depict and prove that his blog has over 422 uploads the past year whereas monthly there’s over 20 posts. The channel has over 1.01 million subscribers with 887 videos uploads. Semrush Analytics below prove the success of his blog;

● Organic search traffic 4,1 Million

● Paid search traffic 4.7K

● Authority score 74

● Unique score 3.5 Million

● Traffic 470.4K.

Furthermore, speakers he had the honour to host who brought high level expertise in the channel include marketers and entrepreneurs such as Kristen Shaw (SVD Marketing), Heidrum Luyt and Brenden Barnett. My overall overview of his channel is that he aims for excellence and his insight on digital marketing, lessons are paving way for upcoming digital marketing professionals.

The second blog and podcast we’ll be analyzing is by Adam Erhart who helps service professionals and businesses double their sales, customers and leads so they can quickly grow their businesses sustainably and predictably. He has over ten years of experience in digital marketing, and a proven track record of ROIs that greatly exceed industry benchmarks, he has helped his clients generate digital marketing systems into their businesses.

Adam has been on YouTube since August 29, 2015 and his channel has expanded throughout the past 8 years with approximately 97 300 subscribers and 4,097,632 total views. The most recent content posted on his Youtube Channel include topics around growing your business with tiktok, marketing mistakes, the secret mental hack entrepreneurs use to win and how to come up with better marketing ideas. Adam has an additional site and a lifelong learning platform that offers educational programs, workshops, courses and master classes. The Digital Academy offers marketing strategy, content marketing, social media marketing, data analytics and marketing funnel, email marketing.

The Adam Erhart blog analytics prove that in the past year he uploaded 1 130 posts on his blog and in the past month there’s over 137. Recent content on his blog includes how to use Linkedin to get clients, Just Add babies, how to make an extra $100,000 a year on YouTube, facebook video ads, how to get results for great results for your clients and brand awareness marketing vs direct response. Semrush analytics are as follows for his blog;

● Unique visitors 3.2K

● Pages 1.9

● Avg duration 02:16

● Taffic 12

● Organic search traffic 1.2Million

My thoughts on both his blog and podcast is generally based on his consistency and his quench to help digital marketers through their journey and career. Giving tips on mistakes they should avoid in their marketing campaigns and strategies.

Thirdly let’s have a look at Tom Ferry, a real estate coach, New York Times best selling author, speaker, investor and entrepreneur. He was ranked 1st Swanepoel Power 200 for seven consecutive years and an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company for seven-consecutive years. He has a YouTube series called The Tom Ferry Show and his podcast named one of the Top 10 business podcasts in 2019 called #TheTomFerryPodcastExperience. This popular show is produces weekly fresh, relevant and free content.

#TheTomFerryPodcastExperience

I subsequently conducted my research on his podcast. He has over 500K subscribers and 1 501 video uploads. My findings are as follows, he invites specialists and experts within the digital marketing space and other industries to share their experience and build on topics that are being discussed on the bodcast. He had the grace to share a room with Dennis Yu and Jason Pantana on a master class in digital marketing. The latest content he posted on his channel was about branding with co-speakers Jason Pantana and Marc Davison. The topic at hand was “Branding” and insights shared mostly were on real estate branding and not necessarily in the digital marketing industry. Though his main expertise is not digital marketing, the dialogue outlines the most important keys that we need as digital marketers.

They have a segment in their podcast each week named (This week in marketing- Twin) .Video uploads the past months covered topics of Digital Ad Ideas for better content and bigger audience, high video engagement video marketing strategies, social media must for new real agent estate agent and 3 tips to better lead communication. Other segments include mindset Monday, team builders, luxury code and the confidence and conversion show.

In conclusion, young professionals in the digital space must master the art of ongoing learning and instilling themselves with knowledge and skills. Read books, articles, blogs and listen to podcasts or go to the extent of enrolling in a new course in digital marketing to upskill yourself giving you that personal competitive advantage to either start your side

hustle or get a promotion. This field is for innovative and creative professionals who areconstantly upskilling themselves. The famous quote by Jay Summit “Lifelong learning is nolonger a luxury but a necessity for employment.”