Digital marketing is a field that’s full of opportunity. Every business needs an online presence, and the demand for skilled marketers to help build and manage it isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
But knowing the field is hot doesn’t tell you much about how to break into it. What skills do you actually need? What are hiring managers looking for when they review a stack of resumes? And what separates the candidates who get called back from the ones who don’t?
That’s exactly what we’re here to answer. Here’s a straightforward look at the top digital marketing skills employers are looking for right now—and what you need to know about each one.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- SEO and Content Strategy
- Data Analytics and Performance Reporting
- Social Media Marketing
- Paid Advertising (PPC and Paid Social)
- Email Marketing and Marketing Automation
- AI Tool Literacy
- Project Management and Cross-Team Collaboration
- FAQs
SEO AND CONTENT STRATEGY
What It Is
Search engine optimization is the practice of making web content easier for search engines to find, understand, and rank. It involves:
- Research – Identifying the terms and questions your target audience is searching for
- On-page optimization – Structuring and writing content so search engines can interpret it correctly
- Technical work – Ensuring a site loads fast, functions properly, and is crawlable
- Off-page factors – For instance, backlinks that signal a site’s authority
Why Employers Value It
Organic search traffic is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach an audience over time. Unlike paid ads, which stop the moment the budget runs out, well-optimized content keeps generating traffic. Employers value SEO because it compounds—a strong foundation built today continues paying off for months or years.
What Job Seekers Need to Understand
Employers are looking for the ability to conduct keyword research, apply it to a content plan, and measure whether it’s working. Familiarity with tools like Google Search Console, Semrush, or Ahrefs is expected. So is understanding how SEO connects to the broader content strategy, because ranking is only half the job. The content still has to be worth reading.
If you can get content to rank high in search results, you’ll find opportunities
DATA ANALYTICS AND PERFORMANCE REPORTING
What It Is
Marketing analytics is the practice of collecting, interpreting, and acting on data from marketing campaigns and channels. It spans everything from reading basic website traffic reports to analyzing conversion funnels, audience behaviour, and cross-channel campaign performance.
Why Employers Value It
Marketing budgets need to be justified. Employers want to know what’s working, what isn’t, and where to invest next. The ability to connect marketing activity to measurable business outcomes (leads generated, cost per acquisition, revenue attributed) is one of the most sought-after skills in the field.
What Job Seekers Need to Understand
You should be able to navigate tools like Google Analytics 4 and Meta Ads Manager, pull performance reports, and draw clear conclusions from what you’re seeing. What separates strong candidates is the ability to turn the data into a recommendation. “Our email open rate dropped 15 per cent this month” is an observation. “Here’s what happened and what we should test next” is what employers are actually paying for.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
What It Is
Social media marketing encompasses strategy, content creation, community management, and performance analysis across platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. It includes both organic activity—building an audience through consistent, valuable content—and paid social, where ad campaigns are built, targeted, and optimized to reach specific audiences.
Why Employers Value It
Social media is often the most visible face of a brand, and for many businesses it’s also a primary driver of awareness, traffic, and leads. Done well, it builds genuine relationships with an audience. Done poorly, it can damage a brand’s reputation or simply waste resources.
What Job Seekers Need to Understand
The biggest misconception about this role is that being an active social media user translates to professional social media skills. It doesn’t. Employers want candidates who understand platform algorithms, know how to plan and schedule content across channels, can manage a brand voice consistently, and can interpret analytics to improve performance over time. Being able to create and edit short-form video is also a standard expectation in many social roles.
You need to know how to tailor content for different social media platforms
PAID ADVERTISING (PPC AND PAID SOCIAL)
What It Is
Pay-per-click (PPC) typically refers to search advertising (i.e., Google Ads) where ads appear in search results based on keyword targeting. Paid social refers to ad campaigns run through platforms like Meta, LinkedIn, or TikTok, using audience data to reach specific demographics, interests, or behaviours.
Why Employers Value It
Paid advertising delivers results fast, which makes it one of the most measurable and high-stakes areas of digital marketing. It can drive qualified traffic, generate leads, and produce a clear return on investment. When managed poorly, however, it burns through budget with little to show for it.
What Job Seekers Need to Understand
Paid advertising is a skill that takes real practice to develop. The core competencies are campaign structure, audience targeting, ad copywriting, bid management, and performance analysis. Google Ads certification and Meta Blueprint certification are both worth pursuing.
EMAIL MARKETING AND MARKETING AUTOMATION
What It Is
Email marketing involves planning, writing, and sending targeted messages to a subscriber list with the goal of building relationships, nurturing leads, and driving conversions. Marketing automation takes this further, using platform logic to send the right message to the right person at the right time based on their behaviour or stage in the customer journey. Tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and ActiveCampaign are the platforms where most of this work happens.
Why Employers Value It
Email consistently delivers strong returns relative to cost, which makes it a channel employers take seriously. It’s also highly controllable—unlike social platforms, a brand owns its email list and isn’t at the mercy of algorithm changes. Employers want candidates who can grow a healthy list, write copy that converts, and use automation to scale personalized communication efficiently.
What Job Seekers Need to Understand
Email is one of those skills where understanding the why matters as much as knowing the how. Knowing how to build a sequence in Mailchimp is useful. Understanding why that sequence is structured the way it is—what the subscriber is thinking at each stage and what action you’re trying to move them toward—is what makes someone good at it.
Email marketing can be a great way to reach an audience
AI TOOL LITERACY
What It Is
AI tool literacy means knowing how to use artificial intelligence tools to support and accelerate marketing work. Such tools include:
- Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude for drafting content, brainstorming, and research
- AI features built into platforms like Canva, HubSpot, and Jasper for content creation and marketing support
- AI-powered analytics capabilities that gleam insight from large data sets
Why Employers Value It
AI tools are changing the pace at which marketing work gets done, and employers want teams that can move with that change. Marketers who can use AI effectively are able to produce more—more content variations, more campaign ideas, more data synthesis—in less time.
What Job Seekers Need to Understand
AI literacy is about being comfortable enough with the technology to make it useful in your workflow, and honest enough about its limits to know when it needs human judgment. AI-generated content still requires editing for accuracy, tone, and brand voice. AI-generated analysis still requires a marketer who can interpret and apply it. Be prepared to use AI to think faster and more creatively, while staying in the driver’s seat.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND CROSS-TEAM COLLABORATION
What It Is
Project management is the ability to plan, coordinate, and execute campaigns and initiatives across multiple tasks, deadlines, and stakeholders. It includes building and maintaining content calendars, managing workflows between teams, tracking deliverables, and keeping projects moving even when priorities shift.
Why Employers Value It
Marketing campaigns have a lot of moving parts, and a breakdown anywhere in the process—a missed deadline, a miscommunication, an asset that never gets delivered—can derail an entire launch. Employers want candidates who can manage complexity without dropping the ball or creating friction.
What Job Seekers Need to Understand
Being organized isn’t the same as being a skilled project manager. What employers want is the ability to hold a full project in your head, anticipate bottlenecks before they happen, and communicate clearly about timelines and progress.
The ability to manage people and workflows is a valuable skill
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
BUILD THE DIGITAL MARKETING SKILL SET EMPLOYERS WANT
The good news is that every skill on this list is learnable.
Herzing College’s Digital Marketing and Project Management program is designed to build these competencies from the ground up, with a curriculum that reflects what employers are actually hiring for. And with the included internship, you’ll graduate with practical skills and hands-on work experience.
Click below to get full program details and chat live with an admissions advisor. We’re here to help!
