Chennai: If your New Year resolution had ‘career change’ and your core proficiency involves content creation or sales, then there has never been a better time to consider upskilling yourself in digital marketing. With businesses cutting across sectors investing in enhancing their digital capabilities, this new-gen marketing channel is gaining prominence.
To know the latest trends in the booming sector, News Today approached founder and CEO of Digital Academy 360, Yogesh Shashi. Having trained more than 15,000 students in three years in their 25 centres spread across the country, Digital Academy 360 is today India’s fastest growing chain of digital marketing training institutes.
Here is what he had to say about the sector:
Q. Tell us about Digital Academy 360. Why did you set up a training institute?
I am a management graduate from Bangalore University. I have worked in various spheres of marketing over the span of eight-plus years. The eureka moment for conceptualising and establishing Digital Academy 360 came when I was taking seminars in colleges and met many entrepreneurs at start-up events who were woefully lacking digital marketing know-how. Digital Academy 360 was thus launched in 2015 to address this gap in the marketplace with a vision to provide high-quality education in the field of digital marketing and content writing.
Q. How do you see the digital marketing space in India compared globally?
With the advent of advanced technology that is helping marketing step up its game and to meet the demands of the customer be it chatbots or cross-marketing automation with necessary personalisation at scale, the digital marketing space in India is evolving and expanding with every passing day. It is now playing a vital role for MSMEs to go global for quick turnover. According to the Annual Digital Marketing Research Report, this will be the number one investment area for India marketers in 2019. Local language initiatives are in the top three areas of investment. When compared globally, India is a lucrative market for social media businesses and it has the potential to grow big as India has over 400 million smartphone users. Digital marketing has rapidly altered the contours of the Indian economy by improving customer access to goods and services
Q. Is there a demand for digital marketers and training institutes in India?
India has witnessed a surge in the tech-savvy consumer and millennial population resulting in a boom in the digital marketing space in India. This has led to an increased demand for digital marketing training curriculum and content like never before. Our rapid growth in the last few years is a testimony to this demand. In Chennai, our four newly launched centres at Anna Nagar, T Nagar, Adyar, Velacheri get more than expected registrations for all the courses. We see that the market is growing and there will be a huge demand for digital marketing in the years to come.
Q. What is your current growth and expansion plan?
Digital Academy 360 has grown by over 10 times in terms of staff strength and its business in 2018 alone. Our new centres in Chennai commenced classes from 9 December. Each centre has a capacity of 90 students per batch and is expected to cater to 5000-plus students annually. We plan to expand to tier two cities in the coming year and then expand towards East Asia (Singapore and Malaysia) in the near future.
| Career prospects of a digital marketer |
“It’s always better to be well equipped in skillsets in your career, regardless of what the field a person is in,” advices Yogesh. According to him, candidates that come from various backgrounds from tier 2 and 3 towns are now able to earn average (starting) salaries of Rs 14,000 per month through the training they receive from them.
He says that for people mastering the following courses in digital marketing and allied areas, it opens up a huge arena of different career options depending upon the course chosen, which could possibly be:
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1. Search Engine Optimization
2. Search Engine Marketing
3. Social Media Marketing
4. Content Marketing Manager
5. CRM Manager
6. E-commerce Manager
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7. Digital Agency Account Director
8. Web Analytics Expert
9. Email Marketing Manager
10. Digital Marketing Manager
11. Conversion Rate Optimizer
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