What Is a Digital Marketing Job Like? – Work, Skills and Growth

In your first year at a media agency, most of your day goes into Excel reporting, coordinating with third parties and learning how a client account runs. You also handle real money early.

Aryayan Bhowmick is six months into his role as a biddable media analyst at Performics (Publicis Groupe), and he works on an Airtel Broadband account that spends about ₹7 crore a month. Naresh Sah has four and a half years of experience and works as a senior associate in ad operations. Between them, they show what the job looks like at the start and a few years in, along with the skills it needs and how to choose where to begin.

Where does your time go in the first year?

Aryayan joined Performics after Kraftshala’s Marketing Launchpad. Most of his day, he says, is Excel and reporting. He also runs campaign execution, talks to third-party vendors and sometimes faces the client, but reporting is the bulk of it.

In six months, he has learnt how an account runs, how budgets are deployed and how media planning works. His team has also been sent to Google and Amazon for meetings and seminars.

How the job changes a few years in

Naresh’s day looks different. Most of his time goes into understanding what the client needs and communicating with stakeholders, team members and managers to get work submitted. He calls it the management side of the work.

So the job shifts as you grow. In year one, you build the reports. A few years in, you spend more time on people and requirements than on the spreadsheet. As Naresh puts it, pre-job training gives you the basics, and the rest comes from seniors and colleagues once you join.

How much money will you handle?

More than most freshers expect. Aryayan’s Airtel Broadband account spends about ₹7 crore a month. Naresh manages close to a million dollars a quarter for clients including Coca-Cola.

This is why Sanya Verma, who has counselled Kraftshala applicants for two and a half years, pushes freshers towards large agencies and brands. There you get experienced managers, peers from different universities, bigger budgets and harder problems. That exposure speeds up your growth.

Aryayan describes the work as connected rather than split into silos. You see a campaign move from planning to budget to third-party partners to the final report, and you learn from many people at once. He calls his first six months overwhelming, and also exciting.

Bigger budgets mean higher expectations

Large companies expect work that meets their benchmark and the client’s needs from the start. For anyone worried about keeping up, Aryayan’s advice is simple: “Being new and not being able to understand are two different things.”

He came from a master’s in English Literature and still picked up the concepts, because his trainers explained them using accounts they had managed themselves.

Which skills do you need?

Excel

Both Aryayan and Naresh name the same Excel skills, on top of basic formulas:

• VLOOKUP
• HLOOKUP
• XLOOKUP
• Pivot tables

Naresh calls these the essential skill set. If your reporting runs on Excel, as Aryayan’s does, you use them every day.

Is digital marketing a technical (IT) job?

Here the two see it differently.

Naresh says the work is more creative than technical, and people from non-technical backgrounds do well in it. He should know: he came from a BCA and a junior software developer job before moving into marketing.

Aryayan sees it as a blend of both, because marketing is about numbers and communication. You can’t do it without creativity, but you’ll also work with dashboards and other technical tools. None of this needs a tech background, though parts of it will be new to you.

How much background do you need?

Aryayan’s answer: “Class 10 maths and Class 12 English, that’s it”, plus patience and openness to learn.

Naresh adds that communication matters as much as hard skills. In interviews and on the job, how clearly you talk to your client, team and manager shapes how your work is received. (If this is an area you want to work on, here are some ways to build communication and personality skills.)

Why does your first company matter so much?

Sanya often speaks to people who have spent two to three years in marketing and still earn 3 to 4 LPA. Freshers placed through the Marketing Launchpad, by contrast, start at a minimum of 4.5 LPA, going up to 10.4 LPA for strong performers.

Her explanation for the gap is the first employer. She splits roles into two paths:

• Path A, a high-potential role: 4.5 to 10 LPA, in-depth knowledge of the tools, and work where you analyse problems and explain your thinking.
• Path B, a compromise role: task-based work at a small company, one or two skills, one or two tools, and little motivation to move up.

Growth after a good first role can be steep. According to Sanya, alumni with three to four years of experience have reached anywhere from 14 LPA to 20 to 22 LPA, depending on whether they stayed or switched. Several moved from an agency to a brand and got a 100% hike, and she says switching tends to bring bigger hikes. (For more detail on pay by role and experience, see digital marketing salaries in India.)

Aryayan’s advice points the same way. Research companies that can offer growth, and aim for an MNC for your first job. Once you’re inside, you’ll see where to grow.

Want a first role on Path A? Kraftshala’s Marketing Launchpad, a digital marketing course with placement, trains you on the tools agencies use every day, including Excel reporting, Meta and Google Ads and programmatic, through live projects. Its hiring partners include agencies like Publicis Groupe.

Do you need to pick a specialisation before your first job?

No. Six months in, Aryayan says he hasn’t found his area of expertise yet. Before joining Kraftshala, he wanted to do content and creative marketing. He then weighed his options and picked performance marketing because it is growing, pays well and has strong industry demand. Whether he stays in it is a question he can’t answer yet.

The T-shaped marketer

Aryayan explains this with the T-shaped model. The top of the T is breadth across SEO, programmatic, content and blogs. The vertical line is depth in one area, such as paid media or e-commerce.

The breadth is what lets you move. If you join paid media and dislike it after a year, you can shift to quick commerce, because the base skills carry over. (Here’s a fuller view of the types of careers in digital marketing.)

Where to start, based on what you enjoy

Aryayan offers a rough guide:

• If you like writing, try content marketing. A content strategist role is one common path.
• If you’re good with numbers and comfortable with large budgets, try programmatic advertising.
• If you want a mix of search and paid media, look at e-commerce. Here’s what an e-commerce manager does.

Naresh’s bet for the next 3 to 10 years is paid marketing, especially Meta ads. He sees SEO changing as more people search on ChatGPT and Claude.

Wrapping up

Your first agency job is mostly reporting, coordination and learning how real budgets move. You’ll need solid Excel, clear communication and the patience to learn, but not a technical degree. The company you start in shapes how fast you grow, and your specialisation can wait until you’ve seen a few channels up close.

If you want structured preparation for that first role, Kraftshala’s Marketing Launchpad is a digital marketing course with placement that trains you on these tools through live projects before placement. It runs online for 6 months full-time or 11 months part-time. If you’d rather learn on campus, the PGP in AI-Led Marketing is a 9-month, full-time program in Gurugram. Both publish batch-wise placement reports, so you can see which agencies and brands hired and at what salaries.