Web Designing vs Digital Marketing: What’s the Best Career Path?
To help you decide between a career in web designing or digital marketing, we asked professionals from various fields to weigh in on the matter. From considering personal talents and aspirations to the progression opportunities in digital marketing, here are 12 expert opinions to guide your decision-making process.
- Consider Personal Talents and Aspirations
- Digital Marketing: More Growth Potential
- Digital Marketing: Better Career Path
- Future Demand Favors Digital Marketing
- Exciting and Lucrative Digital Marketing
- Job Security in Both Fields
- Compare Skills: Web Design vs. Marketing
- Greater Job Opportunities in Marketing
- Start With Marketing, Specialize Later
- AI Impact: Digital Marketing Resilience
- Salary Comparison: Design vs. Marketing
- More Progression in Digital Marketing
Consider Personal Talents and Aspirations
Web design requires technical knowledge in coding, HTML, and CSS, which may impede others. While certain technological abilities are required, I believe that digital marketing is largely focused on marketing strategy and analysis.
Both web design and digital marketing are significant career options with their own set of advantages and disadvantages. When deciding between the two, keep your talents, hobbies, and career aspirations in mind.
Ultimately, what you enjoy doing, what you are good at, and what opportunities are available in your area will determine which career path is best for you.
Adam Crossling
Head of Marketing, Zenzero
Digital Marketing: More Growth Potential
Digital marketing definitely provides more room for growth over the long term compared to web design. Digital marketing professionals have the advantage of working with data analytics and tools that allow them to identify trends and target customers online, which can facilitate a larger reach and engagement with customers.
According to recent surveys from staffing agencies, digital marketing roles earn higher salaries than traditional web design positions. While web designers use their creativity and technical know-how to create visually appealing websites, digital marketers boost website visits with promotion across various outlets like email campaigns, search engine optimization (SEO), etc., allowing for more diverse opportunities for career progression even beyond a website’s visual appeal.
Natalia Brzezinska
Marketing and Outreach Manager, ePassportPhoto
Digital Marketing: Better Career Path
Digital marketing offers a better career path than web design. Digital marketers can work in various industries, including e-commerce, healthcare, finance, and more. They can also specialize in different areas of digital marketing, such as content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and paid advertising.
These areas open up more growth opportunities—as they gain experience, they can move up the ladder, and become managers, directors, or even executives. They can also specialize in specific areas of digital marketing, which can lead to higher salaries and more challenging roles.
Web designers typically work in a limited capacity—designing websites for different industries, which can cause fewer job opportunities than digital marketing.
It can present a limited career path, with fewer opportunities for growth and advancement. While web designers can become senior designers or art directors, they have few opportunities to move into leadership positions.
Tristan Harris
Demand Generation Senior Marketing Manager, Thrive Agency
Future Demand Favors Digital Marketing
Digital marketing requires you to learn several essential skills, thus allowing you to be multifaceted and enhance your value to clients and employers. The learning curve in the digital marketing field is smoother compared to web design, which may be too technical for some people. As more businesses develop their services and go online, digital marketers will be more in-demand to offer continued support.
Liam Liu
Co-founder and CMO, ParcelPanel
Exciting and Lucrative Digital Marketing
If you’re looking for a challenging and rewarding career in the tech industry, digital marketing is a brilliant choice. With a growing demand for skilled professionals and a variety of career opportunities available, digital marketing offers an exciting and lucrative career path for individuals with a passion for marketing and technology.
Digital marketing is a better career path for individuals seeking a dynamic and challenging role in the tech industry. As a digital marketer, you will work with a variety of platforms and tools, including social media, email marketing, content creation, and search engine optimization. You’ll develop and implement strategies that help businesses connect with their target audience and achieve their marketing goals.
Basana Saha
Founder, KidsCareIdeas
Job Security in Both Fields
Web design and digital marketing are both in high demand, and both provide job security. Businesses and organizations will require specialists to develop and maintain their websites and digital platforms, as well as to advertise their products and services through digital marketing, as long as they have websites and digital platforms.
Andrew Dale, Technical Director, CloudTech24
Compare Skills: Web Design vs. Marketing
If you’re interested in pursuing a career in the digital marketing industry, it’s important to know that both web design and digital marketing are essential parts of this field. However, they require distinct sets of skills and can lead down different paths career-wise.
Web design involves creating visually appealing and functional websites using design tools and coding languages. If you have a strong understanding of user experience (UX) and interface design principles, and you enjoy working with code and design, web design may be a better fit for you.
Digital marketing involves promoting products or services using various digital channels, including social media, email, search engines, and content marketing. If your strengths and skills lie in analytics, strategy development, and communicating with audiences, you’d be more suited to a career in digital marketing.
Samuel Johns
CPRW and Career Counselor,
Greater Job Opportunities in Marketing
It really depends on your own personal skills and interests. If you like being creative, working with visuals, and coding, then web design might be the more suitable path for you. But if you’re interested in making a real impact in the business world—and would enjoy discovering new ways to promote products or services online—digital marketing is likely the better career choice.
Whether it’s developing a website from scratch or curating engaging content for social media channels, web designers and digital marketers both have an important role to play in helping businesses grow their brands online. That said, digital marketing offers more job opportunities since many organizations are now relying heavily on this field as an effective way to reach out to potential customers.
Joseph Santaella Vidal
Community Manager, Resume Genius Resume Genius
Start With Marketing, Specialize Later
If you’re starting out in your career, then it’s best to go with digital marketing first, as you can always specialize in web design as part of that path and then focus on it later.
Given the current state of the web design industry and that generative AI is creeping into that domain more and more, it would also be wise to watch the space right now and see if it really will pay off in the long term to specialize here or stay within a broader field of digital marketing.
If your career path is to become a leader or manager soon, then keeping your marketing focus broader is always advisable—that way you can manage or lead a team with a focus on digital, but not be characterized as a ‘specialist’ in a specific domain.
Emma Westley
Marketing Consultant, immerj
AI Impact: Digital Marketing Resilience
While both web design and digital marketing are great career paths to take, with AI, we may see more automation of web design in the future taking jobs away from humans. While digital marketing may also not be immune, there are facets of digital marketing that may always require a human to have the final say, especially regarding the feelings behind a consumer message.
Lilia Koss
Community Manager, Facialteam
Salary Comparison: Design vs. Marketing
Depending on your expertise and skills, both web design and digital marketing have the potential for substantial wages. According to my research, the average annual compensation for a web designer in the United States is around $54,000, whereas the average annual salary for a digital marketer is around $63,000. But, with more experience and improved skills, both jobs have the potential for higher wages.
Arman Minas
Director, Armstone
More Progression in Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a constantly expanding sector with many prospects for progression. You could begin as a social media specialist or email marketer and work your way up to the position of director or vice president of marketing. Web design may offer fewer progression chances and may be more of a freelance or contract-based job.
Tim Parker
Director, Syntax Integration
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