Managerial roles in a digital marketing team or agency attract talented, experienced candidates who have hands-on, real-world expertise and know how to use strategy and market research to produce measurable, successful campaigns that resonate with brand audiences.
Part of the appeal is that, as a Digital Marketing Manager, you may have opportunities to work in diverse settings, whether for an ambitious start-up, within a digital marketing agency, or as a manager and supervisor in a larger digital marketing department for a bigger corporation.
This type of role blends strategic oversight with creativity, analytical thinking, and research skills, as well as the ability to work cohesively with colleagues focused on design, graphics, copywriting, and specific platforms, like social media and PPC, to create improved outcomes that hit core brand targets.
Most Digital Marketing Managers work closely with other managerial personnel, usually reporting to a Head of Marketing or similar senior leadership colleague, who can help to ensure brand messaging is consistent across all projects and that the manager has the resources and budgets they require.
Like many roles, a Digital Marketing Manager in a smaller team will likely be expected to be more involved with day-to-day tasks, perhaps dealing with strategy development, implementation, and reporting. They may have a more supervisory position in larger departments, although with ultimate responsibility for digital marketing performance.
Understanding the Job of a Digital Marketing Manager
The Digital Marketing Manager is in charge of developing digital marketing campaigns or big-picture strategies that more junior colleagues then implement. That could mean designing short-term campaigns for specific platforms or setting targets around ways to improve website traffic, generate more leads, and grow brand recognition.
Depending on whether the manager works within an agency or for one employer, they might be expected to carry out a considerable variety of tasks, overseeing, contributing to, and managing:
- Digital marketing platform and channel selections, based on the mediums and formats that appeal to the target audience demographic.
- Conducting market research to stay current with new tools, trends, or techniques.
- Measuring campaign performance and reporting to senior management on investment returns against ad spend.
- Utilizing varied analytical tools to track metrics like site traffic, response rates, and consumer behaviors.
- Leading on the introduction of new high-growth strategies and ideas for fresh campaigns.
- Checking that campaigns have been optimized, selecting influencers or affiliates to assist with campaign publicity, and identifying the best way to mix varied communication formats, such as email, digital, and social media advertising.
There isn’t a typical day in the life of a Digital Marketing Manager since these skilled professionals might be required to support, advise, and direct teams in so many different areas, projects, and campaigns. However, the core role is to ensure the team creates on-brand content and ads and achieves the brand’s strategic targets.
The Role of a Digital Marketing Manager Within a Digital Marketing Team
Digital Marketing Managers are primarily tasked with coordinating and managing the digital marketing function. This could look very different between two organizations or agencies and depend on the types of digital marketing the brand or business engages with.
Some common inclusions with the job of a Digital Marketing Manager are as follows:
- Managing and reporting on social media marketing campaigns, ensuring marketing colleagues communicate core messaging, leverage newer features and advertising or sales tools on the relevant platforms, and include high-quality, on-brand content, copy, and imagery.
- Overseeing content marketing, ensuring that all third-party content, podcasts, videos, articles and thought leadership pieces are consistent, and position the brand as an authority in the relevant trading space.
- Controlling the use of email marketing, ensuring email databases are properly managed, communications are tailored to the customer’s expectations, and that open and response rates are clearly tracked.
- Delegating and approving SEO campaigns on ongoing optimization work, driving landing pages and the brand’s website higher up the search engine rankings, and complying with changing standards and requirements as ranking indicators and indexing policies change.
- Setting budgets and monitoring PPC campaigns, ensuring spend per click achieves acceptable returns, and reporting back to senior management on the outcomes generated, as well as how PPC advertising can be improved.
Digital Marketing Managers often form the link between directors and boards and the rest of the digital marketing department. As the face of the digital marketing function, they are the managers who deal with problems or queries in the first instance, recruit and train junior staff, and delegate tasks while monitoring the split of work and projects.
How to Become a Digital Marketing Manager
There are several pathways to becoming an in-demand Digital Marketing Manager. Many professionals initially work in a more junior position and develop their skills, digital marketing portfolio, and abilities over time—they can then apply for a management role to utilize their knowledge and progress to a higher-paid position.
Many recruiters will look for candidates with a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, although practical experience may be considered equally valuable. The key is to have work experience within other marketing positions, which is necessary to take on a managerial post.
Digital Marketing Managers commonly have certifications in specific digital marketing skills, potentially within inbound, social media, or content marketing. Depending on the job you’d like to apply for, this may be more or less relevant, but an area of specialty can be beneficial.
When you’re ready to apply, you’ll need to create an up-to-date resume showcasing your work experience, qualifications, and achievements, demonstrating where you have undertaken projects or campaigns with a high level of responsibility.
Agencies and recruiters will also often ask Digital Marketing Manager applicants to provide a portfolio to showcase their abilities and evidence of real-world expertise. These could include examples of campaigns, client testimonials, or reports showing campaign outcomes.
What Skills Do I Need to Become a Digital Marketing Manager?
There are several hard, soft, and technical skills that can help in progressing towards a managerial digital marketing job, with the following among the most common we see on job posts listed on Digital Marketing Jobs:
- Strategic thinking, understanding consumer behaviors, and targeting to augment the returns achieved through each campaign or promotion.
- Excellent time management, dealing with multiple tasks and campaigns simultaneously, and being able to prioritize to ensure functions with the most urgency are dealt with swiftly. Managers are responsible for meeting deadlines, tracking performance, and delegating time-sensitive tasks.
- Concise, clear communication skills, whether instructing junior colleagues, presenting to management or creating content and copy for campaigns.
- Strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to converse and collaborate with sales teams, clients, colleagues, influencers, media channels, and publications.
Digital Marketing Managers also need good technical abilities. Their varied responsibilities involve different software, platforms, and dashboards. They may, for instance, need to create budgets, analyze returns on investments, analyze web traffic, track email open and close rates, analyze bounce rates, conduct research to determine how domains rank, and use analytical tools for other processes.
Digital Marketing Manager Job Description Template
We are recruiting an experienced Digital Marketing Manager to lead on marketing strategy development and implementation, oversee all ongoing campaigns, including social media and content campaigns and web content creation, and work alongside sales and client communication teams to drive success.
Our chosen Digital Marketing Manager must be used to working in a dynamic and competitive field. They must also have exceptional time management abilities and strong marketing campaign monitoring and analytical know-how.
Digital Marketing Manager Tasks and Responsibilities
The newly appointed Digital Marketing Manager will need to:
- Create, implement, and update digital marketing strategies to provide continual improvements to customer experiences and web traffic.
- Monitor all platforms and funnels, ensuring conversion touchpoints are optimized.
- Lead on digital campaign development and perform research into ways to engage, incentivize, and capture interest in selected demographics.
- Work closely with the in-house marketing team on campaign concept, development, and execution, including collaboration with creative colleagues.
- Review campaigns and marketing efforts to ensure full compliance with best practice standards, advertising legislation, and brand policies.
- Analyze and report on trends, insights, performance, and progress towards KPIs.
Eligibility Requirements for the Digital Marketing Manager Role
We prefer applicants with a bachelor’s degree or higher in digital technology, advertising, business, communications, or marketing. Candidates without a degree must have the higher end of two to five years of experience in a relevant position or managerial role.
All candidates must have prior work experience in management or leadership, and our ideal candidate will hold certifications in Google Ads and Google Analytics.
Find the Latest Digital Marketing Manager Jobs With Our Digital Marketing Job Board
Here, we’ve examined the job of a Digital Marketing Manager, the types of tasks and responsibilities this position involves, and the experience and qualifications a recruiter or agency may look for.
To review all current Digital Marketing Manager vacancies, please visit our Digital Marketing Job Board, where you can filter and sort by location, pay rate, working structure, and any other parameters important to your job search.
