Hiring the Best Digital Marketing Specialist for Your Business

If you are looking for a digital marketing specialist to steer your online business in the right direction, you’re not alone. Digital marketers were in high demand before COVID-19 sent traditional companies scrambling to digitally transform their business. Latest data shows that the world vaulted five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around eight weeks. 

As the pandemic continues, many companies will invest time and money into digital marketing without a plan, goals, or measurement. Others will hire digital marketing agencies or work with digital marketing specialists, hoping to do better. Read this article before you start interviewing candidates for the job of digital marketing consultant--even before you start recruiting.

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Who are Digital Marketing Specialists and What they Do?

A digital marketing specialist is like a superhero to any business looking to take advantage of digital media. They are expected to open the floodgates of hungry online customers on your website and other digital properties. They should be able to help create an impressive online presence and build a strong digital brand. They should to work with your marketing team to identify and discover your audience, create a digital marketing strategy for your business, and run online marketing campaigns to keep online sales growing.

Job Description of a Digital Marketing Specialist

The typical job description of a digital marketing specialist includes:

• Help create a cross-channel digital marketing strategy and digital transformation roadmap
• Translate the broader strategy into SMART objectives and actionable digital marketing plans
• Help create a content marketing strategy including types of content and channels for distribution
• Help nurture and grow leads through a lead capturing strategy and onboard new clients via scheduled consultations  
• Help create the company’s digital marketing assets including website, landing pages,  ads, email drips, and social media pages in line with the digital marketing strategy
• Create and manage sales and lead-generation funnels by aligning the marketing assets with the customer’s buying journey
• Devise a system for analytics tracking and reporting and stay on top of the numbers at all times
• Analyze campaign and ad performance through A/B testing and report on key performance indicators
• Plan and execute new online marketing projects, product launches, webinars, customer interviews, and other customer outreach and discovery programs 
• Advise the client on infrastructural and process changes and resources required for digital marketing transformation and employee engagement
• Advise the client on new product development and create a go-to-market strategy in the light of customer feedback and campaign results
• Advise the client about everything digital and proactively inform them about the latest trends, technology and best practices

What Qualification and Skills Must a Digital Marketing Specialist Have?

A digital marketing specialist can be the make-or-break person for a startup or small business. With the right skill set and experience, a digital marketing consultant can help establish an internal marketing team that outshines top-dollar agencies. So, what skills does a digital marketing specialist need to prove equal to the task?

No single specialist, consultant or analyst can claim to be a master of all areas of digital marketing. According to a survey conducted by Smart Insights, less than half of digital marketing specialists rate themselves as skilled and highly skilled in many areas of digital marketing.

Source: SmartInsights

Your business requirements will determine the exact skill set you need in a digital marketing specialist. For example:

• An ecommerce business may need a digital marketer with skills and experience in conversion optimization, SEO, SEM, and Facebook marketing.
• A B2B seller may require a person with a proven track record of managing direct marketing channels, lead generation and nurturing, and webinars.
• A technology product can do well with a digital marketing specialist who is effective at creating user experience, providing and articulating data analytics, and ensuring App Store Optimization.

A digital marketer, however, should have select essential skills to be called a digital marketing specialist. Here they are:

Data Analytics: Digital marketing is a data driven activity. Digital marketing specialists must be skilled in data analytics. They must know how to use Google and other analytics tools, select the KPIs to track, and report the findings.

Customer Experience: Your digital brand is the sum of experiences your customer has with your digital assets—website, landing pages, mobile app, videos, ads and other assets. A digital marketing specialist knows how to measure and improve customer experience using digital tools and industry best practices.

Marketing Technology: Digital marketing has turned marketers into geeks. They should be experts in the full stack of digital marketing and automation software including various CMS systems, ecommerce platforms such as Shopify or BigCommerce, marketing automation software such as HubSpot, Mailchimp or Klaviyo, as well as other applications that the client is using.

Channel Expertise: A digital marketing consultant should have a proven track record of managing the specific channels the client needs to use or is already using. A specialist should have a well-rounded cross-channel expertise in SEM, social media and email marketing.

Sales and Marketing Copywriting: A digital marketing consultant will need to create and assess advertising campaigns, so they must be good at copywriting.

Visual Storytelling: Without video and photo, there’s no digital marketing these days.  Consumers are more likely to buy products and services with high quality photos and videos. That’s why a digital marketing expert should be able to conceptualize visual marketing and organize the creation of photo and video assets.

Conversion Optimization: All the traffic in the world doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t convert. A consultant should be able to audit your sales funnel and implement the changes that deliver more conversions. Conversion optimization requires skills like copywriting, A/B testing, and web designing.

Content Marketing: Digital marketing is permission marketing. You can’t interrupt people and hope they listen. The only thing a marketer can do is engage them with compelling content. A marketing maestro understands how to create and promote high quality text and audiovisual content.

Strategy and Planning: Strategy is a vital part of digital marketing, but most digital marketers admit they’re weak at strategizing. A digital marketing strategist has in depth knowledge of a variety of digital marketing activities and can provide you with a detailed strategic document outlining your long and short term goals and the ways to get there.

Search Engine Optimization: Nothing beats the evergreen organic traffic that search engines send your way. An online marketing consultant is also an SEO expert. They can adopt ways to improve your Google rankings and drive more traffic off natural searches.

Google Advertising: Expertise in Google Ads, the world’s biggest advertising platform, is a must have for a digital marketing specialist. They should be adept at setting up and tracking Google Ads accounts, adjusting PPC bids, conducting A/B tests on ads, running remarketing ads, and improving the Google Ads Quality Score.

Facebook Advertising: Facebook ads are very effective at increasing brand awareness, attracting leads and converting prospects into customers. A specialist must know how to engage your audience on Facebook and reach out to them via paid ads.

A Digital Marketing Expert with a Team

Hiring a digital marketing specialist is a great idea if you have an in-house marketing team. A consultant brings years of hardcore digital marketing experience to your company and can help groom your marketing employees for a digital marketing culture. But if you still don’t have an online marketing team, it’s a better idea to engage a digital marketing expert who does.

Josh Meah & Company is a global team of digital marketing professionals working under the direction of one of the most successful and experienced digital marketing experts in America. It is a full-service digital media agency with a verifiable record of bringing online marketing success to businesses of different types and sizes. Read the following success stories to learn how Josh Meah helped these companies achieve continuous online growth and transformed them into strong digital brands.

• How Peter Christian achieves 726% year on year US revenue growth
• Teonan Wellness Beverages grows from a local business to a nationwide brand
• Tweedl, a music app, decreases the average Cost of Acquisition by 79%

Consult Free with a Digital Marketing Expert

If you’re looking for a digital marketing specialist to transform your startup or traditional business into a dynamic digital brand, we can help. Book your FREE, NO-OBLIGATION consultation session today. The experts at Josh Meah & Company will listen to your requirements and advise you about the skills and experience your potential digital marketing consultant must have.

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