For businesses that want to grow their online presence or use digital marketing to grow their revenues, the obvious option is hiring a digital marketer. The one challenge businesses might face when they get to this point is that it is somewhat challenging to find a great digital marketing expert. While there are a lot of digital marketers available in the market, there are only a few who will fully understand your vision and be able to execute growth strategies that greatly benefit your business. To help you out, we will outline the most important things to look for in a digital marketer.
A Specialized Skill Set
For digital marketing roles, you should not just hire competent digital marketers, but someone who can help you with a specific digital marketing channel you would like to use and the strategy you would like to implement. It is therefore important that you first determine what you are looking for before you go out to hire a digital marketing expert. After you identify the type of marketer you need, you can go out looking for one who has the skills to be the exact digital marketer you are looking for.
A great example is when hiring someone for an SEO strategy. Some skills they should have include a deep understanding of the Google Search Console, content creation, link-building, technical SEO and SEO tools. The point here is that they should know their stuff and be able to help you achieve what you want to achieve.
Strategic and Analytical Thinking
Strong strategic and analytical thinking skills are critical when looking at a digital marketer’s resume and their past work. The ideal digital marketer should be able to look at brand, market and campaign and come up with strategies that help you reach your goals They should be able to put a viable long-term strategy in place and ensure that regardless of which strategy is implemented and how it is implemented, the business can reach its goals while staying within a set budget.
They should also be able to look at different competitor marketing campaigns, analyze their strategies and see how what they learn can be used to benefit your business. Lastly, they should be able to analyze data from Google Analytics and other analytics platforms to come up with insights on how your campaigns are doing and what tweaks you can make to ensure continued success.
Social media analysis is another critical skill considering how important social media has become in digital marketing. They should be able to work with different dashboards, looking at the numbers and combining numbers from different platforms and dashboards to determine whether they are hitting their key performance indicators.
Great Writing Skills
Even in cases where a digital marketer is not required to come up with copy for your content marketing strategy, they should be able to write well and compellingly. They might be involved in writing social media campaigns, writing copy for paid ads, and aiding in content optimization for your blog. In all these cases, you need them to write clearly and effectively, keeping the messaging in mind and ensuring it comes through in everything they write.
Great Communication Skills
All digital marketers need to be able to communicate clearly and effectively. Digital marketers interact with different parties including vendors, stakeholders, colleagues, and customers. Their communications skills should be good enough to bring everyone on the same page.
Also, digital marketers need to talk about reports, strategies, and business decisions with relevant stakeholders, and they must do so effectively, simply, and convincingly.
Their communications skills should also allow them to communicate differently depending on who they are talking to. For example, it is okay for them to use industry jargon when talking to their managers and colleagues. However, they should be able to make their language fit contexts like talking to stakeholders who may not be invested in learning industry jargon.
A Deep Understanding of Data and Data Analytics
No matter how you decide to execute your digital marketing strategy, there is no getting away from the fact that you will need a digital marketer who understands data, data analytics, and the tools that are required to make the best use of both. Tools like Google Analytics are essential for all digital marketers as they make monitoring, reporting, and strategizing a lot easier.
The tricky part is gathering consumer data so a business can use data analytics to learn more about consumer behavior, motivations, and everything else they need to know about their customers. Businesses then need to know how to apply the insights they get from this data analysis in their decision-making processes.
Most businesses collect and track a lot of data and digital marketers need to understand how to use this data to help the businesses they work for. While many businesses will be looking for people to read and interpret this data, many others look for people who can help them know which data to use and how to use this data to improve marketing and business strategies. To become the asset and data-savvy digital marketer businesses need, marketers should consider enrolling in Emerson’s online masters in data analytics program at Emerson College. This program blends digital marketing and data analytics into a single program to arm you with the skills modern marketers need and businesses are looking for.
Strong Organizational Skills
Digital marketers, especially those working with growing businesses that need to reach as many people as possible, will often work on multiple campaigns, taking on numerous initiatives and responsibilities at the same time. Any digital marketer you pick should have stellar organizational skills so they can keep things straight.
Their organizational skills should allow them to prioritize tasks, keep tight deadlines and achieve key performance indicators. All of these need to be done at the same time and if they are not organized enough, one or all of them are likely to suffer.
Candidates with great organizational skills should have worked in high-pressure environments, and the key indicator for this is internal promotions in the companies they have worked for. This is because businesses will often promote people who have proven great at handling the pressures that come with working in different environments.
Organization also comes with great time management skills. Although this can be said for any employee, it is especially true for digital marketers who need to juggle a lot of things at once. The best digital marketers can get a lot done in a single day. They should be able to prioritize tasks and assign enough time to complete them while not allowing anything to slip through the cracks.
Marketers Who Value Lifelong Learning
Digital marketing is always changing. Skills and strategies that were relevant last month or even last week might not be today. A great digital marketer should be able to adapt to these changes, and the best way to stay ahead of the curve is to keep learning. They should have a thirst for knowledge and keep in touch with the latest news and happenings in the world of digital marketing.
Curious digital marketers are always learning and it is sometimes better to hire a less experienced digital marketer who is willing to learn for life than hiring an expert who is set in their ways and may not adapt to changes in the industry.
Self-Motivated Digital Marketers
Because of how fast digital marketing moves and the cut-throat competition in the field, there is no space or time for leniency. The best digital marketers always have high energy levels and always want their days to be productive. They are motivated to not only help your business achieve its aims but to also hit their personal goals for the day, week, or month.
Self-motivated digital marketers have an infectious energy that they pass on to others. This means they lift everyone’s spirits and lead to better overall team productivity.
A Deep Understanding of Content and Video Marketing
Content is usually at the center of any digital marketing campaign, and content marketing is likely to remain a huge part of digital marketing for the foreseeable future. Because of this, any digital marketer you have should have a deep understanding of content marketing, including video marketing.
Digital marketers should understand what high-quality content is and how to make content that engages an audience. They need to have a firm grasp on how different types of content work and how they fit into an overall digital marketing strategy.
Apart from textual content, video content has become an integral part of digital marketing. The main reason is that a lot of people now report enjoying watching rather than reading content. Videos have been shown to hold a visitor’s attention far better than textual content can. This means well-optimized and interesting videos can help a website’s ranking and this plays a great role in helping achieve SEO goals.
To make content and video marketing work, digital marketers must also understand how social media works. Social media marketing is another important part of digital marketing as it puts your content in front of relevant audiences, allows you to engage with your customers, and gives you channels that you can use to address customer needs. Digital marketers should not only be able to develop social media marketing campaigns using the platforms that work best for their customers but also monitor analytics to see how their campaigns are doing.
Persuasiveness
Digital marketers are primarily tasked with driving businesses forward, and one of the ways they do this is through persuasion. Digital marketers have to craft campaigns that convince people to take an action, whether it be leaving a name and email or making a purchase. They also need to persuade team members, stakeholders and anyone else involved that the ideas they have are the best and that they will produce the desired effect.
Persuasiveness should not be confused with arguing or being arrogant, but rather the confidence that a digital marketer knows what they are doing, knows how to convince someone else to take the desired action, and outlining both in the best way possible.
Additional and Unusual Skills
In many cases, people have skills that they never get to show off because of narrow job requirements. Employers should be on the lookout for these skills, especially in cases where the skills can come in handy. For example, a digital marketer may have database design and management skills that can come in handy during data analysis but not be able to showcase these skills. They may also know some SEO strategies that they do not get to put into practice because the campaigns they get to work on do not allow them to showcase these skills.
In all these cases, you should be on the lookout for digital marketers who have additional and unusual skills that can come in handy in the future.
Past Work and Successes
Digital marketing is usually about getting certain results, and businesses must ensure that the digital marketer they are looking to hire can deliver. The best way to ascertain this is to look at their past work and successes. Asking candidates about campaigns they have worked on in the past is a great way of finding out whether they can handle the tasks you would like them to handle for you.
If they are not bound by confidentiality agreements, you can also ask them to show you metrics of their past work. This will help you see whether they can deliver great results.
Finally, you can talk to their references to see what type of person they are. Talking to past employers and clients is the best way to get a clear insight on a digital marketing candidate and deciding whether they would be a great fit.
Businesses that do not do digital marketing are unlikely to see much success in their marketing efforts. To support these efforts, businesses should strive to hire the best digital marketers they can. The qualities and skills outlined above should be a great starting point for businesses looking to hire the best digital marketing expert.
