Digital Marketer: What is the cost of hiring?

What is a Digital Marketing Specialist?

A Digital Marketing Specialist typically plans, executes and monitors marketing campaigns across digital platforms. Responsibilities may include content strategy, paid advertising, search engine optimization and performance tracking. The role often works cross-functionally with sales, design and web development teams.

Why hire a Digital Marketing Specialist

Digital Marketing Specialists help businesses grow by increasing online visibility, attracting the right audiences and driving revenue through targeted campaigns. They create and manage strategies that support brand awareness and lead generation across channels like search, social and email. This role can be especially valuable when internal resources are limited, campaign performance has declined or your business is expanding into new digital platforms.

Contributions of a great Digital Marketing Specialist:

• Increased visibility and brand awareness across digital channels
• Improved campaign performance through data-driven adjustments
• Stronger ROI from paid and organic marketing efforts

Defining your hiring needs for a Digital Marketing Specialist

As you decide how to hire a Digital Marketing Specialist, start by defining your hiring needs and employment type based on your budget and workload. Clarify the role’s focus areas to determine if a more specific title like SEO Specialist or Social Media Manager is a better fit. If the responsibilities are broader, a generalist title may be more appropriate. You may also want to consider related roles such as Marketing Coordinator, Campaign Analyst or Marketing Manager.

What are the types of Digital Marketing Specialists?

Digital Marketing Specialists may focus on specific channels, campaign types or levels of strategy depending on the needs of the business. Understanding these role types can help you hire a candidate with the right experience and expertise. Common role types include:

• Junior Digital Marketing Specialist: Supports campaign execution and reporting, handles basic platform management and coordinates content delivery
• Senior Digital Marketing Specialist: Oversees digital strategy, performance optimization and multi-channel planning
• SEO Specialist: Focuses on improving search visibility through keyword research, technical SEO and on-page content optimization
• PPC Specialist: Manages paid advertising campaigns, tracks budgets and tests ad performance across platforms like Google Ads or social media
• Social Media Strategist: Plans, publishes and monitors social media content, builds engagement and supports community growth

When writing your Digital Marketing Specialist job description, consider including some or all of the following keywords to improve the visibility of your job posting. These are the most popular search terms leading to clicks on Digital Marketing Specialist jobs, according to Indeed data:

• Marketing
• Digital marketing
• Social media
• Communications 
• Graphic design 
• Social media manager 
• Marketing assistant 
• SEO
• Marketing manager

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Where to find Digital Marketing Specialists

Digital Marketing Specialists can be found through marketing-focused job boards, professional associations, digital boot camps and industry networking groups. Attending conferences, participating in online communities or building relationships with schools that offer digital marketing programs can help expand your reach.

To find the right Digital Marketing Specialist for your business, consider trying out a few different recruiting strategies:

• Industry job boards: These sites attract candidates focused on marketing, advertising or creative work.
• Professional associations: Groups for marketing professionals may provide access to job boards, member directories or events.
• Employee referrals: Your current team may have former colleagues or industry contacts who are open to new opportunities.
• Freelance platforms: These platforms let you evaluate a candidate’s work before extending a long-term offer.
• Post your job online: Try posting your Digital Marketing Specialist job on Indeed to find and attract quality candidates.

Skills to look for in a Digital Marketing Specialist

A successful Digital Marketing Specialist candidate will typically have the following skills and competencies, which may be gained through a variety of experiences, training or education:

• Campaign performance tracking, including experience with Google Analytics, Meta Ads Manager, Looker Studio and CRM/sales platform dashboards
• Search engine optimization (SEO), including writing optimized content, researching keywords, improving site performance and tracking ranking changes
• Paid media management, such as setting up, monitoring and adjusting pay-per-click campaigns across platforms like Google Ads, Bing Ads and LinkedIn
• Marketing automation, including building email workflows, segmenting audiences or using tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, Marketo or ActiveCampaign
• Social media content planning, such as developing editorial calendars, managing posting tools and optimizing platform-specific content
• Online community engagement, including moderating comments, responding to inquiries and supporting brand voice across social channels

Writing a Digital Marketing Specialist job description

Now that you know the key skills, salary expectations, popular job seeker search terms and hiring insights for a Digital Marketing Specialist, you’re ready to write a job description.

A Digital Marketing Specialist job description typically includes a compelling summary of the role, a detailed list of duties and responsibilities and the required and preferred skills for the position. You may also want to include information about your company culture, benefits and perks to attract candidates to your open role.

Ready to get started? See our full guide for writing Digital Marketing Specialist job descriptions.

Interviewing Digital Marketing Specialist candidates

Strong candidates for Digital Marketing Specialist positions will be confident answering questions about:

• Building and managing digital marketing campaigns across platforms like search, social and email
• Using tools for analytics, automation or content scheduling
• Creating and optimizing content based on audience, channel or performance data
• Optimizing campaigns to meet goals
• Reporting on campaign outcomes and applying insights to future strategies