Here's What It Takes to be a Digital Marketer in 2018

As the agency has grown, we've had to hire fairly aggressively to keep up with demand from our clients. In the arena of B2B digital marketing, there is a core skillset that is needed to be successful in this ever expanding field of Digital Marketing.

I've spent some time reviewing the activities of the team and have attempted to summarise the key skills and knowledge that we look for in a new Digital Marketing hire.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on the below—we'd love to hear from you.

General Digital Marketing Knowledge

• Able to work out conversion rates and COA for any given campaign/asset
• Knows the best practices for landing pages. Can you spot a good LP from and bad one?
• Familiar with landing page creation and testing tools: heat maps, page builders, analytics, A/B Testing
• Can name at least three important digital marketers/gurus/experts and explain why these folks are important 

Knowledge of Content Management Systems 

• Hands-on experience with managing content and plugins/modules on Wordpress, Sitefinity, AEM
• Do you have the ability to set up a WP site with a purchased theme?

Hands-on experience in Search Engine Optimisation

• Knowledge of keyword research and associated tools: Keyword Planner, ahrefs, etc
• Understanding of major Google updates, their purpose and effects on SERPs
• Ranking factors. Can you list important on-page and off-page factors?
• Hands-on experience with Google Search Console—can explain major functions

Deep understanding of Google Analytics

• Able to analyse website traffic data to make recommendations for improving performance, e.g. conversions, sales, etc.
• Possess a certification in Google Analytics
• Can you set up custom dashboards as well as integrate with Google Data Studio and Google Optimize?

Paid Media Creds

• Hands-on experience running ads on major digital media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Display & Search
• Understanding of programmatic ads; how are these different from Google Display Ads?
• Able to explain how a prospect is tracked from ad click to conversion: UTM, Automatic, etc

Email Marketing

• Knows the best practice for designing emails: CTAs, Mobile, A/B testing, Subject & Preview, Formats (HTML, Image sliced)
• Hands-on experience with email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, etc
• Can you design and set up a post-conversion nurture campaign?

Social Media Marketing

• Facebook Insights. Are you able to define specific metrics and extract them from Facebook?
• Do you have accounts on major social media platforms: Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn?
• Knows the various types of content types/posts/ad units available on major platforms - FB Lead Ads, Video Ads, LinkedIn Ads

Marketing Automation

• Hands-on experience with Marketing Automation tools like Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua
• Able to independently set up a typical campaign with a landing page, emails and workflows
• Can design and configure campaign tracking to show ROI on your campaigns

Website/UX/User Personas

• Able to do basic research to develop User Personas
• Then map out a User Journey for these personas
• Knows best practice for website design/UX: F-pattern, CTAs, Information Architecture planning

General Web Technologies

• Can read HTML/CSS and do some basic hacking through the browser's code inspector
• Have a decent understanding of web architecture: server stack, hosting, DNS
• Knows the difference between Javascript and APIs

I reckon this should do for now.

Have what it takes? Well, you're in luck cos we're looking for someone who can check off all the items on the list above.