Marketing’s always going to be a key aspect of any business. Letting your target customers that you exist, as well as putting the word out about your products and services (and why they’re better than your competitors’) should be a given, after all.
And now that much of commerce has moved online, digital marketing is where it’s at. The basics are pretty much the same, but the battlefield and the weapons have changed. This is where a good digital marketer comes in.
But first, let’s discuss what a digital marketer is and what they do.
What is a Digital Marketer and Why Do I Need One?
Basically, a digital marketer is in charge of growing your company’s presence online. As the name suggests, they do this primarily through digital channels. Think social media, Youtube ads, email marketing, and so on. Typically, they use a combination of paid and free methods to accomplish your digital marketing objectives, which they’ll help you set and track.
Digital marketers usually work freelance, but they can also be outsourced or hired in-house. They’re especially critical in this day and age because they control your company’s digital image. Since most people are constantly on their phones and on the internet these days, a good digital marketing strategy is crucial to controlling how your customers perceive you.
To put it simply, a digital marketing campaign can make or break your company, so it’s best left to professionals.
Related read: Six Strategies for Successfully Hiring a Digital Marketer
What Skills Should I Look For When Hiring a Digital Marketer?
Okay, so digital marketing is a vast field. Many digital marketers are jacks or jills of all trades who know enough about the required disciplines. Depending on your needs, however, you might need specialists or experts in given fields.
On the other hand, the following skills are a must for ANY digital marketer:
Great writing skills.
No, you don’t need a Shakespeare for the job, but you do need someone who has the writing chops to draft everything from social media captions to SEO-optimised blog content. At the most basic level, they should be aware of proper grammatical usage and have a sufficient vocabulary to match.
A knowledge of basic SEO principles.
Even if you’re not looking for an SEM specialist, your digital marketer should at least know what SEO metrics to look for. Basic keyword research, keyword optimisation, and on-page signals for ranking are all examples of such.
Ideally, your candidate should also know the difference between black-hat and white-hat SEO. Furthermore, it helps if they know how to use at least one major SEO tool like Moz, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and so on.
A solid grasp of email marketing metrics.
Writing a good email is one thing. Knowing what happens once they’re sent off is a whole nother animal.
It’s not enough to do the former. A good digital marketer should also be able to write an email that a customer would actually open. Apart from that, they should also understand how email marketing works and how to improve upon it if needed.
Analytical skills.
While it’s command of the written word is critical, the biggest part of a digital marketer’s job actually involves numbers. Specifically, this entails staring at various figures and determining the story they’re telling.
Digital marketers should be able to find the right numbers and interpret them correctly to formulate the right strategies. They should be able to derive and analyze the said data from platforms like Google Analytics and social media dashboards.
Excellent communication skills.
Your digital marketer interacts with your customers through the content they create. Thus, they need to be comfortable with communicating with a wide variety of audiences and on equally diverse platforms.
Knowing the right words to use and being able to craft the right message for each situation is thus a non-negotiable.
There are plenty of great candidates for your next digital marketer out there. With Remote Staff, however, not only do we have a rich pool of prescreened and diverse Filipino talent, we can also shortlist the ones who match your needs. All you need to do is request a call back here.
Serena has been working remotely and writing content for the better part of the last decade. To date, she's written for Pepper.ph and Mabuhay Magazine, among others, and has churned out more than a thousand articles on everything from The Basics of Stock Market Investing to How to Make Milk Tea-Flavored Taho at home.
