Hire the Top 3% of Freelance Digital Marketers

Demand for Top-notch Digital Marketers Is High

Digital marketing now encompasses the vast majority of marketing efforts for businesses across industries, given that emerging technologies and analytical advancements have pushed traditional marketing approaches like print and television media ads to the background. According to spring 2024 CMO Survey data, digital marketing spending grew by an average of 8.9% over the previous 12 months, more than three times the rate of marketing spending overall. This pattern, in which companies invest more in digital marketing than other marketing activities, is projected to continue for the foreseeable future.

To remain competitive in this advertising environment, business owners and leaders must hire digital marketing experts who understand the intricacies of digital tools and techniques. Yet, finding and hiring the right digital marketer can be challenging due to the broad range of capabilities and skills required. Digital marketing often involves an integrated approach encompassing paid ads, search engine optimization (SEO), website conversion rate optimization (CRO), email marketing, social media strategy, content development, and customer relationship management (CRM).

Throughout this guide, we discuss some of the essential areas of digital marketing and how to hire the right expert for your needs. The guide can also help you determine whether a digital marketing generalist is best for your business goals or if a specialist in a particular technique is a better option. Finally, we walk through strategies for crafting job descriptions and conducting interviews for new digital marketing hires.

What Attributes Distinguish Quality Digital Marketers From Others?

Hiring digital marketers is essential for increasing the reach of your business’s promotion efforts, thereby driving traffic, sales, and customer retention. Without digital marketing experts on your bench, the sheer variety of methods and tools for accomplishing growth through digital channels can be overwhelming, especially considering the need for continuous tracking and optimization. A skilled digital marketing specialist can integrate your marketing campaigns within a comprehensive strategy, helping to ensure that your marketing investments are being used efficiently and opening your business to short- and long-term growth.

While digital marketing experts need to have a wide range of skills and professional traits, here are six essential attributes that distinguish top-quality digital marketers from the rest of the candidates in the applicant pool:

• Data-driven mindset — Look for a marketing expert with an analytical capacity for evaluating sales and marketing results across platforms. High-quality marketing experts must be able to collect and process performance data (pertaining to SEO, social media, website analytics, and other digital techniques) and synthesize the information within a cohesive marketing plan.
• Customer focus — Hire a digital marketing expert who is committed to understanding and mapping out your brand’s unique customer journey. They should have experience creating digital marketing strategies tailored to the needs and preferences of specific audiences, leading to increased sales and long-term, loyal customer relationships.
• Creativity — In a crowded digital marketing sector, digital marketers must be able to create content and strategies that separate your organization from the competition. They should have a keen eye for text, image, and video designs that will resonate with your target audience and be able to articulate a vision to designers, content creators, and stakeholders.
• Flexibility — The world of digital marketing is constantly evolving, so the expert you hire must adapt to changing platforms, strategies, marketing methods, and industry trends. Approaches that worked a year ago may have lost efficacy, so continuous testing and optimization are mandatory.
• Top-level communication — Soft communication skills are of the utmost importance for digital marketing experts. The digital marketer you hire must be able to communicate openly and honestly with other employees on your team. In some cases, they may need to teach stakeholders at your organization how to leverage tools and data correctly. Beware of digital marketers who are unwilling to explain what they are doing.

How Can You Identify the Ideal Digital Marketing Consultant for You?

When hiring a digital marketing consultant, begin by analyzing and documenting the business objectives motivating your hiring decision. Here are a few questions you can ask yourself—and your hiring team—at the outset:

• What goals do I want this marketer to achieve or help the business achieve? Some of the goals a digital marketer could help your organization achieve include increasing website traffic, sales revenue, B2B leads, or customer retention. You may also define more specific goals, such as developing social media posts that drive greater engagement, improving ad spend allocation, optimizing email marketing campaigns for higher click-through rates (CTRs), or raising your organic search ranking in Google.
• What skills and expertise are vital for this digital marketing role? Based on your business objectives, begin to outline some of the specific skill sets that will be necessary. For example, a B2B company that has identified lead generation as a primary objective may want to enlist talent with considerable expertise in targeted paid advertising, CRO, and CRM tools (e.g., HubSpot, Salesforce). For this business’s objectives, social media, search marketing, community management, or affiliate marketing may be lower priorities.
• Would a digital marketer with generalist or specialist capabilities be more appropriate for your needs? A digital marketing expert with generalist capabilities may offer advantages for small teams or businesses looking for a holistic approach to managing digital campaigns and strategies. These individuals can picture your entire digital ecosystem and align your efforts across platforms and campaigns. They can also help allocate time and resources based on marketing performance data. Other brands may seek marketers specializing in a specific type of digital marketing, such as SEO, SEM, content marketing, social media, or affiliate marketing. Yet even specialists should have a broad understanding of other digital marketing practices.
• How will this role integrate with the rest of your business’s team? A strong digital marketing consultant or expert must be able to integrate and communicate well with your entire team. They should also be able to explain what they are doing so that team members can measure progress and learn from one another, encouraging sustained, long-term results.

It’s also important to consider which level of marketing talent your project requires:

Junior digital marketers will have one to four years of experience and demonstrate foundational knowledge in all the primary areas of digital marketing, such as SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, and CRO. They may have less on-the-ground expertise in developing or optimizing campaigns holistically, but a junior talent with strong communication skills and a passion for learning can be ideal for executing campaigns as part of an existing marketing strategy.

Mid-level digital marketers with five to nine years of experience can be an ideal option for many organizations. These individuals should have a strong background and real-world experience in all the main areas of digital marketing and understand how to optimize campaigns and integrate them into a cohesive marketing strategy. Mid-level digital marketing talent may offer the best value for your investment and have the strong potential to grow and succeed with your company in the long term.

Senior digital marketers with 10 or more years of experience may be optimal for a variety of business scenarios, such as short-term or high-urgency projects that require surefire outcomes or projects in sensitive industries. These individuals may also be ideal for large companies, given that their expertise level should allow them to jump in and quickly adapt to complex organizational structures and needs. During the interview, these candidates should be able to describe highly successful outcomes achieved in their past and current work and articulate how these tried-and-tested experiences will enable them to meet your organization’s objectives with great precision.

What Are Some Key Complementary Skills for Digital Marketing Consultancy?

Digital marketing is a broad discipline that almost always involves a combination of techniques. Depending on your business objectives, you may want to hire a digital marketing professional with specialized expertise—but, in general, all digital marketers should have a strong understanding of the following approaches:

• Social media marketing — An expert digital marketer should be able to create engaging social media posts, develop social communities, and leverage analytics to align social media efforts with your overall business goals. They should understand how to launch organic and paid social media campaigns and be equipped to optimize them to build brand recognition, drive website traffic, increase sales, and foster strong loyalty across social channels.
• SEO — Digital marketing experts use SEO techniques to develop and refine content on a website (or digital platform or app), causing the pages to rank higher for organic search in Google and other search engines. SEO is essential for long-term growth, as it generates unpaid traffic and sales. Look for an expert who knows how to conduct keyword research, improve your website content and structure, and use analytics to drive your site’s SEO performance.
• Search engine marketing (SEM) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising — Expert digital marketers should understand SEM best practices and be capable of integrating SEO with PPC advertising campaigns. Paid search advertisements (especially Google Ads) can quickly boost your brand’s visibility and conversions, while other tactics, such as social media management and SEO, can take much longer to achieve visible results. Consider looking for a digital marketing expert who can design and execute cost-effective ad campaigns, select and optimize your brand’s keywords and ad copy, analyze results, and adjust the ads to achieve the highest possible return on investment (ROI).
• Email marketing — A strong digital marketer should know how to execute and optimize email outreach to promote products, grow leads, and build customer loyalty. Email campaigns are important because they are a low-cost strategy for engaging high-interest subscribers and customers. A strong digital marketer should know how to execute and improve your email outreach efforts, using techniques like A/B testing and audience segmentation to enhance engagement and drive conversion.
• Content creation — The digital marketing expert you hire must know how to create, publish, and distribute content that engages your target audience. Digital marketing content almost always involves a prominent text component, even when the messaging is relayed in visual, audio, or dynamic formats. Therefore, look for an expert with strong writing skills, attention to detail, creativity, and experience tailoring messages to support brand development. Content marketing may also dovetail with public relations efforts.
• Video marketing — Digital marketing experts are responsible for strategizing and guiding video content creation to fit with a company’s goals and brand, so the one you hire should have a strong foundational knowledge of video content creation for social media posts, ads, and other channels. In some cases, digital marketers will develop video content themselves, while at other times, a video production specialist will do so—especially in the case of longer-form video content, such as educational videos shared on platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. Such longer-form content often requires a more substantial background in video editing, scriptwriting, and familiarity with video production software. It is helpful to clearly state your video production objectives and technical requirements in the job description.
• Marketing analytics — The digital marketing expert you hire must be able to obtain, understand, and make strategic decisions based on real-world marketing data. This skill is crucial for digital marketers and overlaps with all other aspects of digital marketing and advertising, including SEO, social media, and email marketing. While digital marketing experts may not have an advanced mathematical skill set, they should be highly adept at viewing, analyzing, and explaining the data.

You may also want to consider the digital marketing candidate’s familiarity with maintaining and building relationships with external partners in the following areas:

• Influencer marketing — Enlisting influencers to build brand awareness can help your organization achieve its social media objectives, especially in the current crowded advertising environment. For optimal results, the digital marketing expert will need to help find, nurture, and manage these relationships, ensure brand alignment, and support the influencer with content creation, optimization, and strategic guidance. The expert will also be required to track, analyze, and report on performance metrics to ensure campaigns are driving ROI.
• Affiliate marketing — Organizations that sell goods and services directly to consumers online may find that affiliate marketing is a valuable complement to the rest of their digital marketing activities. This approach involves enlisting third-party content creators (e.g., influencers, bloggers, or product review websites) to promote the brand to a wider audience using trackable, commission-generating links or codes. Not all digital marketers will have strong backgrounds in affiliate marketing, so if this is a priority, be sure to vet candidates accordingly.

How to Write a Digital Marketing Expert Job Description for Your Project

After you determine the type of digital marketing expertise needed to accomplish your goals, you will be ready to build your job description for the role. This is extremely important, as it will help you find the best matches possible. Consider developing your job description using the following structure:

• Clear job title — Develop a title for your role that clearly shows what you are looking for without superfluous language, such as: “Digital Marketing Manager for [Industry/Company].” Instead of “manager,” you could use a term like “expert,” “consultant,” or “strategist,” depending on what level of experience you need and how you imagine this individual working with your organization.
• Introduction and job summary — Start by briefly describing your company and mission. Then, outline the primary responsibilities and objectives of the role, as discussed earlier in this guide. This section should also include key platforms and digital marketing tools that you use or intend to use so potential applicants will know which experience will be most applicable to the role. The summary can also set the tone about what you expect from the candidate and the general results that should be achieved within the timeframe.
• Key responsibilities — List the essential day-to-day tasks the digital marketing expert will have in this role. Depending on your company’s needs and existing structure, this could involve doing a general—or more specialized—marketing audit, initiating or further expanding marketing platforms and tools, or growing sales and traffic through strategies including SEO, Google Ads, CRO, social media marketing, and more. While the responsibilities for the position may evolve over time, outlining the expert’s intended role at the outset is essential both for you and them.
• Required skills and qualifications — Digital marketing is a broad discipline with thousands of commonly used software applications and online platforms, so avoid requiring expertise with too many specific tools. Otherwise, you may scare away high-quality talent with substantial experience using related products but not those named. However, some skills and tools may be non-negotiable, including experience with Google Analytics and major social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. Also, be sure to mention requirements about SEO, paid ads, and content management.
• Preferred skills — This area is a chance to outline your wish list of marketing technology tools and skills, so don’t be shy about specifics. In fact, the preferences named in this section will give the applicant a better understanding of your company’s tech stack and overall marketing plan, allowing them to understand whether their background aligns with your organization. Still, it’s important to remember that your ideal candidate doesn’t need to check every box in this section.

What Are the Most Important Digital Marketing Expert Interview Questions?

Given the wide range of experiences, knowledge, and personality traits digital marketing candidates may possess, it is essential to invest time and care when deciding which individuals to interview. Narrow down three to five of the best candidates and schedule 30- to 60-minute conversations with each. Remember to use the same structure and questions for each interview. Take notes and consider scoring the candidates using a rubric for qualities like experience, preparation, having a plan for your role, cultural fit, and communication style.

After initial greetings, ask the candidate to start by introducing themself. They should outline their digital marketing background (including some achieved results) and name what they seek in this new role. Their answer will offer insight into their professional priorities, and right off the bat, you should be able to judge their passion for digital marketing. If they do not have this spark of professional enthusiasm and curiosity, they may not be an ideal fit for the role. If you have employees on your team with a technical marketing background, have them ask follow-up questions to suss out the candidate’s technical marketing chops. Here are some questions that you should consider asking:

Can you describe a successful digital marketing campaign that you managed or developed? What was your strategy, and what were the results?

The candidate should describe a real-world scenario in which they devised and implemented an effective digital marketing strategy. Their answer should showcase how they combined creativity and analytical approaches to develop the marketing plan, guide it through implementation, and then make ongoing adjustments based on the performance data. By hearing their thought process and logic, you’ll be able to understand the steps the marketing expert would take with your organization and their confidence in doing so. To ensure their example is relevant to your project, consider tailoring the question to ask for an example specific to your type of organization or industry (e.g., B2B, B2C, e-commerce, or service companies).

What analytics or data tools do you use to interpret the performance of your digital marketing campaigns, and what are the key metrics you evaluate?

The applicant should name at least one or two specific tools they use for marketing analytics and data interpretation, such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and Tableau. They should describe how they use these tools to evaluate essential metrics like cost per click, conversion rate, CTR, and social media engagement. The candidate should also indicate that increasing the overall marketing ROI or return on ad spend is the primary goal.

Next, briefly introduce your company and the role, and ask the candidate for their impressions of your organization’s website, social media accounts, or other marketing channels. This is an opportunity to test the applicant’s preparation and understand what they identify as strengths and growth opportunities for your digital presence. It’s also a good idea to ask the candidate about their experience or knowledge of your industry. While they might not have an extensive background in your niche, they should demonstrate curiosity and an eagerness to learn. Here are some questions that may be appropriate at this stage of the interview:

How do you use CRO to improve sales or successful user outcomes on a website?

You may want to frame this question around your organization’s website to see if the candidate has put thought into your platforms. While this question can bring about a bit of an open-ended response, the candidate should mention important CRO topics like user experience improvements, A/B testing, landing page and form optimization, content improvement, personalization strategies, and improved checkout processes (for e-commerce companies). By testing the marketer’s comfort and familiarity with discussing these topics, you’ll be able to evaluate how they could help develop successful campaigns for your platform.

What is your experience with content marketing, and what writing and SEO techniques do you use to improve content reach and exposure?

Content is a fundamental part of digital marketing, so gauging a candidate’s direct experience with content development for websites and other marketing channels is essential. They should confidently describe strategies for developing useful, authoritative, and engaging content that adheres to SEO best practices and incorporates targeted keywords and strong internal links. They may also discuss developing images, videos, infographics, and other media types to convey brand messaging.

What methods have you used to manage and improve a brand’s reputation online, including in search or social media?

For this question about digital branding and reputation management, the applicant may reflect on their experience building effective and consistent branding on social media, eliciting online reviews and testimonials, developing influencer partnerships, and creating thought leadership content. Other relevant topics include monitoring and responding to online feedback, managing crisis communications, and leveraging SEO techniques to enhance brand visibility. As a key ambassador of your brand and organization, the candidate must demonstrate a strong background and competencies in this realm.

Throughout the interview, be sure to evaluate the candidate’s ability to communicate easily with you and mesh with your organization’s team and culture. You may want to ask specific questions about their communication preferences (e.g., channels and frequency) and how they prefer to work within a team environment. Finally, ask the candidate if they have questions. Their curiosity about the role is important, and the questions may illuminate their priorities and interests. At the end, explain the rough hiring timeline and next steps for the role, particularly if they are an ideal candidate you may like to move forward with.

Why Do Companies Hire Digital Marketing Experts?

In the modern business landscape, it’s imperative that organizations hire digital marketers to keep their promotion, advertising, and customer engagement activities on track. Even organizations that have relied upon traditional advertising channels in the past are transitioning to digital, with fewer than 9% of companies remaining in the nascent stage of their digital marketing transformation in the fall of 2023, according to The CMO Survey. Digital marketing experts can help organizations navigate the ever-changing online environment, engaging new potential customers and nurturing relationships with existing audiences.

A digital marketing expert should have a strong overall knowledge of the online ecosystem—including sectors like social media marketing, SEO, email marketing, and marketing analytics—and know how digital tools and techniques can be leveraged to generate leads and sales tailored to your organization. Done well, this can take your organization to new levels of success, both in the short and long term.