Digital Marketing Manager: A Simple Guide

Digital Marketing Manager Job Description

A Digital Marketing Manager is responsible for the “digital campaigns” focused on digital customer acquisition. This role is accountable for demonstrating a definite increase in sales or leads by leveraging digital channels to show a positive ROI. Often a Digital Marketing Manager will report to the Marketing Director. 

How Digital Marketing is Different from Traditional Marketing

In aspiring to be a Digital Marketing Manager it is essential to differentiate between your skills. Traditional marketing often requires a different set of skills. If one intends to transition from traditional marketing to digital, they will find they need to relearn skills all over again. As big brands transition to digital marketing channels, it can be difficult for a legacy marketer who has had years of success as they could struggle to adapt to a digital environment. Digital has a rapid, quick feedback cycle. Within minutes, you can experience an uplift in traffic or leads. Campaigns are measurable with multiple live metrics. Traditional channels tend to have effective ways of measuring success, but they have a slow feedback cycle. Often the reporting metrics can be inaccurate due to multiple traditional campaigns running simultaneously. 

For example: Disrupting flyers, while running Radio Ads may result in an influx of new phone call enquires, though it’s difficult to measure which was more effective.

Each uses different channels to solve the same problem.

What Does a Digital Marketing Manager Do?

A Digital Marketing Manager’s daily, weekly, and monthly activities could include; checking on campaigns and calculating month to date performance. Weekly meetings may consist of agency partners and freelancers to ensure continuity on all digital projects. Significant time should be dedicated to learning and attending events with other industry professionals. 

The tasks vary based on the business. For example, B2B companies tend to focus on marketing channels that can focus on particular job roles. Platforms such a Linkedin and Facebook enable the Marketing Manager to target prospects who fit a specific job role, whereas B2C businesses could focus on a broader audience such as working females. A strategy to attract this audience could involve content creation that offers suitable solutions, followed by a serious of ad campaigns and email remarketing. This strategy could be to sell an online product where the entire transaction happens digitally. 

Key responsibilities of a Digital Marketing Manager include: 

1. Predict Annual KPI’s 
2. Monitor Positive ROI Across Channels
3. Consistently Manage Marketing Budgets
4. Create Content Strategies 
5. Manage Agency Partners and Advertising Agencies

Skills You Need to Learn to Manage Digital Channels Effectively:

1. Clear Communication Skills
2. Consistent Brand Management
3. Seasonal Social Media Marketing
4. Relevant Content Marketing
5. Efficient Paid Media Marketing
6. Interpretation of Analytics
7. Managing Technical Implementations

There are a lot of online courses to help upskill oneself in a specific channel. To effectively manage all digital channels, it’s advisable to become a generalist, having a broad understanding of each channel. Most importantly, because digital is evolving so rapidly, it’s essential to nurture the correct mindset and attitude toward digital. 

The Attitude Of a Successful Digital Marketing Manager

A person’s attitude defines their ability to produce long-standing results. The approach of a Digital Marketer requires one to be continually learning and growing. Learning by trying new campaigns that are initially ineffective, but if the individual learns from the failure, they can adopt a growth mindset. A growth mindset is one that embraces failure and often pivots strategies to serve an overarching outcome, and this may even require constant shifting in the budget and possibly defining more effective KPI’s such as “lifetime customer value”.

As a digital marketing agency, our team at Kaomi has observed that Digital Marketing Managers who can stay agile around an outcome, while continually monitoring and evaluating KPI’s, tend to be the most effective in their role. This role requires curiosity, and if an individual is seeking an extremely structured workflow, this role may seem overwhelming for them. 

A Digital Marketing Manager is responsible for showing a positive ROI. This role is different from traditional marketing, where it is challenging to attribute ROI correctly. However, most of all, to be a successful Digital Marketer requires a specific attitude, one that is fluid and adaptive.