Key Members of a Digital Marketing Team
H
ave you given thought to who you need on your team to understand digital marketing?
If you are in a position where it’s time to assemble a dream team, then you should know the key roles and responsibilities. Successor failure can hinge on having the right people in essential parts.
The overall level of achievement is also affected – you can enjoy modest success with one or two done well, but you can grow enormously when building a high-functioning team. These are some key team members to have and the roles they should perform:
Digital marketing team members
Here are the primary and essential roles in the digital marketing team:
1. Project manager
A project manager is like the anchor between digital marketing and the wider marketing team or even more experienced. There are various moving parts to an active digital marketing strategy that the project manager’s role is essential for managing and overseeing.
Digital marketing project managers are usually responsible for managing and creating an overall digital strategy. They lead the design of campaigns, digital link marketing, and overall organizational goals, importantly, liaise or manage between all the people involved.
Digital project managers manage to have at least five years of experience in digital marketing, are very knowledgeable about digital marketing trends and strategy, and are adept at managing time and people. They may have additional skills such as animation or web design.
2. Content strategist and Content manager
A substantial part of any digital marketing strategy is devising and creating content. This can take various forms: social media posts, blog posts, videos, podcasts, animation, and many more. A content strategist is tasked with developing a content strategy based on the business objectives that prioritize digital marketing.
The strategist will develop and research “personas” for the target audience that the company wants to reach. They understand the role of the content in the customer journey, identify what to use and when to use it, and measure the results to optimize future efforts.
A content strategist also creates and maintains editorial calendars, creates style guides, manages budgets, and assists with technology integration. A content manager will always be doing all of these things but also have people management responsibilities. For example, the content manager can manage a team of content creators.
3. Content creators
The content creators have a key role in fulfilling in that they create the deliverables needed for the digital marketing strategy. Their primary responsibilities are to produce content according to the specifications of content strategists or managers, build to a high standard and turn in work on time. The duties and roles of content creators will vary depending on what is required. Sometimes, you also need people who specialize in one area or want people who can do more than one specialty.
Some content creator roles include:
- Copywriters (a skill with the ability to prompt with words)
- Writers
- Animators
- Video producers
- Social media specialists
- Email specialists
- Graphic designers
- Audio specialists
4. SEO specialist
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategy to get your website found quickly in search results. The SEO specialist is responsible for ensuring that the digital content is optimized for searching and implementing current SEO best practices.
SEO specialists will be spending a lot of time in Google Analytics. They will advise SEO strategies to other team members and spend a lot of time reporting, refining strategy, and testing.
5. Social media manager
Social media managers may be run by one person or a team, depending on the company’s size. There is only one person in charge of social media. They will be social media managers and strategists or “doers,” all turned into one. Big teams might have one or more social media strategists that a social media manager manages.
The social media manager is liable for executing and developing the company’s social media strategy. They understand audiences on the platform that attracts them. They create the posting schedule and the posts to go unless they have team members to make posts.
Another crucial part of the social media role is encouraging engagement on social media channels. Social media team members respond to the messages or comments and look for ways to promote the conversation.
The social media manager also keeps a close eye on reporting and analytics. They use these to improve the strategies.
6. PPC manager
Pay Per Click (PPC) manages lives and breathes the advertising side of digital marketing. They specialize in PPC ads and have social media platform advertising through the social media manager often handles this.
PPC ads such as through Outbrain or AdWords require testing, research, and optimizing. The PPC manager spends the days creating ads and monitoring those that are already in play. Someone dedicated to this role does mean that you make better use of the advertising spend.
7. Email marketing manager
Email marketing is a different essential part of any digital marketing strategy. Email marketing manager implements and devises an overall email strategy about key marketing and business goals.
Email takes some specialist information to be used optimally. For example, the email marketing manager needs to have strong marketing automation knowledge, audience segmentation, interesting, engaging emails, the actual writing of persuasive.
An email marketing manager is also an expert in generating sales or leads via email. They know how to create flows that logically take the audience where they’d like them to go.
8. Front end developer
Front-end developers are an essential part of a digital marketing team because they can put the nuts and bolts together that bring the strategy to life on a website.
A front-end developer will create landing pages, call-to-action-buttons, web forms, pop-ups, and other essential design elements for your digital strategy.
Combining key roles
In small businesses, many of these critical roles are linked. For example, someone manages social media and email, or a content manager does those and produces all the other content. It can work just fine, as long as the requirements of each role can be met within the reasonable course of a workday.
There are various multi-talented digital marketing specialists out there, but the main issue with linking roles is that the part quickly becomes too big as you grow. When it happens, something needs to give unless splitting it into specialist positions. When a busy social media manager has more than enough on their plate, email or other things get missed if the social is booming.
The risk of trying to have all the support of a digital marketing strategy covered with some people is that:
- you have to compromise on your experience in particular areas.
- you don’t give strategy the best chance of success or the people in the role to succeed.
Outsourcing marketing tasks
If you are a business owner growing a business that needs to scale digital marketing or a marketing manager in a more prominent organization that needs to add these key marketing roles but can’t do so within, there’s another option.
Some of these key marketing roles and their associated tasks can be outsourced to experienced people. You benefit from specialist marketing knowledge without hiring several people or going through lengthy training periods, especially if you go to a company that employs their team.
When you come to a company like Astral Tech, you get complete marketing services set monthly fee. Our team of specialists can handle any of the core duties you’d give to a marketing employee.
Summary
A fully-developed digital marketing strategy requires several critical specialists in marketing roles. Each of the areas outlined takes several years to learn, and each can quickly grow into a full-time position.
Combining roles is possible, but you risk diluting marketing results by dividing time between the tasks if you’re overgrowing. Your options are hiring full-time employees or outsourcing to a marketing agency with expertise in those key areas.
