Digital marketers are more than just another addition to your workforce; they’re the framework behind your company’s market reputation. From online advertising to coordinating digital campaigns, digital marketers can determine how attracted clients will be to your products and services. So, it’s safe to say that a digital marketer’s job is integral to any company’s success.
With such an important role, you’ll want to take time to assess each candidate’s skills carefully during your hiring process. But this is easier said than done, especially if you don’t know what to look out for. Luckily, this article contains everything you need to know about digital marketing skills, their importance, and how to test for them. We will also explore 10 vital skills to look for in a digital marketer.
Why are digital marketer skills important?
With the online market growing daily, digital marketing is becoming more crucial for business success. Consequently, we’ll explore why digital marketing skills are necessary for any organization.
1. Better reach and online visibility
According to Statista, over 95% of people in the U.S. between the ages of 18 and 29 and 30 and 49 own smartphones, most of which can connect to the internet. With these internet users spending over six hours online daily, digital platforms are certainly the way to go if you want to gain publicity.
With digital marketing skills within your company, you can harness the potential of digital platforms like social media to reach even more people. This can help you boost sales and raise awareness about your company and its products.
2. Reduced cost and better ROI
Traditional marketing practices like billboards, print advertising, and cold calling can be expensive. Plus, you can never accurately project how many people the campaigns are going to reach or convert, which sometimes means a low ROI.
Digital marketing allows you to reach more people at a more cost-effective price. Excellent digital marketers can apply their skills to create and tailor campaigns to suit your budget and use analysis tools to find out exactly where your campaigns go and who they reach. This can help you plan your marketing strategies better and take steps to ensure you receive a great ROI on your company’s campaigns.
3. Data-driven decision making
Digital marketers with extensive skills and a great job fit should have an in-depth knowledge of analytics platforms like Google Analytics or CRM platforms like HubSpot. These tools are especially important for analyzing the performance of digital marketing campaigns, tracking customer behavior, and monitoring your conversions.
Using the data obtained from these platforms, you can make critical decisions about your marketing. For example, based on the information you get, you can decide to increase or decrease your budget or even use another online advertisement medium.
4. Better brand reputation management
With skilled digital marketers, you can build a good reputation that showcases your company’s brand and demonstrates your values. Using structured campaigns, social media optimization, and great brand visuals, you can build an image of innovation and inclusion alongside your fundamental company culture.
Digital marketing skills also enable you to build stronger client relationships through strategic and authentic online engagement. By leveraging platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and targeted email campaigns, you can respond to client needs in real-time, gather valuable feedback, and showcase positive reviews—all of which build trust and attract new business.
10 essential skills to look out for in your next digital marketer
While there are numerous skills a digital marketer should possess, they need some fundamental capabilities and software knowledge to excel in their roles. So, let’s go over 10 vital skills you should look out for when hiring your next digital marketer:
1. Data analysis and interpretation
Digital marketers are responsible for collecting, interpreting, and utilizing data to drive decision-making processes, specifically regarding online visibility and marketing. To achieve this, they need data analysis and interpretation skills and familiarity with software like Google Analytics.
These skills allow digital marketers to harness critical thinking to analyze data and derive insights. For example, they can track insights like audience behavior and distribution to know how to align their targets better. This means that the digital marketer can focus campaigns on high-converting audience segments while still testing other audience fragments and raising awareness for your brand.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The concept of online marketing is founded on the ability to reach people on the internet, either through blogs, ads, social media posts, or any content. To achieve this, digital marketers employ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to ensure their content is visible to the right audience on search engines like Google.
When evaluating a candidate’s SEO skills, it’s vital to check for knowledge of on- and off-page SEO, keyword research, and link-building strategies. One way to spot these skills is to assess their understanding of audience search intent, search rankings, and organic traffic growth.
3. Content marketing and copywriting
Digital marketing can only be successful with the right content and content strategy. As such, a great digital marketer must be able to create, plan, and distribute visual, written, or audio content based on your company’s goals, needs, and audience.
In addition, they must be able to write engaging, user-friendly copy using tools like Google Docs and Microsoft Word. When assessing their skills, be sure to check for a portfolio showcasing their effective campaigns and clear audience targeting.
4. Social media management and strategy
A good digital marketer has a deep understanding of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. They know how these platforms work, how their algorithms rank content, and what platform works best for specific audiences.
Social media management and strategy skills allow the digital marketer to combine this knowledge with insights from engagement metrics to find out what marketing strategy works best. As a result, they can create effective content calendars with tools such as Excel or Google Sheets, plan for engagement tactics, and run paid campaigns.
5. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Conversion Rate Optimization involves improving a website, landing page, or marketing funnel to increase the percentage of visitors that perform a desired action. Digital marketers use this skill to ensure people make a purchase, fill out a form, or even download an application or resource.
Candidates with excellent CRO skills can identify barriers to audience conversion, apply A/B testing to improve website performance and modify site content to enhance audience experience. They are also proficient with CRO tools like Hotjar, Optimizely, and Google Optimize.
6. Paid ads
The job of a digital marketer revolves around publicizing services and products to attract customers. One way they achieve this is by using paid ads. An exceptional digital marketer should be proficient in managing ads using platforms like Google Ads, social media (Instagram, Facebook ads, etc.), and even LinkedIn campaigns.
They should also be able to conduct effective keyword research for search engine campaigns to ensure they reach the right audience. An adequate understanding of different ad formats, such as search ads, display ads, shopping ads, and video ads is equally important.
7. Collaboration and communication
To function effectively, digital marketers work with other people and teams, including content writers and the sales team. They can even work with other digital marketers to implement new strategies or analyze old ones. So, for them to function effectively, they must be able to collaborate properly with others, share ideas, and listen to suggestions.
To test for communication skills, you must assess their ability to speak clearly and fluently in your company’s primary language. To measure their collaboration skills, evaluate their active listening skills, information delivery, and ability to receive and give constructive criticism. Also, identify if they’re team players and how well they trust their team to perform tasks effectively. Proficiency with collaboration tools like Slack is also a must for digital marketers.
8. Project management
Digital marketers’ primary function is overseeing campaigns, from ideation to execution. This means that online marketing campaigns are like projects to them. Essentially, they need project management skills to organize various aspects of these campaigns and ensure that all tasks are performed correctly within the appropriate period.
When assessing digital marketers’ project management skills, you should test for organizational skills, budgeting, and resource management. You should also evaluate their ability to use project management tools like ClickUp or Basecamp.
9. Attention to detail
Attention to detail ensures that digital marketers thoroughly review, analyze, and execute tasks with precision, ensuring that all components are consistent and error-free. This skill covers everything from creating flawless campaigns to ensuring brand consistency and data accuracy.
During recruitment, you can evaluate attention to detail by checking the candidate’s portfolio or performing an interview. When analyzing their portfolio, check how well they prioritize little details, avoid spelling or punctuation errors, and maintain consistent personal branding.
10. Email marketing
Aside from social media, digital marketers also use emails to send campaigns to customers either to engage them or to publicize a new service or product. To do this, they must be able to draft, edit, and schedule campaigns using tools like Mailchimp and Hubspot.
Furthermore, digital marketers must be able to analyze insights from each email campaign at the end of the process. So, in addition to checking for basic email campaign skills, evaluate their knowledge of the significance of open rates, click-through rates, or email conversions.
How to test for these skills ahead of your interviews
While structured interviews are great for evaluating digital marketer skills, it’s always a good idea to test for them even before the interview process. With skill-based testing, you don’t just identify that the candidates have these skills, but you can accurately determine the proficiency level they’re at.
A pre-employment tool like Vervoe makes this possible, as you can administer specialized assessments that adequately measure these digital marketer skills with reliable testing questions.
In this section, we will discuss how to test for digital marketing skills thoroughly before the interview stage using Vervoe:
1. Give practical tests for technical skills like Google Analytics
Using practical tests helps you assess a candidate’s ability to apply theoretical concepts in digital marketing to real-world scenarios rather than testing only surface-level knowledge. These tests use real-world data sets to evaluate the candidate’s ability to analyze data, interpret metrics, and make informed decisions.
When designing your practical tests, you can use demo accounts to see how well they can operate the platform and derive relevant information from data. For example, when evaluating a candidate’s Google Analytics skills, use a Google Analytics Demo account or create a mock Google Analytics property with sample data. To host these tests, you can also use a virtual assessment platform like Vervoe.
Vervoe lets you create practical tests to evaluate technical digital marketer skills using sample data and practical questions. You can also combine questions that test the candidates’ skills with multiple aspects of a platform’s functionality, such as data entry, interpretation, and segmentation.
2. Assess their content and copywriting skills with content creation tasks
Content is often the first connection a brand has with its audience, especially when reaching out to them through multimedia. Therefore, your digital marketer must adapt your company’s brand voice and tone while writing your content and copy.
To assess this, you can give the candidates a concise content brief on a testing platform such as Vervoe so they can write a sample copy for Instagram or Facebook. You can also design tasks that reflect the type of writing they would encounter in the role. For example, you can structure a question requiring them to draft a 500-word blog post on a trending topic in your industry and link it to your company’s products or services.
3. Use job simulations that mimic real campaign work
While what and why questions are great for testing fundamental concepts and general knowledge of tools related to digital marketing, they’re not as great for in-depth evaluation. Instead, it’s best to use situation-based questions that demonstrate how the candidates can think and apply their problem-solving skills to solve hypothetical issues.
This is where job simulations come in. Vervoe uses realistic job simulations, which are situation-based inquiries at their core, to assess digital marketer skills. These questions use a day-in-the-life experience to evaluate how well the candidate would perform in various scenarios common in the role.
4. Combine skill tests to evaluate technical proficiency
For a more holistic skill evaluation process, you should combine multiple skill assessments instead of using just one. In doing so, you can thoroughly assess each technical skill required for digital marketing, such as knowledge of Google Analytics, content writing, and social media management. Additionally, this lets you spot each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses so you can hire one with extensive proficiency in the technical skills you want.
Vervoe allows you to design your own skill tests using customizable questions from our question bank or by drafting them from scratch. Plus, you can combine tests in our skills assessment library to create the perfect digital marker assessment based on your needs. For example, you can combine our content writer skills test and digital marketing manager assessment when hiring a digital marketing manager for a more in-depth evaluation.
The seamless way to hire digital marketers
To hire the right digital marketer for your company, you must go beyond surface skill testing. It’s one thing for a candidate to have the skills you want, and it’s another for them to be proficient enough for your standards. Effective skill testing can help you spot candidates who aren’t just skilled but have enough proficiency to perform exceptionally in your company. One way to integrate skill testing into your hiring process is by using an assessment tool like Vervoe.
From realistic job reviews to scalable assessments, Vervoe’s features make skill testing and identifying excellent digital marketers easy. Plus, you don’t have to worry about bias since the system grades all your candidates based on the same criteria set to your preferences.
The best part is that getting started is just as easy as setting up your assessment. Register for a free demo today, and let’s show you how!
