Hiring someone to look after digital marketing can feel like the obvious next step when a business wants more enquiries, better visibility or simply more consistency.
The difficulty is that “digital marketing” can cover a huge amount of work. SEO, social media, email, website management, content, analytics, paid campaigns, photography, video and AI Search Visibility can all sit somewhere under that heading.
That can make it surprisingly easy to start with a job title and then gradually add responsibilities to it, without first working out which of those things the business actually needs most.
Start with what needs to change
Before thinking about the person, get clear on why you are adding marketing resource in the first place.
Perhaps you need more qualified enquiries, stronger visibility for an important service or a better way of turning what is happening inside the business into useful marketing. Whatever the priority is, it gives you something more useful to work backwards from.
From there, you can identify the work that is likely to make a difference.
If search visibility is a major problem, SEO and the website may deserve much more attention than social media. If the business already generates plenty of interest but does a poor job of following it up, the priority might sit somewhere completely different.
This sounds simple, but it stops the role becoming a collection of marketing activities that are there because they seem like things a marketer ought to do.
Be realistic about the skills involved
Once you know which areas matter, look at the type of work involved.
A good digital marketer may be comfortable across several disciplines, particularly if they are a strong generalist. That does not mean every part of digital marketing requires the same skillset.
Writing and managing content is different from technical SEO. Managing a website is different from developing one. Planning video content is different from professionally shooting and editing it.
The useful distinction is whether someone needs to own an area, personally deliver the work, or know when to bring in somebody with deeper expertise.
That can make a significant difference to what you actually need from the person you hire.
Look at how often you genuinely need each capability
It is also worth considering how frequently each area needs attention.
Some responsibilities benefit from somebody being close to the business every week, understanding what is happening and keeping activity moving. Other skills may only be needed occasionally or around particular projects.
You can make this fairly practical. Take the main areas you have identified and mark them as daily, weekly, monthly, occasional or project-based.
That might show that most of the work genuinely belongs with somebody inside the business full-time. It might also highlight specialist requirements that are important, but only needed at certain points during the year.
Either way, you now have a much clearer picture than you would get from starting with a generic digital marketing job description.
The requirement should come before the solution
This is often the same conversation we have when businesses approach EDP.
Someone may initially come to us about their website, SEO, content or another specific area. Once we understand what they are actually trying to improve, the requirement can look slightly different.
Part of the value of having search, development, content and creative capability within the same team is that different skills can be brought in where they are genuinely needed. We can also work alongside somebody already inside the business rather than assuming everything needs to sit with us.
The same thinking is useful before making a hire. You may find that one person can comfortably own most of what you need. You may find there are a few areas where specialist support would make more sense. The important thing is that you have worked that out deliberately instead of expecting one role to absorb everything labelled “digital”.
Once you have that picture, you are in a much better position to decide what should sit with an internal hire, where outside expertise might be useful and what sort of marketing setup actually makes sense for the business.
That is what we’ll look at in the next article, including when digital marketing is best handled in-house, externally or through a combination of the two.
Frequently asked questions
Start with what you want marketing to improve, then identify the activities and skills most likely to help achieve that.
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We help businesses across Eastbourne and East Sussex turn this kind of thinking into real results.
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