What a digital marketing specialist does
A digital marketing specialist manages the online channels that bring buyers to your business. Depending on your needs, that can include paid search and social advertising, search engine optimization, email campaigns, landing pages and marketing automation. Just as important, they measure results, using analytics to show which channels produce leads or sales and adjusting budgets accordingly. For many companies this role decides whether the marketing budget produces customers or simply produces traffic.
Digital marketing is broad, and few people are equally strong in every channel. Finch starts by understanding where your growth needs to come from, then looks for specialists whose experience lines up. During screening we ask candidates to walk us through campaigns they personally ran: the goal, the budget they managed, how they tracked results and what they changed. That approach separates people who operate the platforms from people who only list them.
Typical responsibilities
- Plan, launch and optimize paid search and paid social campaigns
- Improve organic search visibility through content, technical fixes and on-page optimization
- Build and send email campaigns and automated nurture sequences
- Set up conversion tracking and report on results using analytics tools
- Test landing pages, ad copy and offers to improve conversion
- Manage digital advertising budgets and report on return to leadership
Qualifications and credentials
- Hands-on experience managing digital campaigns, ideally across more than one channel
- Working knowledge of major advertising, analytics and email platforms
- Comfort with data, spreadsheets and reporting dashboards
- Platform certifications, such as those offered by Google or Meta, are often an asset
- A diploma or degree in marketing or a related field is common but not essential
Who hires a digital marketing specialist
- E-commerce and direct-to-consumer brands
- Software and technology companies
- Clinics, dental offices and other local service businesses
- Marketing and advertising agencies
- Real estate, home improvement and professional services firms
Where we recruit digital marketing specialist candidates
We fill digital marketing specialist roles for employers across Toronto and the GTA, including North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill, Mississauga, Brampton, Oakville, Burlington, Oshawa and Pickering, and for employers across Canada. GTA employers can meet us at our North York office by appointment.
What Finch checks before you meet a candidate
- Specific campaigns they managed, with clear goals, metrics and lessons
- Depth in the channels that matter most to your business
- Ability to set up reliable tracking, so reported results reflect real leads or sales
- How they explain results to people who are not marketers
- Awareness of Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) consent requirements for email marketing
Interview questions to ask
- Pick a campaign that underperformed. How did you find the problem and what did you change?
- How would you set up tracking to know whether our ads are producing customers, not just clicks?
- If we gave you a fixed monthly budget, how would you decide how to split it between channels?