Which Digital Marketer Do You Actually Need?

“Digital Marketer” has become one of those job titles that can mean almost anything.

An SEO specialist, PPC expert, performance marketer, CRO specialist or someone who does a bit of everything could all reasonably describe themselves as a digital marketer. The problem comes when you’re recruiting one. Generic job adverts are everywhere, with companies thinking they ‘may as well’ leave a range of skills in as they’d be nice to have.

Before you start writing the job description or looking at potential candidates, it’s worth getting really clear about what you actually need. Because while these people might all sit within digital marketing, their skill sets and candidate pools can be very different.

The specialisms hiding behind one title

An SEO specialist is focused primarily on growing organic search visibility. That might cover technical SEO, content strategy, topical authority and increasingly optimisation for AI-driven search.

It’s generally a longer-term discipline where results build over time. A good SEO specialist will be comfortable being measured on rankings, organic traffic and ultimately the quality of the leads or revenue that traffic generates.

A PPC or Paid Media specialist operates in a very different world. Google Ads, Meta, TikTok and increasingly retail media can all come into the mix, with budgets being managed and optimised in real time against ROAS and other commercial targets.

The feedback is much quicker and the pressure is often more immediate. It’s about finding the balance between driving volume and maintaining efficiency.

Then there’s the Performance Marketer. There can obviously be plenty of crossover with paid media, but these roles tend to have a broader commercial remit. Rather than simply managing individual channels, they may own acquisition costs, lifetime value and overall performance across several channels.

A CRO or Conversion Rate Optimisation specialist is different again. Instead of focusing on bringing more people to the website, their job is to get more from the traffic you already have. Testing, UX and funnel optimisation are central to the role, which can make CRO sit almost as closely to product as it does to traditional digital marketing.

And then, of course, there’s the Digital Marketing Generalist.

For many businesses, particularly smaller marketing teams, this is exactly what’s needed. Someone who can manage a mixture of paid, organic, email, content and website activity without necessarily being a deep specialist in any one area.

That breadth can be hugely valuable. But if 70% of the role is actually SEO or paid media, recruiting a generalist and hoping they can cover it probably isn’t the answer.

Why does the distinction matter?

Because these people aren’t necessarily interchangeable.

A brilliant SEO specialist isn’t automatically going to be comfortable managing a significant paid media budget. Equally, someone who has spent their career working with the instant feedback of paid campaigns may not be the right person to build an organic search strategy that takes months to really demonstrate results.

Search itself has changed considerably too. Google increasingly rewards genuine expertise, useful content and a strong understanding of search intent rather than many of the keyword-led tactics that worked in the past.

Add AI search into the equation and the SEO specialist you’re recruiting today may need a pretty different skill set from the person you hired five years ago.

The same applies across the wider digital mix. CRM and lifecycle marketing, for example, has become a specialism in its own right as businesses put more emphasis on retention, automation and customer value.

What about seniority?

The job title only tells you so much.

A Digital Marketing Executive will usually be fairly hands-on, executing activity across one or two channels under the guidance of somebody more senior.

A Digital Marketing Manager is more likely to own the channel mix and budget and make decisions about where time and money should be spent.

At Head of Digital or Digital Marketing Director level, the emphasis shifts again. They’re likely to own the overall digital strategy, team and commercial performance rather than personally managing individual campaigns.

Interestingly, the more senior the role becomes, the less important it can be which particular channel somebody originally specialised in.

At executive level, though, depth of expertise can be crucial. If you genuinely need an SEO specialist, recruiting someone whose experience is 20% SEO and 80% general digital marketing is unlikely to give you the result you’re looking for.

So, who do you actually need?

When we’re taking a digital marketing recruitment brief, there are three things we really want to understand:

What does the person actually need to be good at?
Which channel or discipline is genuinely critical to the role and which skills would simply be nice to have?

How hands-on are they going to be?
Are you looking for somebody to actually build campaigns, optimise activity and get into the detail or someone to set the strategy, manage agencies and own the budget?

What level is the role really operating at?
Forget the job title for a moment. What decisions will this person make and what will they actually be accountable for?

Get those three things right and the candidate pool becomes much clearer.

It also means you’re less likely to end up with a shortlist containing an SEO specialist, a paid media buyer and three digital generalists who have all interpreted the same job advert completely differently.

There can also be plenty of crossover with data, insights and analytics, particularly as digital roles become more commercially accountable. Understanding whether you need a channel specialist, an analyst or someone capable of doing a bit of both can make a big difference to the search.

Getting the digital marketing recruitment brief right

This is a big part of what specialist recruitment should add to the process.

At Brand Recruitment, we’ve been recruiting across marketing and digital since 2005. Before starting a search, we want to understand what the person is actually going to do, where they sit within the wider marketing team and what success will look like.

That gives us a much clearer idea of who to approach and importantly who not to approach.

Whether you’re recruiting a Digital Marketing Manager, SEO specialist, PPC Manager, Performance Marketer or Head of Digital, getting the brief right at the beginning makes the whole process easier.

You can also take a look at our latest marketing and digital jobs to see the types of roles we’re currently recruiting for.

And if you’re not completely sure which type of digital marketer you need, get in touch and we can help you work through the brief before you start the search.