Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Digital Marketing Lead
💰 $90,000 - $150,000
🎯 Role Definition
The Digital Marketing Lead is a strategic, hands-on marketing leader who owns end-to-end digital acquisition and engagement programs. This role develops and executes integrated digital strategies across paid search, paid social, programmatic display, SEO, email and marketing automation, and conversion rate optimization to meet business KPIs (CAC, LTV, revenue, retention). The Digital Marketing Lead will manage cross-functional teams and agencies, own the digital marketing roadmap and budget, and use data-driven insights and testing frameworks to continuously improve campaign performance.
📈 Career Progression
Typical Career Path
Entry Point From:
- Senior Digital Marketing Manager
- Performance Marketing Manager
- SEO Manager / SEM Manager
- Growth Marketing Manager
- Paid Social Manager
Advancement To:
- Head of Digital Marketing
- Director of Marketing / Director of Digital
- VP of Marketing / VP of Growth
- Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
- Head of Customer Acquisition
Lateral Moves:
- Product Marketing Lead
- E-commerce Manager
- CRM & Lifecycle Marketing Lead
- Analytics / Insights Lead
Core Responsibilities
Primary Functions
- Develop and own the annual digital marketing strategy and roadmap for acquisition, retention, and revenue growth, aligning digital initiatives with company objectives and sales/CRM cycles.
- Plan, execute, and optimize multi-channel performance campaigns (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, programmatic display, YouTube) to drive efficient customer acquisition and maximize ROAS and ROI.
- Lead SEO strategy and execution: technical SEO audits, on-page optimization, content strategy, backlink acquisition, and monitoring organic visibility to increase qualified organic traffic and SERP rankings.
- Manage paid search (SEM) strategy including keyword strategy, account structure, bid strategies, shopping campaigns, dynamic search, and optimization using automation and scripts where applicable.
- Build and scale paid social strategy across platforms (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn), including audience segmentation, creative testing, funnel-based messaging, and campaign scaling playbooks.
- Own marketing budgets and media allocation, develop forecasts, run spend pacing, analyze incremental performance, and reallocate budget for maximum impact.
- Lead creative testing and ad development processes in partnership with creative teams and external agencies; establish testing cadences and iterate on top-performing creative assets.
- Implement and manage tracking and measurement infrastructure (GA4 migration, GTM, server-side tracking, conversion API), ensuring accuracy and compliance with privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA).
- Design and run A/B and multivariate experiments across landing pages, funnels, creatives, and email flows to drive measurable uplifts in conversion rates and LTV.
- Partner with product, sales, and analytics teams to develop funnel diagnostics, cohort analysis, and lifecycle strategies that improve retention and reduce churn.
- Lead vendor and agency selection, contract negotiations, and ongoing management to augment in-house capabilities and scale campaigns efficiently.
- Configure and manage CRM and marketing automation platforms (HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce Pardot, Braze): create nurture journeys, lead scoring, and lifecycle communications to convert and retain customers.
- Synthesize campaign performance into executive-level reporting, dashboards (Looker, Tableau, Power BI), and actionable insights that inform strategic decisions and investment priorities.
- Establish and monitor KPIs (CAC, LTV, ROAS, conversion rates, CPM, CTR) and build consistent reporting cadences for stakeholders across marketing, finance, and leadership.
- Lead integrated content marketing programs aligned with SEO and paid channels: content calendar, thought leadership, landing pages, and gated assets to drive qualified leads and pipeline.
- Drive cross-channel attribution modeling, incrementality testing, and media mix optimization to understand true channel contribution to revenue and inform budget allocation.
- Mentor and develop a high-performing digital marketing team; define roles, recommend hiring plans, and coach direct reports on strategy, execution, and career growth.
- Ensure compliance with platform policies and advertising laws, including reviewing creative, landing pages, and claims for regulatory and brand safety.
- Implement customer segmentation and personalization strategies across paid channels and owned properties to increase relevance and conversion.
- Lead crisis response for paid campaigns, addressing performance drops, account suspensions, or policy issues while communicating remediation plans to stakeholders.
- Support product launches, promotions, and seasonal campaigns with end-to-end go-to-market planning, including creative, landing pages, tracking, and post-launch analysis.
- Oversee performance marketing experimentation roadmap — prioritizing tests, defining success metrics, and documenting learnings for repeatable growth playbooks.
- Coordinate with data engineering and analytics to ensure data hygiene, event taxonomy, and accessible datasets for deeper marketing analytics and predictive modeling.
- Advocate for marketing automation and operational efficiency by recommending tooling improvements and process automation to reduce manual work and speed execution.
Secondary Functions
- Provide ad-hoc performance deep dives, exploratory analyses, and recommendations to senior leadership and cross-functional teams.
- Contribute to the organization’s digital measurement strategy, including the roadmap for analytics platforms, tagging standards, and reporting governance.
- Collaborate with product and engineering teams to translate marketing measurement needs into tagging, API, and data pipeline requirements.
- Participate in agile planning and sprint reviews for marketing technology, tagging, and campaign infrastructure projects.
- Support periodic competitive analysis, monitoring competitor digital activity, share-of-voice, and emerging channel/opportunity scouting.
- Facilitate quarterly planning sessions to align marketing goals with cross-functional roadmaps, acquisition targets, and fiscal objectives.
Required Skills & Competencies
Hard Skills (Technical)
- Advanced knowledge of paid media platforms: Google Ads (Search, Display, Shopping, Video), Microsoft Ads, Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and programmatic DSPs.
- SEO expertise: technical SEO audits, keyword research, content optimization, schema markup, crawlability fixes, and backlink strategies.
- Web analytics and tag management: GA4 configuration, Google Tag Manager, conversion tracking, event taxonomy, dataLayer best practices.
- Marketing automation & CRM: hands-on experience with HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce Marketing Cloud/Pardot, Braze, or equivalent for building lifecycle campaigns and lead scoring.
- Measurement & attribution: familiarity with UTM strategy, multi-touch attribution, incrementality studies, MMM (marketing mix modeling), and probabilistic/deterministic attribution approaches.
- A/B testing and experimentation platforms: Optimizely, VWO, Google Optimize (or equivalent), and CRO best practices for landing page and funnel optimization.
- Data literacy: SQL for marketing analytics, Excel/Google Sheets advanced formulas, and ability to work with BI tools (Looker, Tableau, Power BI).
- Creative operations & ad build process: understanding of ad specs, dynamic creative, UGC, video best practices, and creative testing frameworks.
- Budget management and financial acumen: forecasting, pacing, ROI/ROAS calculations, and CAPEX/OPEX awareness for marketing spend.
- Basic technical literacy: HTML/CSS familiarity, experience working with engineering on tracking, and understanding server-side or CAPI implementations.
- Experience with tag governance, data privacy, and consent management tools (CMPs) to ensure compliant tracking and measurement.
- Familiarity with customer lifecycle analytics, cohort analysis, retention metrics, and LTV modeling.
Soft Skills
- Strategic thinker with strong commercial orientation — able to translate business goals into measurable marketing programs.
- Excellent written and verbal communication—experience presenting to executives and aligning cross-functional teams.
- Leadership and people management — proven ability to hire, mentor, and scale multi-disciplinary digital teams.
- Analytical and data-driven mindset — comfortable deriving insights from complex datasets and recommending next steps.
- Project management and organizational skills — ability to run concurrent campaigns, prioritize workstreams, and meet deadlines.
- Collaboration and stakeholder management — experienced in working cross-functionally with product, sales, finance, and engineering.
- Creative problem-solving and experimentation mindset — embraces testing, learning, and iterating rapidly.
- Attention to detail and quality assurance — ensuring tracking integrity, budget accuracy, and brand-safe creative.
- Adaptability and resilience — ability to navigate platform changes, privacy shifts, and fast-paced digital trends.
- Customer-centric orientation — strong empathy for user journeys and experience optimization across channels.
Education & Experience
Educational Background
Minimum Education:
- Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, Data Analytics, or related field.
Preferred Education:
- Master’s degree (MBA, MSc Marketing, Data Analytics) or relevant advanced certification.
- Professional certifications such as Google Ads Search/Display/Video Certification, Google Analytics & GA4, Facebook Blueprint, HubSpot, or other platform certifications.
Relevant Fields of Study:
- Marketing
- Business Administration
- Data Analytics / Statistics
- Communications
- Computer Science (for technical marketing roles)
Experience Requirements
Typical Experience Range: 5 - 10 years in digital marketing with a minimum of 2+ years leading teams or managing cross-functional initiatives.
Preferred:
- 7+ years of progressive digital marketing/ performance marketing experience with demonstrated success scaling acquisition channels and improving unit economics.
- Proven track record managing multi-million dollar digital media budgets, multiple channel strategies, and cross-channel attribution.
- Experience working with e-commerce, SaaS, marketplace, or B2B/B2C growth-stage companies preferred.
- Prior experience managing external agencies or vendor partners and building internal processes for campaign execution and measurement.