Things you can learn from 15 expert digital marketer interviews

Things you can learn from 15 expert digital marketer interviews

Digital marketing is not just promoting a website on Google, managing Facebook pages or running ads. Good marketers have the right mix of technical skills and creative streak. Most importantly, they know about psychology, can analyse data and have great communication skills.

We’ve been talking to expert digital marketers & taking their interviews. We think their insights can help small businesses and new marketers alike. If you’re a fresher digital marketer, these answers can help you with marketing interviews or better your understanding. Additionally, if you’re experienced, read to see if it’s the same as what you think. Small businesses can also understand what goes behind the scenes of marketing agencies and get an idea of what questions to ask before recruiting one.

Whom have we interviewed?

We interviewed founders of marketing agencies, social media specialists, strategists and marketing directors. With an average experience of about 10 years, they are the right people to guide us on the topic. If you prefer, you can read all the individual interviews on our Interview’s website. Otherwise, in this article, I’ll try and sum up all the answers together.

Interview Question 1: How did you get where you are?

Most of our experts said that they are really passionate about social media / digital marketing and love what they do. Those who have their own agencies, either used to freelance or work in other agencies before they opened up their own company. Hard work, ethics, communication and the drive for the client’s success were the most talked about skills.

Bar Chart on what was most talked about

Interview Question 2: What will success look like for you in a few weeks?

The idea behind this question was to understand what are they looking forward to in their work. Vandana Kapur, director at Channel, has meticulously laid out the plans for the coming weeks and is excited about the results - be it adding some huge brands or increasing the services offered. There are three major things all experts are looking forward to:

  1. Partner’s success: Perhaps, this is what differentiates experts from everyone else. They look forward to improving engagement rates, generate leads or start some new strategies for their clients first and then for their own self.

  2. More partnerships: This goes without saying that we’re all looking for more clients and partners

  3. Increasing offering: Digital marketing is a very generic term for a vast majority of services. A lot of experts are looking forward to increasing their offering. They are trying to include social media management, content creation and SEO services.

Interview Question 3: What are you actively focused on learning about these days and how?

From answers to this question, we understand that marketing is perhaps one of the most learning-intensive fields of work. Experts are learning to use facial recognition as an opportunity to help clients, ad targeting, graphic design and building a community. Zara Baker is interested in the use of Artificial Intelligence. While Stephanie Sadler says that she understands how Facebook is now giving more importance to groups instead of pages. So she is now learning how to create and run groups in a strategic and effective way.

Interview Question 4: How do you prioritize your tasks for the day or week?

Time management has been stated as one of the biggest problems in the field. 10 out of 15 marketers say that managing tasks, time or work-life balance are the most difficult part of the job. From apps like Asana, to lists and whiteboards, our creative geniuses use all kinds of digital and physical tools to make their life easier. Danni Moon’s partner goes crazy because of the number of lists she is making on a daily basis - be it shopping, holidays or work!

Interview Question 5: Which social media platform is working best for your brand at the moment?

Though a few of the answers were inclined towards “it depends”, everyone has their own personal favourite, like Evan Arancibia who’s 100% faith is on Facebook marketing.

  1. Facebook: 41%
  2. Instagram: 27%
  3. LinkedIn: 16%
  4. Twitter: 8%
  5. Youtube: 8%

Which platform is really working

Quora was mentioned once, but beyond that, no one talked about any other platform.

Interview Question 6: What have you found to be the most effective marketing tactic or platform, beyond social media?

Our experts claim that building trust and authenticity is one of the most important and effective ways to market a product. Other factors, as answered by our experts, listed in no particular order were:

  1. Word of mouth
  2. Networking
  3. Blending personal & professional lines together
  4. Email marketing, along with emails to employees or friends
  5. Meetups and Seminars
  6. Blogging, other forms of content marketing

Interview Question 7: What is a key metric you’re measuring these days, and why?

Gone are the days of vanity metrics like the number of followers, likes and shares. The winner for this question was, as expected, Engagement. Apurba answers, that measuring engagement gives her an idea on what is appreciated by her audience. Traffic, ROI, and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) were other metrics which were talked about. Above all, Evan says that the most important metric he measures is his happiness! He rightly claims that this business can be stressful and chaotic. He pinpoints the things stressing him out and tries to fix them. We can all learn from Evan that if we ourselves not happy, our business will suffer.

Interview Question 8: If you could choose to implement only one marketing tactic for the next 3 months, what would you choose to do?

We asked this question to understand what is that one silver bullet which works for our experts. Thinking we might get some actionable points for the readers. To our disappointment, we found out that there is probably no silver bullet which works for all. Everyone had different answers and almost all forms of digital marketing got mentioned. Be it Facebook networking, one to one interactions, google ads, content marketing or email marketing.

Interview Question 9: What problem are you focused on solving for your customers?

Lead generation was by far the most popular answer to this question, followed by more subjective answers, like Gabrielle Crumley helps her clients by giving them a sense of direction with strategies, creating a plan and consulting them on where to start. There are also geniuses like Cherry Fernandez who have identified big gaps in her company’s marketing and is initiating marketing strategies for a completely ignored customer segment.

Interview Question 10: What is your #1 tip for a newbie in marketing?

Learning and educating is the #1 tip for new digital marketers from experts. Be it through online lectures, experienced coaches, 1 on 1 consultations or trial and error, you can’t build your digital marketing game without education. We would like to end this article, by Tawney Allen’s tip for new digital marketers “All the secrets of what works comes from you. Discover it by doing the work.”

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