Companies cannot afford to ignore online marketing. Nowadays, even people who want to make their purchase in brick and mortar will firstly check the situation online. They will compare the prices, have a look at the websites and social profiles of different vendors, and then they will decide where they will spend their hard-earned money.
Businesses are well aware of this situation. Many of them advertise a job opening for Digital Marketing Manager. This position didn’t exist ten years ago, but now it belongs to the most important jobs in the marketing department, if not in the entire company. And you can find many ads on the job boards.
DMM responds for the entire online marketing strategy, including social media, SEO, SEM, PPC, email marketing, other online sales channels. Let’s have a look at the questions you may face in this interview, and how to answer them to make a good impression on the hiring managers.
Why do you want to work as a digital marketing manager?
Focus on your skills and experience with online marketing. Say that you enjoy setting up, leading, and evaluating online marketing campaigns.
You can briefly refer to your past successes in the field (if you have any experience with digital marketing, either from professional or personal life). Do not forget to speak with enthusiasm in your voice. Enthusiasm can take you a long way in this interview, especially if you lack experience or have any other disadvantage when compared to other job candidates.
Tell us more about your experience in the field.
Try to tell them a story of success. It can be anything from improving the conversion rate of a website to running marketing campaigns with positive ROI for your previous employer, or for your clients (if you worked as a freelancer).
You can even show them a portfolio, and explain, with the help of pictures or online presentations, what exactly you did and achieved in the field of digital marketing. If it is your first job application in the field of online marketing, you can talk about offline marketing experience, or what you did and achieved online in your personal life. Anything you talk about, they should feel your passion for the field.
You have probably checked something about our company. What would you improve on our online presence?
This is a tricky question, since people do not like criticism. On the other hand, if they were happy with their digital marketing efforts, they would not look for a new marketing manager.
I would suggest the following: Say that results matter the most, and since you have no access to their analytics or other tracking tools, you can not tell the ROI of their campaigns and therefor it is hard to understand what they could do better.
Say, however, that there is always room for improvement, both on their website and social media, and that once you have access to all data and statistics, you will easily identify room for improvement.
Obviously if something clearly strikes you (their website design is extremely outdated, they update their social profiles once in a month, or they even do not have them), you can point these things out. And you can also praise them for the things they do well in their online marketing strategy.
What is your knowledge of SEO?
Organic traffic beats any other traffic source. It’s free, recurring, and it converts. Every good online marketer should know something about optimization for search engines.
You can emphasize the importance of SEO, and refer to some recent trends, such as mobile optimization, local SEO, or outreach. Say that SEO evolves constantly and you are a member of several forums, trying to keep your knowledge up to date.
* For more specific questions check our article about SEO interview questions.
Do you have any experience with PPC campaigns?
PPC or pay per click can be extremely effective, if you know what you are doing. Emphasize the importance of properly set sales funnel, constant monitoring, split testing, and improvement of each step of the funnel, until you achieve the best possible ROI for the given campaign.
You can explain these things on a particular campaign you ran in the past, narrating how you set it up and played with it later on, until you achieved the desired result.
What social media do you consider most important for a company like ours and why?
Everything is about their target audience. Middle aged women love Pinterest, senior business professionals opt mostly for Twitter, and young boys and girls spend their days swiping pictures on Instagram (or Snapchat).
Think about the product they sell, and the group of people they try to sell it to, and this should help you to pick the right channels.
Alternatively you can say that in your opinion all social channels are important. You would experiment with each and every channel, at least with a small budget, trying to find the winners, media and campaigns that convert. In reality, a combination of simultaneous campaigns, ran on different platforms, typically brings the best results.
Do you know any programming languages?
They do not want to hire a programmer, and you should not present yourself as one. It is OK to say that you know the basics of HTML, CSS, or even PHP, since this knowledge will help you with some changes on the websites and social channels.
However, modern content management systems and code translators make this job much easier for everyone, and you do not need to know how to code to be able to design a great website, or setup a beautiful campaign on Facebook.
Some other questions you may get in your digital marketing manager interview
- What software programs and tools do you use to help you manage the social profiles effectively?
- What will be the first thing you will do if we hire you for this position?
- Where do you see yourself in five years from now?
- Imagine that a client asked you to improve the conversion rate of their website. What steps would you take?
- Can you handle criticism?
- Do you think that public relations play any role in digital marketing?
- What would motivate you the most in this job?
- Why should we hire you, and not one of many other applicants for this job?
Special Tip: Download all questions in a one page long PDF, and practice your interview answers anytime later:
Conclusion
Online marketing is an extremely popular job field, and you will always compete with other people for the position. It can be five, ten, but also fifty other candidates.
This makes the interview difficult, though the questions are not extremely technical, and with some preparation you can get ready for them.
What often makes a difference in this case is your enthusiasm, motivation, your knowledge of their brand, and your portfolio.
Try to demonstrate your knowledge with the help of practical examples, successful campaigns you ran in the past, value you brought to your former clients and employers. Once you manage to do it and know a lot about their company and their online marketing strategy, your chances to succeed and get the job will improve immensely.
I wish you good luck!
May also interest you:
- Marketing interview questions – Do you apply for an entry level job in marketing? You can expect them to test your creativeness and ideas with a couple of practical exercises. Behavioral and personal questions will help the hiring managers to create a complete picture of your skills and personal traits.
- Social media manager interview questions.
- Content strategist interview questions.
