Done well, digital marketing will boost your business. But digital marketing isn’t as simple as it sounds and finding a good digital marketer can be a daunting task. If you’re just starting your search for the right digital marketing expert for your business and are not sure what’s important to look for, you need to keep reading. Here are five things you need to know when you’re looking to hire a digital marketing expert. 

1. Look For Someone With A Big Picture Mind Set

It’s true that your digital marketer will be handling your online presence and it might be tempting to think that’s all they need to know about. That’s not actually true, however. You’re hiring someone who’s going to be representing you and your business to a lot more people in an entirely new setting. Your online reach needs to be in sync with your business goals as a whole.

When you’re looking for a digital marketer you need to find someone who can make a great digital marketing plan with the idea of helping your business as a whole. You don’t want to stick with someone who only think about your social media analytics  – if those analytics aren’t translating to an increase in profits, for example.

Look for a digital marketer who truly gets your business and the bigger picture. You are always going to get more out of your digital marketing efforts if they are the right avenues and decisions for your specific business. A good digital marketer will understand that, and come up with a plan that keeps your goals in mind.

2. Look For Someone Who Understands Content Marketing

Content marketing is a big deal and whoever you hire for your digital marketing efforts shouldn’t underestimate its power even a little bit. You want to hire someone who is going to make sure the content that they put online for you is high quality and interesting to your client base. Clicks are a great thing, but your content should be engaging, too.

When you’re looking for a digital marketer, make sure you’re asking about their strategies for providing high-quality content. Look for someone who can give you content for your business that has a good amount of reach but also isn’t just clickbait. Your content itself really does matter, so your digital marketer needs to understand that.

3. Look For Someone With Some Degree Of Technical Ability

Depending on your strategy for content marketing, you may want to look for someone who already has a specific skill set. If you’re going to be relying heavily on images, for instance, you’ll probably want someone who already knows how to create or at least edit your images. If your marketer notices a slight error in an image, it’s going to be less effective if they have to send it back to you for every minor change.

Depending on your specific goals, you may want to look for a digital marketer who already has video editing skills or is a really strong writer. Think about what you want them to promote – videos, blog posts, etc. Use that as a guide for thinking of skills that would be especially beneficial to your business’ digital marketing efforts.

4. Look For Someone Who Understands Their Tools

There are a ton of tools out there for things like social media management and keyword research. A good digital marketer will be able to explain which tools they use and why. Look for someone who understands the tools they use and can explain to you why those tools are better than others. It’s especially helpful to find someone who understands that jumping from new tool to new tool may not be the best option.

When you’re looking for your digital marketer, keep in mind that they should be able to tell you why they do things the way they do. Someone who really knows what they’re doing will be more able to explain why they use one tool over another, and why they may not use every new marketing tool that pops up.

5. Look For Someone With A Balanced Social Media Strategy

Social media has shifted in the more recent past to include businesses more easily. At one point, businesses may have been able to rely only on organic posts and the engagement it brought in. That’s no longer the case. Companies like Facebook have over a decade’s worth of data they want to utilize at this point and that’s where paid advertising on social media comes in.

Look for a digital marketer who understands the value of both genuine organic posts and engagement and effective paid posting as well. Companies cannot rely on only posting once a day as their sole social media focus any longer. The demand for your customer’s attention has grown, so your social media strategy needs to grow too. A good digital marketer will already know that.

Conclusion:

Digital marketing doesn’t have to be an overwhelming thing to take on. There are people out there who have made the effort to learn how it all works. As long as you’re putting in some research about the best ways to find a good digital marketer, you’re going to get a great return on any investment of time or money you put into the process.

The good thing is you don’t have to limit your search to someone in your local area. If you want to succeed in SEO in Boston, the right person for you might be a digital marketer on the other side of the world, so you have a wider search area when it comes to finding a good digital marketer than you do when looking for an events marketer, for example. 

Author: This is a guest post by Gabe Nelson.