There are numerous moving parts to any marketing initiative. Marketing agencies are no strangers to this concept. And it's virtually impossible for one individual to completely handle planning, executing, and analyzing marketing campaigns on their own.
This is why marketing agencies opt to employ a variety of experienced marketers, each with their own specialty, to create a well-rounded team. In turn, when a business hires a digital marketing agency, it gains access to a qualified assortment of marketers without the expense of hiring an in-house team.
Keep reading to learn more about marketing agency job descriptions and which roles can help your business reach its goals.
What Is a Digital Marketing Agency?
Digital marketing agency responsibilities include providing a range of solutions and expertise to help businesses promote their products or services online.
What do digital marketing companies do? Agencies may specialize in services like search engine optimization (SEO), paid advertising, or website design and development. Or they may consider themselves full-service and offer a range of strategies and tactics.
Whether you run a large corporation or a small start-up business, one thing is true across the board: To drive online visibility, customer acquisition, and revenue growth, you need some kind of marketing professionals working on your plan.
While many companies have the capacity to hire an extensive internal marketing department, other businesses opt to partner with a full-service digital marketing agency to plan, execute, and deliver results knowing they will have access to an entire team of experienced marketers.
How Do Digital Marketing Agencies Work?
The various positions in a marketing agency must have their internal processes figured out to foster efficiency and organization within the team. And having a way for digital marketing team members to easily store, access, and share files and materials is just the tip of the iceberg.
Organizational characteristics also include knowing which agency roles are responsible for which parts of the process, as well as having a schedule of what job will be done and when. This helps speed things along while ensuring the quality of work is never lost and that no one team member is carrying more weight than they should be.
At LAIRE, we use the Agile Methodology for internal structure and usually work ahead of schedule. This ensures that if an urgent task or revision needs to be done, we have the capacity to meet client needs getting flustered or off-track.
All in all, there are a variety of marketing agency roles that must work harmoniously to achieve and deliver results. If specialists and generalists do not understand the value of each other’s contributions, clients’ marketing initiatives can fall flat.
Marketing Agency Roles and Responsibilities
There are many different job roles that can be present within digital marketing firms. Here are some of the most essential marketing agency titles to look for when choosing one to hire.
Account Strategist
Account strategists are the driving force behind client strategy. Creating revenue strategies, crafting seamless and enjoyable customer experiences, and critical thinking to solve problems is what this role does.
Whether the client is just starting on their marketing journey or has a full set of campaigns under their belt, the purpose of this role is to identify pain points and deliver a strategy that will eliminate those aches while driving revenue through the roof.
Client advocacy goes a long way with this job, and nurturing long-term client relationships sets the tone for every action this role takes.
Account Manager
Responsible for communication between the agency and the client, account managers are the planners within the organization. They help account strategists develop effective marketing strategies, assign duties to the internal team, review deliverables before they go to the client, and track campaign progress.
Account managers are also responsible for ensuring the happiness of the client. If the client is frustrated because they are not seeing results, this role can soothe those concerns with new strategies, updated content, and digital marketing materials.
Marketing Technology Coordinator
If workflows, lead-generating forms and gates, and automated marketing technology are your jam, a marketing technology coordinator role might be your dream job. These individuals are knowers of all things integration that will help move your potential customers through the buyer’s journey stages and into your closing process.
In our agency specifically, marketing technology coordinators are HubSpot veterans and can quickly troubleshoot roadblocks or make suggestions for better use of the platform.
Creative Director
Creative directors are charged with creating beautiful imagery and graphics while ensuring the brand’s guidelines and preferences are met. Not to mention, all creative elements are passed through this person to maintain quality control and ensure the agency’s best work is being produced.
Creative directors also oversee the layout and visuals created in UI/UX website, landing page, and email design. They brainstorm new graphic ideas and strategies to be implemented by graphic designers and visual developers.
Graphic Designer
Graphic designers are the implementers of the creative director’s vision — and then some.
Branding projects and social media graphics take shape at the hands of the graphic designer. Imagery, icons, and motion graphics for website and email use are developed using this person’s tools and vision.
Visual Designer & Developer
Visual designers and developers work similarly to graphic designers in that they create visually appealing elements on web pages and emails. In fact, our visual designer and developer designed the layout for this very blog page to ensure it flows properly and provides a visual that’s easily digestible.
Project Manager
One-off projects and beginning-phase projects start with a project manager. This person works closely with their designated projects to set business goals and implement strategies to consistently convert new leads.
Project managers are also the helping hand to guide businesses from project status to retainer status, helping them get into the groove of long-term marketing goals and plans.
Project Coordinator
Project coordinators work closely with the project managers. This role helps to implement the web changes and project plans to give clients a running start.
While project managers are on the front-line meeting with clients, hearing their pain points, and delivering solutions, project coordinators work behind the scenes to help complete the work and act on the agreed-upon strategy.
Content Manager
The content manager oversees the content planned, written, and published by an agency, internally and externally. From finding the right content that speaks to buyers to proofing all written content that will be consumer-facing, content managers work to put a company’s value into words.
Drafting blog ideas, developing premium content offers, and evaluating the associated analytics are just a few of the ways the content manager supports the agency. As the gatekeeper of a client’s brand, all deliverables move through this role to ensure cohesiveness, accuracy, and uniformity across the board.
Content Coordinator
Content coordinators work closely with the content manager and account managers to provide deliverables.
The focus here is copywriting. Blogs, landing pages, email, and social media are the main pieces of content this role touches, but this individual can help fill in the gaps where needed.
SEO strategy is a big component of the work this job focuses on to ensure content is being found by search engines and delivered to leads at the right time.
Director of Business Operations
A director of business operations working at a marketing agency is the foundational glue that holds everything together. Internal strategy, internal processes, and agency cohesiveness are the priorities of this role. The director of business operations ensures workload distribution and appropriate staffing measures are taken to allow the agency to grow.
If the agency hits a bump, this individual jumps into action to ensure clients do not feel it. The director of business operations also ensures that clients are being billed correctly and collection of payment is being conducted appropriately.
Sales Manager
The sales manager is an integral part of the agency’s growth. This role is responsible for relaying products and services to accounts — present and potential. This job role can be brought on to upsell clients on new services but is also responsible for finding compatible client fits for the agency.
The sales manager also communicates with the internal team to determine the capacity for new work, drafts contracts, and works with other managers and directors to determine deliverables.
Sales Director
The sales director works closely with and oversees the sales manager. The sales director is responsible for ensuring a new business is brought to the company appropriately and assesses the amount of revenue needed to ensure agency production.
They also work with account managers, account strategists, project managers, and sales managers to upsell accounts and promote new service offerings and products, while ensuring the agency is not over- or under-delivering on their contracted services and products.
If a contract needs to be reviewed and revised, the sales director will work to clarify it and provide the new terms that are needed within the agreement.
Freelancers
Many digital marketing agencies choose to hire freelancers. As long as they follow brand guidelines and complete work in a timely manner, these extended team members can be a very valuable asset. Here are some ways in which freelancers supplement marketing agency positions:
- Website development and backend support
- Long-form technical premium content offer copywriting
- Long-form and short-form blog copywriting
- Social media copywriting
- Videography and photography
- Video editing and motion graphics
Businesses working with an agency that uses freelancers should rest assured that these “on-demand” workers have been vetted for quality of work, capability, and experience.
Should I Hire an Internal Team or an Agency?
Whether you are starting off your marketing efforts with a small campaign or looking to launch an entirely new brand complete with a new website, you will need a team of marketers to lead the charge.
The challenge arises when a company must choose between hiring an in-house team or outsourcing marketing to a digital agency.
Hiring an Internal Team
When deciding to hire an internal marketing team, your company should be prepared to hire anywhere from two to five employees to start, keeping in mind that the department could expand in the future due to increased marketing efforts or company growth.
With hiring these employees comes paying salary, providing benefits, and providing any necessary equipment or software the marketers might need.
Hiring marketers is also a difficult task in itself. Knowing if the individual you are hiring is the right fit for your company, and knowing if they will be able to deliver results and eventually revenue, is almost impossible.
Don’t be afraid to ask for certifications, portfolios, hiring projects, or even working interviews when deciding to hire an internal team. This can help ensure you are getting the right fit for your needs.
Partnering With a Marketing Agency
Here’s a quick synopsis of why a digital agency might make sense for your organization.
For starters, partnering with a digital marketing agency is almost always more cost-effective than hiring an internal team. Because agencies have multiple clients to service and additional projects, you are not paying the salaries of multiple people.
However, because digital agencies do have a decent portfolio of clients, they may not always be available to tackle new initiatives right away and will rarely operate outside of the signed agreement, unless a new or expanded agreement is put into effect.
Additionally, when partnering with a digital marketing agency, you have access to a full suite of experts and tools available for your company’s use. From account strategists and managers to content managers and coordinators, you know you’ll be receiving work from seasoned marketers.
Not to mention, your agency team will always be analyzing performance and adjusting strategy to deliver results. You should get consistent reports that illustrate whether your marketing efforts are working to grow your business.
If you’re thinking about hiring an agency, they likely have a library of client success stories so you can assess their effectiveness and gauge whether they may be a good partner for your organization.
Let These Key Marketing Agency Job Titles Crush Your Digital Marketing
The digital marketing team roles at LAIRE always strive to improve client experiences and results.
Our team of digital growth experts has a track record of finding innovative and creative solutions to maximize client revenue through marketing efforts. We’re continually researching, learning, and executing new trends and techniques for growth while ensuring customer identity is always at the forefront of everything we do.
Ready to take your business’s marketing up a notch? Connect with us today to see if LAIRE is the right fit for you.
