how to become a digital marketer (2024 Guide)

Digital Marketing Interview Questions

BrainStation’s digital marketing career guide can help start a career in marketing, including content creation, social media marketing, email marketing, and more. Read on for an overview of common digital marketing interview questions and strategies for answering them.

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There is no standard interview format for Digital Marketing interviews. The process will vary depending on the company and the interviewer. To see if you are the right fit, employers may test you on your digital marketing knowledge and technical skills.

In addition, you can expect to answer behavioral questions, which will reveal your work habits, experience, and personality.

To prepare for your digital marketing interview, you will need to:

  • Ensure you understand role and requirements of the job
  • Explain the value you can bring as a Digital Marketer
  • Study the company’s brand and digital marketing strategy
  • Brainstorm suggestions to improve the company’s current digital marketing campaigns
  • Review and practice common digital marketing interview questions and answers

Prior to the interview, take a look at the company’s brand and current digital marketing strategy. By understanding their mission, values, and marketing channels, you can better tailor your interview answers. Think about suggestions for improving their digital marketing. If this comes up during the interview, you will be ready to show them your creative and analytical thinking.

To prepare for any interview question that may come up during your interview, you can review and practice these common digital marketing interview questions and answers.

Common Skills-Based Digital Marketing Interview Questions

Employers will be looking for candidates who understand the basics of digital marketing principles, tools, and processes. Digital marketing is a broad field, and your interviewer will want a better sense of where your skills and experiences lie.

In addition to questions about your portfolio and professional background, you should expect questions that touch on your experience with social media marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, email marketing, analytics and reporting, public relations, and search engine optimization, among other areas.

Expect to be asked about social media marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, email marketing, analytics and reporting, public relations, search engine optimization, and more.

At a job interview, a hiring manager may ask some of the following questions to test your knowledge of the digital marketing industry:

Question: What is digital marketing?

Answer: Digital marketing is the umbrella term for all forms of marketing that use the Internet or electronic devices.

There are many marketing techniques and tactics that fall under digital marketing, including search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), link building, social media marketing, email marketing, direct marketing, influencer marketing, and viral marketing.

Similar to forms of traditional marketing, the ultimate goal of digital marketing is to:

  • Boost brand awareness
  • Increase the size of a company’s sales funnel
  • Reach a target audience
  • Increase revenue

These forms of digital marketing can be broken down into two main categories:

Outbound Marketing:

When a marketer tries to sell a product directly to the consumer (examples: purchasing ad space, making cold calls, or going door-to-door to sell a product)

Inbound Marketing:

The marketer creates videos, a social media presence, web pages, or other content that attracts potential customers, who might then consider buying or becoming interested in your product.

Additional Skills-Based Marketing Interview Questions

What is a keyword? How important is it from the point of SEO?
What are the key areas where you can use keywords to optimize site ranking?
What are the primary models for determining pay-per-click?
What are some of the most useful online marketing tools?
What is on-page and off-page optimization?
What are the characteristics of “bad links”?
What makes digital marketing different from traditional marketing?
What do you see as the difference between content marketing and content strategy? Provide some examples of each.
Describe the sales funnel and why it is important to digital marketing.
What are the most effective ways to increase traffic to your website?
What is the difference between search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)?
What KPIs do you use in social media reporting?

You should also be able to define and explain a number of terms, including:

  • SEO

  • Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

  • Google Ads

  • Google AdWords

  • Bad Links

  • Sales Funnel

Common Technical Digital Marketing Interview Questions

Technical skills questions test your ability to implement essential strategies and tools. For these questions, you can refer to your past digital marketing projects and results.

Remember to clearly articulate your thinking and work process!

Even though it is not considered a highly technical role, a successful Digital Marketer needs to be committed to staying up-to-date with the latest tech and tools to help them do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.

A few examples of technical digital marketing interview questions include:

Question: What are the top tools and software for social media marketing?

Answer: Digital marketers rely on a range of tools to ensure social media marketing success and to streamline tasks like scheduling social media posts, creating images and other content, analyzing the performance of your posts, managing multiple social media accounts across multiple social media channels, and more.

Top tools for scheduling content include Hootsuite, Later, Buffer, FB Creator Studio, and Sprout Social. For content strategy and marketing, tools like SEMrush are helpful.

  • Hootsuite

  • Later

  • Buffer

  • FB Creator Studio

  • Sprout Social

  • SEMRush

  • Ahrefs

  • Moz

  • Screaming Frog

If the job you’re interviewing for has a heavy social media element, review the job description to see if there’s a mention of any specific tools or software, and be sure to include them in your answer.

Other Technical Digital Marketing Questions

How do you pick effective digital marketing KPIs, and how do you track them?
What is your usual method for SEO strategy?
What are some digital marketing tools you have experience with?
Describe a digital marketing campaign you worked on from start to finish. What approaches did you take, what challenges did you face, and how were you successful?
What do you think is the biggest challenge in digital marketing?
What do you think is the next major trend in digital marketing?
How would you go about building an effective email marketing strategy?
What are the hallmarks of a successful marketing email?
How would you measure the success of a marketing email?
Explain an effective sales funnel you built.
Do you have experience with marketing automation?
Tell us about your experience with creating digital marketing budgets.
Explain how you know a digital marketing campaign is not successful.
What social media platforms do you think would be best for our brand?
How would you develop a social media campaign?
How can you drive traffic to our site immediately?

Common Personal Digital Marketing Interview Questions

Employers are not only looking for a candidate with the necessary digital marketing qualifications but also the right personality and work style to collaborate with others.

To get to know you better, employers may ask personal interview questions such as:

Question: What is the biggest challenge facing digital marketing teams today?

To answer this question, draw upon your own digital marketing career, as well as your experiences as a consumer. You could cite the saturation of social-media platforms and the challenge of finding the right approach for each unique audience.

Challenges of digital marketing:

  • The saturation of social-media platforms
  • Finding the right approach for every unique audience
  • How savvy modern consumers are
  • Creating content that balances authenticity with a brand’s vision

Another option would be to talk about how savvy the modern consumer is, and the challenge of creating content that strikes the balance between authenticity and aligning with a company’s overall brand vision. Be prepared to offer the strategies you personally use to overcome these challenges.

Other Personal Digital Marketing Questions

Can you tell us about yourself?
What is your biggest accomplishment?
What are your biggest strengths?
What are your biggest weaknesses?
What kind of team environment do you thrive in?
What kind of management style do you respond to best?
What interests you most about this digital marketing position?
Why do you want to work for our organization?
Why should our company hire you?
Where do you envision yourself in five years?
What do you like most about digital marketing?
What do you like least about digital marketing?
What is your digital marketing philosophy?
What brands do you like or follow on social media and why?
What is an example of a lead-generating campaign you would be excited to work on here?

Common Situational Digital Marketing Interview Questions

Leadership and communication are two essential skills that every Digital Marketer needs.

Their job responsibilities often include leading digital marketing campaigns, communicating a brand’s message, and presenting ideas to clients or stakeholders.

To see if a candidate has the right communication and leadership skills, employers may ask interview questions such as:

Question: How do you keep on top of industry news and digital marketing trends? How do you apply this to your work?

Answer: The best way to stay on top of digital marketing trends is social media. You could explain to the hiring manager that as a digital marketer, you are extremely active on a wide variety of social platforms, and you keep up with the latest in the industry by following influencers, industry blogs, and top executives on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

You could talk about setting up Google Alerts for any keywords relevant to your brand or company, while also highlighting your interest in completing webinars, pursuing continuing education, and attending digital marketing industry conferences.

Ultimately, you need to convey to the hiring manager that you are dedicated to keeping up with the latest trends. Digital Marketers cannot afford to fall behind the times.

Additional Situational Digital Marketing Questions

Give an example of how you would describe digital marketing to someone who is completely new to the industry.
How do you communicate your progress to clients and/or stakeholders?
How do you motivate your digital marketing team to do their best?
Describe a time you gave constructive feedback to a colleague.
Describe a time your team didn’t agree with your direction. How did you handle it?
Tell me about a situation where you worked as a part of a team to execute a mission-critical marketing project. What role did you play?
What would you do if there was a breakdown in communication at work?
Talk about a successful presentation you gave and why you think it did well.

Common Behavioral Digital Marketing Interview Questions

Behavioral questions are based on your past professional experiences in your digital marketing career.

Employers are looking for specific examples that show how you handled a situation. To successfully answer a behavioral interview question, clearly explain:

  • The situation or challenge
  • How you responded
  • The outcome or results of your actions

Examples of behavioral interview questions for Digital Marketers include:

Question: Describe a digital marketing campaign you worked on that didn’t go as planned. Why did it go wrong, and how did you react?

Answer: The hiring manager here will be looking to see how you deal with disappointment. In your answer, you need to clearly explain how the campaign got off-track, take some responsibility for the setback, and spell out what you learned and the steps that you would take next time to ensure a better result.

One strategy would be to pick a campaign where you might have set unrealistic expectations. Discussing how you chose your KPIs and how you learned to create realistic goals will show that you are a critical thinker and problem solver with a mind for marketing strategy.

Additional Behavioral Digital Marketing Interview Questions

Discuss a time when your team did not agree with you.
Talk about one of your most effective campaigns. What made it so effective?
Describe a time you worked with a team to create a campaign on a tight budget.
Have you worked on a cross-functional project? How many people did this involve?
Talk about a time you were put under an enormous amount of pressure and what you did to remain effective.
What is an example of a marketing-related goal you achieved? What steps were involved with your accomplishment?
Talk about a time you took a digital marketing risk.
Have you ever had to market a product or brand you weren’t passionate about?
Tell me about a major change you made to an old marketing process or strategy and the effects it had.
What was a time you combined creativity and analytical thought to overcome a problem?

Advanced Digital Marketing Interview Questions

To give you an idea of what top companies are looking for in digital marketing candidates, here are a few examples of interview questions from companies such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

Tell me about a time you were given tough feedback on your work performance. How did you respond?
Tell me about a time you had to solve a problem where requirements were ambiguous. Talk me through your process.
Have you used Google AdWords in your past work experience?
How would you increase the adoption of a new product or feature? How would you measure success?
What strategies for attracting new business would you apply in order to gain new accounts?
Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager about an issue. What did you do to overcome it?
What would you improve on our website?
How would you increase conversion rates?
Walk me through one of your digital marketing campaigns. How it was structured, implemented, executed, and reported on?
What is a product or service that you think is being marketed well?
Tell me about a time you worked on a collaborative project.
Tell me about a time you faced a conflict and how you dealt with it.
Tell me about a time you worked cross-functionally.
Tell me about a time you had to work with someone you didn’t agree with.
Tell me about a time you worked with multiple stakeholders.
What kind of approach do you take when developing a digital marketing strategy?
How does data and Google Analytics drive digital marketing?
Describe a time when you had to manage a team with conflicting personalities.

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