A digital marketing team is the group of people who plan, run, and measure a company’s online marketing, from SEO and paid ads to social media, content, and email. How you structure it depends mostly on the size of your company and your goals: a small business might have one or two generalists, while a large company has a specialist, or a whole sub-team, for every channel.
We have more than 20 years of experience running a digital marketing agency and have seen how the structure of a digital marketing department can go a long way in determining the team’s success.
In this post, you'll learn about the most essential digital marketing team roles, how to structure your team for your company size, and how to build it.
What Is A Digital Marketing Team?
A digital marketing team is the business unit responsible for planning and implementing the company’s digital marketing strategies.
The purpose of these strategies is to engage customers and drive revenue through online channels such as search engines, social media networks, advertising platforms, and email.
To achieve this objective, the digital marketing team requires various skills, including some of those needed in traditional marketing like:
- Branding and positioning
- Storytelling
- Creativity
- Strategic thinking
- Reporting and communicating
The nature of digital marketing requires teams to have additional skills. Most notably analytical and technical skills.
Digital marketing mediums generate more data than traditional marketing channels. The digital marketing team is heavily involved in analyzing this data to make better decisions.
Because digital marketing is so technology-centered, teams also need to learn how to use a variety of software and tools.
A digital marketing team can be an in-house department of a company. Or, they can work at an outside agency, managing digital marketing for third-party companies.
Key Roles in a Digital Marketing Team
These are the important roles in a digital marketing team. In a large company, each one is usually a manager with a sub-team. In a smaller team, the same work is done by specialists, and one person often covers two or three roles.
- Digital Marketing Manager
- PPC Manager
- SEO Manager
- Social Media Marketing Manager
- Content Marketing Manager
- Affiliate Marketing Manager
- Email Marketing Manager
- Web Development Manager
- Marketing Analyst
- Creative and Graphic Designer
Digital Marketing Manager
The digital marketing manager (or director, in larger companies) is responsible for developing, implementing, and managing the company’s digital marketing strategy.
With the typical structure of digital marketing teams, the digital marketing manager oversees a group of managers responsible for a specific digital marketing channel. For example, SEO or social media.
In larger companies, a digital marketing manager may report to a VP or director of marketing.
In addition to creating a holistic digital marketing strategy, the digital marketing manager must ensure that all the digital marketing department roles work together toward the same goal.
Some of the tasks and responsibilities comprising the typical day of a digital marketing manager include:
- Planning and executing campaigns and budgets across digital marketing channels
- Communicating with clients to explain the benefits of digital marketing
- Monitoring the implementation of the digital marketing plan to see if it is achieving its objectives
- Making adjustments and optimizations to the digital marketing strategy to yield maximum results
- Staying on top of the latest digital marketing trends
Digital marketing managers usually need at least a few years of digital marketing experience.
They also need extensive education and training in all the key areas of digital marketing. This can come from a college degree or a series of digital marketing courses and marketing certifications.
PPC Manager
Pay-per-click (PPC) managers are responsible for overseeing the marketing team’s paid online advertising campaigns.
With the majority of businesses now working to grow their online presence, there is a consistent need for companies to invest in paid advertisements to get in front of their target customers.
A PPC manager leads these initiatives by planning and implementing campaigns for advertising platforms like Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, and Microsoft Advertising. In smaller teams, this role is often called a paid media specialist.
Some of the day-to-day responsibilities of the role are:
- Creating and executing paid advertising campaigns
- Researching keywords to target campaigns
- Managing campaign budgets and adjusting bids
- Tracking KPIs to see where improvements are needed
- Optimizing campaigns to improve conversion rates and return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Aligning PPC campaigns to other marketing channels
- Helping to create engaging copy for campaigns
In addition to these tasks, PPC managers communicate with clients and report any results and analyses to all relevant stakeholders.
Effective PPC managers need a mix of analytical, communication, and creative skills. They must also be well-versed in several platforms and tools, including Google Ads and Google Analytics.
PPC managers tend to have a team of PPC professionals working beneath them. This can include PPC specialists, analysts, copywriters, and graphic designers.
The manager will coordinate with the team to ensure they always have the information needed to manage the campaigns effectively.
SEO Manager
The next role to include in your digital marketing team structure is the SEO Manager.
An SEO manager is responsible for managing the marketing team’s strategy for reaching customers organically (without paying) through search engines.
Search engines are one of the best ways to attract audience members from every step of a digital sales funnel.
However, it is difficult to rank high enough to drive targeted traffic to your site without the right strategy and optimization efforts.
SEO managers work to find the best opportunities to drive relevant organic traffic to the company’s website and create a plan to make it happen.
Some of the key responsibilities of the role are:
- Researching target keywords
- Planning content to rank for the target keywords
- Auditing websites for technical and other factors
- Identifying opportunities for backlinks
- Keeping up with the latest SEO best practices
- Analyzing traffic reports and other key SEO metrics
- Communicating SEO performance with clients
Another big part of the SEO manager's role is managing the SEO team. Their teams can include SEO experts as well as content creators and editors.
The manager must delegate tasks and provide training and guidance to allow the team to perform their jobs effectively.
Social Media Marketing Manager
Social media managers are responsible for overseeing the marketing team’s social media marketing strategies.
It is an important position as social media is one of the most essential departments in digital marketing. It gives businesses a way to consistently engage their audience through their preferred channels.
Social media also makes it easy to collect information about your target customers.
Social media managers devise a strategy to engage with users and grow the brand’s online presence through different social channels.
Important responsibilities for the digital marketing role include:
- Researching the best social media networks for the business to focus on
- Designing the brand’s social media pages and profiles
- Creating a social calendar and scheduling posts
- Learning the target audience and the most appropriate types of content to use
- Tracking the engagement for posts
- Reviewing competitors’ social media presence
- Checking for user-generated content
Juggling all these responsibilities requires social media managers to develop a strong skill set in many areas. Communication, creativity, analytical thinking, and time management are the most important among them. Our guide on how to learn social media marketing covers the skills the role needs.
Content Marketing Manager
Content marketing managers are responsible for planning and implementing the company’s content marketing strategy.
Content marketing has grown in popularity as many businesses have come to understand how influential it is in connecting with your target audience.
The content marketing manager aims to create engaging content that can drive traffic and provide value to your readers.
Depending on the size of the team, the content marketing manager may write some of the content on their own. Or they could just handle the planning and oversee the writers that create the content.
Some of the other day-to-day responsibilities of a content marketing manager include:
- Researching topics and trends for your industry
- Planning content for a variety of channels
- Editing content to ensure it aligns with the brand’s style
- Scheduling and publishing content
- Managing the distribution and promotion of content
- Monitoring content performance
- Collaborating with other departments to align content with the overall marketing strategy
In addition to good writing and editing skills, content marketing managers need to have strong SEO abilities. This enables them to plan and create content that will rank well and drive traffic to the business.
Content marketing managers also oversee the content creation team. This team can consist of content marketing specialists, writers, editors, and content strategists.
Affiliate Marketing Manager
An affiliate marketing manager is responsible for overseeing the company’s online affiliate program.
The position is less common than the other digital marketing roles on this list, as not every company has an affiliate program.
However, it is still an important role if you want to use this channel effectively. Without an affiliate manager, most affiliate programs yield little to no results.
The affiliate marketing manager handles everything from structuring the program to managing the relationships with affiliates.
Below are some key responsibilities for affiliate marketing managers:
- Developing a recruitment strategy to attract new affiliates
- Responding to affiliate inquiries
- Collaborating with third-party affiliate networks
- Designing branded materials for affiliates to use
- Working with top affiliates to develop new sales strategies
- Implementing a tracking system for affiliate referrals
- Creating bonuses and incentives to motivate affiliate activity
Affiliate marketing managers tend to have experience in other areas of digital marketing as it allows them better to understand the traffic and revenue generation tactics of affiliates.
Email Marketing Manager
Email marketing managers are responsible for planning and executing the company’s email marketing strategy. In many teams, this role also owns marketing automation: the automated email sequences, lead nurturing workflows, and CRM tools that follow up with leads without manual work.
Today, email remains one of the best digital marketing channels, giving businesses a direct line to communicate with their customers.
A good email marketing manager can find the right people for the company’s email list while creating engaging campaigns.
Some of the day-to-day functions of the position include:
- Creating tactics for gaining email subscribers
- Designing templates for landing pages and emails
- Aligning email content and messaging with the brand’s vision
- Monitoring the effectiveness of campaigns
- A/B testing different variables in email campaigns
- Creating and presenting reports
Email marketing managers need a balance of marketing, creative, and analytical skills. They also need to be technically savvy, with the ability to use various email marketing solutions.
Like other digital marketing team roles, email marketing managers rely on a sub-team of various positions to help them execute their strategy.
This can include copywriters, graphic designers, and email marketing specialists. See our list of the best email marketing courses to train for the role.
Web Development Manager
Last on our list of key digital marketing roles and responsibilities is the web development manager.
This position manages the technical infrastructure needed for the company’s website.
They handle the end-to-end delivery of any web-related projects and are responsible for overseeing the work of web developers and designers.
Timeliness is a key for web projects, so web development managers must work closely with their team to ensure they can work as efficiently as possible.
Here are some of the other responsibilities of a web development manager:
- Designing and developing website architecture
- Managing servers and databases
- Creating a strategy for designing and enhancing the online user experience
- Providing guidance on technical issues
- Working with clients to create web design concepts
Naturally, web development managers must have a high degree of technical skills to perform the job well.
It is common for managers to have experience with common web development languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and Python.
Marketing Analyst
A marketing analyst turns the data from every channel into decisions. Digital marketing generates a lot of data, and someone has to make sense of it.
Some of the key responsibilities of the role are:
- Setting up and maintaining tracking, such as Google Analytics and conversion tracking
- Building dashboards and reports for the team and for management
- Measuring which channels and campaigns bring leads and sales
- Running and analyzing A/B tests
- Spotting trends and opportunities in the data
In small teams, the digital marketing manager or the PPC specialist usually handles analytics. As a team grows, a dedicated analyst becomes one of the most valuable hires, because every other role depends on accurate data.
Creative and Graphic Designer
Designers create the visuals that almost every digital marketing channel needs: ad creatives, social media graphics, videos, landing pages, and email templates.
Some of the key responsibilities of the role are:
- Designing ads and social media posts in the right formats for each platform
- Producing short videos for Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts
- Keeping all visuals consistent with the brand
- Working with copywriters and channel managers to test different creatives
Small teams often use freelancers or design tools like Canva for this work. Larger teams usually have in-house designers and video editors, because paid social and social media need a constant flow of new creative.
Digital Marketing Team Structure by Company Size
There is no single best digital marketing team structure. The right one depends on the size of your company and your budget. Here is how teams are usually structured at each stage:
| Company size | Typical team | What to outsource |
|---|---|---|
| Solo marketer or small business | One digital marketing generalist who covers strategy, SEO, social media, and email | Paid ads, design, and web development |
| Small team (2-5 people) | A digital marketing manager plus specialists for content and SEO, paid media, and social media | Design, video, and web development |
| Mid-size team (6-15 people) | Channel specialists for each main channel, plus a marketing analyst and an in-house designer | Specialized projects such as technical SEO audits or video production |
| Enterprise | A director of digital marketing, a manager for each channel, and a sub-team under each manager | Usually very little, or only overflow work |
Which roles do you need for your goals?
Your goals decide which roles to hire first:
- More leads: paid media, landing pages, and marketing automation to follow up with leads.
- More online sales: paid media, SEO, and email marketing, supported by an analyst to track what converts.
- Brand awareness: social media, content, and a designer or video creator.
Most companies start small and add specialists as the channels that work begin to grow. The hierarchy below shows what a fully built team looks like.
Hierarchy in a Digital Marketing Department
Your digital marketing team structure sets the foundation for how it will operate. By building an efficient marketing team structure, you can keep the entire department in sync and aligned with the company’s goals.
The best marketing team structure will depend greatly on the company, the industry, and what you want to accomplish with your online marketing.
That said, there are some common characteristics among the structures many digital marketing teams use today.
One of the most fundamental similarities is the adherence to a hierarchy in which each team member has clearly defined roles and responsibilities.
Below, we’ve outlined a common digital marketing team hierarchy:
The key feature of this marketing team structure is the segmentation of each specialization.
By breaking the hierarchy into individual disciplines, the marketing team can more effectively cover a broader range of digital marketing channels.
Managers and their team members can specialize in a single focus area, allowing them to master that aspect of digital marketing.
This structure also gives the digital marketing manager a big picture of the overall digital strategy as they can see how each department contributes to the business reaching its overall objectives.
With this digital marketing structure, each manager oversees a sub-team of people who are responsible for helping execute their strategy.
Below is an example of how the sub-team for an SEO manager might look.
As the SEO manager creates their SEO strategy, they will share the objectives with the team and begin delegating tasks.
Each sub-team member has a specific focus area, whether writing content or testing website performance.
As projects progress, SEO team members will report their progress to the SEO manager.
The manager will then compile the most relevant information into reports to share the team’s performance with the digital marketing manager.
How to Build a Digital Marketing Team
There are several ways you can approach building your digital marketing team. The most common methods are:
- Hiring a team of digital marketing professionals
- Educating your staff using digital marketing courses and certifications
- Outsourcing the work to an agency
- A mix of in-house and outsourced digital marketing responsibilities
Hiring a team of digital marketing professionals
The first approach you can take to create your team is to build it internally by hiring experienced professionals to fill each digital marketing role.
Creating a new team dedicated to digital marketing, instead of adding to or converting an existing team, can give you a specialized team with clearly defined functions and accountability.
If you choose to build a dedicated in-house digital marketing team, you must hire managers for all the key marketing departments, including social media, SEO, PPC, and email.
You will then need to fill each sub-team with digital marketing professionals.
Educating your staff using digital marketing courses and certifications
If you want a completely in-house digital marketing team but do not want to hire an entirely new department, you can train your current staff in digital marketing.
This can save you the effort and cost of recruiting new team members. If you have underutilized employees, it can also be a way to fill the open bandwidth.
One of the most effective ways to teach your in-house marketing team about digital is to have them follow a digital marketing course and obtain a certification.
With an online course, your team members can access a single resource to help them go from beginner to competent in various digital marketing functions.
Certificates validate this achievement. If you run an agency, they have the added bonus of helping market your proficiency to potential clients.
Once you have an understanding of the digital marketing team structure and roles you want to use, you can review the skills of your existing team to see who would be a good fit for each of your planned positions.
Outsourcing the work to an agency
If you do not want to use an in-house marketing team structure, you can always outsource the various marketing activities to an outside agency. Doing so will allow you to focus on reaching your business objectives while the agency focuses on the details of implementing a digital marketing strategy.
Outsourcing digital marketing to an agency can also help you get your strategies up and running faster. While your business is unique, the agency will have experience working on similar projects and will know how to avoid common pitfalls when starting a digital marketing campaign.
Outsourcing can also prove cost-effective as the agency strategizes and executes more efficiently. With hiring, it can be hard to find the right people, and you need to find many of them to round out your entire digital marketing team.
Plus, there are plenty of marketing agencies, freelancers, and contractors for each area of digital marketing. For paid search, see our Google Ads management service.
This structure works best for smaller businesses that may not have the resources to create their own digital marketing team.
A mix of in-house and outsourced digital marketing responsibilities
The final way to create your digital marketing team is to take a hybrid approach. With this structure, your digital marketing team will have a mix of in-house professionals, trained employees, outsourced agencies, and digital marketing consultants.
This is a very common structure as it provides great flexibility.
You can fill the most important roles in your business with in-house positions and outsource the other areas that may be less essential. For paid search, see how a Google Ads freelancer, agency or in-house hire compare.
For example, you could hire SEO, content, and social media marketing managers to oversee the strategies for these channels and then outsource the copywriting and graphic design work to freelancers or an agency.
How Much Does a Digital Marketing Team Cost?
For an in-house team, salaries are by far the biggest cost, followed by tools (analytics, SEO, email, and design software) and your advertising budget. What you pay depends on the roles, their experience, and your location. See our guide to digital marketing salaries for what each role typically earns.
This is why many small and mid-size companies choose the hybrid approach: a small in-house team for strategy and the most important channels, and agencies or freelancers for everything else. If you are on the other side of the table, see how to start a digital marketing agency.
How AI Is Changing Digital Marketing Teams
AI tools now draft copy, suggest keywords, generate images, summarize reports, and automate parts of ad management. For most teams, this has changed how people work more than how many people are needed: research, first drafts, and repetitive tasks take less time, which leaves more time for strategy, testing, and analysis.
What AI doesn’t replace is judgment: understanding the audience, choosing what is worth creating, and deciding where to spend the budget. When you build or train a team, make sure everyone knows how to use AI tools well.
Key Learnings
You need a team of digital marketing professionals to implement a successful digital marketing strategy.
The right structure depends on your company size and goals. Small teams rely on a few specialists who cover several channels, while large companies have a manager for each channel with a sub-team working under them.
By sticking to specialization, the entire team can stay organized and work more efficiently.
Digital marketing teams can be built through hiring, outsourcing, or combining the two.
The hybrid approach is often preferable for companies without the resources to build a whole team internally.
