Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Online Marketing Manager
💰 $65,000 - $120,000
MarketingDigital MarketingOnline MarketingGrowthAdvertisingSEO
🎯 Role Definition
The Online Marketing Manager is a strategic, hands‑on marketer who plans, executes, measures and optimizes integrated digital campaigns across search, social, display, email, affiliate and content channels. This role owns campaign performance and ROI, develops audience segmentation and lifecycle marketing strategies, partners with creative and product teams, and leverages analytics and testing to continuously improve acquisition, engagement and conversion metrics.
📈 Career Progression
Typical Career Path
Entry Point From:
- Digital Marketing Specialist / Coordinator
- Paid Media Specialist / PPC Specialist
- Social Media Manager
- Content Marketing Specialist
Advancement To:
- Senior Online Marketing Manager / Growth Manager
- Head of Digital / Director of Digital Marketing
- VP of Marketing / Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
- Director of Performance Marketing
Lateral Moves:
- E-commerce Manager
- CRM / Lifecycle Marketing Manager
- Product Marketing Manager
- Performance Media Buyer
Core Responsibilities
Primary Functions
- Develop, implement and manage end‑to‑end digital marketing campaigns across paid search (Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising), paid social (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn), display, programmatic and native channels to achieve acquisition, retention and revenue targets.
- Own campaign strategy and execution for SEO and content marketing, including keyword research, on‑page and technical SEO audits, content calendar development, and working with content creators to improve organic visibility and traffic quality.
- Plan and optimize paid media budgets and bidding strategies to maximize return on ad spend (ROAS) and minimize cost per acquisition (CPA), with weekly and monthly reforecasting based on performance.
- Configure, maintain and interpret analytics tracking and reporting (Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, server‑side tagging) to ensure accurate measurement of traffic sources, conversion funnels and campaign attribution.
- Design and run A/B and multivariate tests across landing pages, creatives, ad copy and email workflows to systematically improve conversion rates and lifetime value (LTV).
- Build and maintain comprehensive performance dashboards and executive reporting (daily/weekly/monthly) that summarize key metrics including traffic, conversions, CAC, ROAS, LTV and funnel drop‑offs.
- Lead audience segmentation and targeting strategies using first‑ and third‑party data, lookalike modeling, and CRM integrations to increase relevance and personalization across channels.
- Manage lifecycle and behavioral email marketing programs (onboarding, nurture, re‑engagement) using marketing automation platforms (e.g., Klaviyo, HubSpot, Mailchimp), optimizing for deliverability, open rates and conversion.
- Collaborate with product, UX and web development teams to optimize user journeys, implement tracking, and prioritize conversion rate optimization (CRO) opportunities on web and mobile experiences.
- Oversee creative brief development and performance creative testing, working with internal designers or external agencies to produce on‑brand assets that drive engagement and improve click‑through rates.
- Implement and evolve attribution models (last click, multi-touch, data‑driven) to inform budget allocation and measure true incremental impact of each channel and campaign.
- Manage relationships with external agencies, media partners and vendors—negotiating contracts, setting KPIs, and evaluating performance to ensure partner contributions align with strategy and budgets.
- Drive paid social strategy with tailored creative, copy and audience testing for Meta (Facebook & Instagram), TikTok and LinkedIn to increase acquisition and retention for target segments.
- Develop and execute affiliate, influencer and partner marketing programs including recruitment, briefings, tracking, commission structures and ongoing optimization to expand reach and credibility.
- Create and run retargeting and remarketing strategies across search, display and social channels to recover abandoned carts, re‑engage site visitors and increase conversion frequency.
- Lead paid search keyword strategy including match type management, negative keyword lists, shopping feed optimization and search term analysis to reduce wasted spend and improve relevance.
- Execute product feed management and shopping campaign optimization for e‑commerce clients, including feed cleansing, bidding strategies and promotional extensions to increase ROAS.
- Ensure compliance with privacy and data regulations (GDPR, CCPA) and implement consent management and cookieless strategies where required, working with legal and engineering partners.
- Identify and prioritize growth experiments using a structured testing roadmap (hypothesis, metric, audience, timeline) and report learnings to stakeholders to scale winning initiatives.
- Train, mentor and coordinate cross‑functional teams and junior marketers on campaign best practices, analytics literacy and performance optimization processes.
- Analyze competitive landscape, industry trends and channel innovations to adapt strategies, pilot new platforms and capture early advantages for acquisition and engagement.
Secondary Functions
- Provide ad‑hoc analyses and insights for product launches, seasonal promotions and pricing experiments to inform go‑to‑market decisions.
- Maintain documentation of campaign setups, standard operating procedures (SOPs) and playbooks to ensure consistency and scalability across channels.
- Assist in quarterly planning and budget allocation exercises, providing forecasts and scenario analyses to guide investment decisions.
- Coordinate with sales, customer success and BI teams to align KPIs, track pipeline influence and understand the downstream impact of marketing activities.
- Support platform migrations, tag audits and data layer improvements to preserve tracking fidelity and conversion continuity during site changes.
Required Skills & Competencies
Hard Skills (Technical)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): keyword research, technical audits, on‑page optimization, schema markup, and content optimization strategies.
- Paid Search / SEM: Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, search campaign structure, bidding strategies, shopping campaigns and search term analysis.
- Paid Social & Programmatic Advertising: Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads, LinkedIn Ads, DSP basics, creative testing and audience targeting strategies.
- Web Analytics & Tagging: Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Google Tag Manager, event tracking, funnel analysis and dashboarding.
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): A/B testing platforms (Optimizely, VWO, Google Optimize alternatives), landing page best practices and UX testing.
- Marketing Automation & Email Platforms: HubSpot, Klaviyo, Mailchimp or equivalent; workflows, segmentation, deliverability and campaign optimization.
- Data & Reporting Tools: Excel/Sheets (advanced), Looker Studio (Data Studio), Tableau/Looker basics; ability to create actionable dashboards and automate reporting.
- Paid Media Optimization: Bid strategies, budget pacing, ROAS/CPA modeling, negative keyword management and performance scaling tactics.
- Tagging & Measurement: Google Tag Manager, consent management platforms, familiarity with server‑side tracking and event schema.
- Content & Creative Briefing: Ability to translate performance objectives into creative briefs, copy direction and visual testing plans.
- Basic HTML/CSS and CMS familiarity (WordPress, Shopify) to support landing page edits and campaign deployment.
- Attribution & Experimentation: Knowledge of multi‑touch attribution, incrementality testing and holdout experiments.
- CRM & Audience Segmentation: Experience syncing CRM data to ad platforms, building custom audiences and lifecycle segmentation.
Soft Skills
- Strong analytical mindset with the ability to synthesize data into clear recommendations and prioritized action plans.
- Excellent verbal and written communication for cross‑functional collaboration and stakeholder reporting.
- Project management and organizational skills to run multiple campaigns, timelines and vendor relationships simultaneously.
- Strategic thinking with a growth mindset and bias toward testing, learning and scaling successful initiatives.
- Problem solving and critical thinking to diagnose performance issues and rapidly iterate on solutions.
- Leadership and mentorship skills to develop junior marketers and drive alignment across teams.
- Creativity for developing compelling campaign concepts and improving creative performance.
- Attention to detail to ensure tagging, budgets and reporting are accurate and auditable.
- Adaptability to respond to changing platform features, privacy regulations and business priorities.
- Customer‑centric mindset to align acquisition and retention tactics with user needs and lifecycle journeys.
Education & Experience
Educational Background
Minimum Education:
- Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business Administration, Communications, Digital Media, Economics or related field.
Preferred Education:
- Master's degree in Marketing, Business Analytics, MBA or advanced certification in digital marketing.
- Industry certifications (Google Ads, Google Analytics, Meta Blueprint, HubSpot, Facebook Certification, TikTok Ads).
Relevant Fields of Study:
- Marketing
- Business Administration / Management
- Communications / Journalism
- Data Analytics / Statistics
- Advertising / Media Studies
Experience Requirements
Typical Experience Range:
- 3–7 years of progressive experience in digital marketing, with hands‑on campaign management across paid search, paid social, SEO and email.
Preferred:
- 5+ years of experience managing end‑to‑end digital marketing programs and budgets (often $100k+ monthly media spend or equivalent annual budgets).
- Proven track record of improving ROAS, lowering CPA, scaling acquisition channels and driving measurable revenue impact.
- Experience working with cross‑functional teams (product, engineering, creative) and managing agencies or external vendors.
- Experience with e‑commerce platforms or B2B SaaS funnels depending on company context; experience with both acquisition and retention strategies preferred.
- Demonstrated ability to set measurement frameworks, lead experimentation programs and translate analytics into business decisions.