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A director of digital marketing owns the plan for how a company finds, converts, and keeps customers online. They set strategy across search, paid media, social, content, and email marketing, manage the budget behind it, and answer to leadership for the results. This director of digital marketing job description gives you a template you can copy, a clear line between the director and manager levels, and a short guide to checking candidates for the skills you list.
A digital marketing director leads a company’s online marketing strategy and team. Core duties include planning digital marketing campaigns, managing channel budgets, guiding SEO, paid media, social, and email marketing, reporting on performance, and hiring and coaching the team.
Most employers ask for a bachelor’s degree in marketing or a related field and 7 to 10 years of work experience, including time leading people.
Most companies already run some digital marketing. Ads are live, a newsletter goes out, someone posts on social. What they lack is one person who decides which of those channels deserve more money, which should stop, and how all of it ties back to revenue. That is the job.
The director sits between the executive team and the people running each channel. Upward, they turn business goals into a channel plan and a budget, then report on what the spend produced. Downward, they set priorities for specialists, agencies, and a digital marketing manager or two, and they remove the blockers that slow campaigns down.
In smaller companies, the director is often hands on and still runs paid search or email themselves. In larger ones, they manage a team across several channels and spend most of their week on planning, reviews, and cross functional work with sales, product, and brand.
The titles get used loosely, and many job postings blur them. The real difference is scope: who owns the strategy, the budget, and the team.
| Area | Digital marketing manager | Digital marketing director |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Runs channels and digital marketing campaigns | Sets the strategy those campaigns serve |
| Budget | Spends an allocated budget | Builds the budget and defends it to leadership |
| Team | Works with specialists or agencies | Hires, leads, and develops the team |
| Reporting | Reports campaign metrics | Reports pipeline, revenue impact, and return on spend |
| Typical work experience | 3 to 6 years | 7 to 10 years or more |
| Reports to | Marketing director | VP of marketing or CMO |
If the person will mostly run campaigns inside a plan someone else owns, the digital marketing manager job description is a better fit. If the role centers on planning and research rather than leading a team, look at the digital marketing strategist job description.
These responsibilities form the core of a director of digital marketing job description, sometimes listed as a digital marketing director job description. Cut or reword them to match your company’s channels and size.
Years of experience are a rough filter. Two candidates with ten years each can look very different: one may have built a channel mix and a team from scratch, while the other managed a single channel inside a large department. Ask what they owned and what changed because of them.
Copy the template below and edit the details to fit your company.
Job title: Director of Digital Marketing
Reports to: VP of Marketing or Chief Marketing Officer
Location and type: [City, remote, or hybrid], full time
Job brief
We are hiring a director of digital marketing to lead our online growth. You will build our digital strategy, manage the budget and team behind it, and report on how our digital marketing campaigns drive pipeline and revenue. You should be comfortable with data, clear with executives, and steady when priorities shift.
Responsibilities
Requirements
What we offer
[Salary range, benefits, flexible work options, and growth opportunities]
Every candidate for this role will show you a strong deck of past results. The harder question is what they personally decided and how they think when the data is messy.
Sit down with the hiring executive. Decide how much budget the director will own, how big the team is, and which channels matter most this year. Edit the template to match those answers.
Give shortlisted candidates a short, realistic exercise. Examples that work well:
Glider’s skill assessment software and job based skill tests let you run exercises like these in one consistent format, scored against the same rubric for every candidate.
Ask every finalist the same core questions so answers are comparable. Focus on specific situations: a campaign they shut down, a budget fight they won or lost, or a hire that did not work out. A one way video interview can help you screen communication and strategic thinking early, before senior leaders spend time on live rounds.
Ask to speak with people who worked for the candidate, not only people they reported to. A director’s results depend on the team they build.
For related roles, see the social media manager job description or browse the full job description library.
It should include a job brief, reporting line, core responsibilities, required digital marketing skills, education, years of work experience, and what you offer. The template above covers each of these.
A digital marketing director sets the company’s online marketing strategy, manages the budget and team, oversees digital marketing campaigns across channels, and reports results to leadership.
The director owns the strategy, budget, and team. A digital marketing manager runs campaigns and channels within that plan and usually reports to the director.
Most employers ask for a bachelor’s degree in marketing or a related field and 7 to 10 years of work experience, including team leadership. Proven results matter more than any single credential.
Strategic planning, analytics, budget management, leadership, and project management matter most, along with working knowledge of SEO, paid media, and email marketing.
They usually report to a VP of marketing or a chief marketing officer. In smaller companies they may report to the CEO.
Strong directors follow platform and search updates, test new channels in small budgets, and review industry research and peer communities on a regular basis.
Use a realistic exercise, such as reallocating a budget from real channel data, then follow up with a structured interview. This shows how the candidate makes decisions rather than how they present past wins.
Copy the template, tailor it to the budget and team this person will own, and decide in advance how you will test the skills you listed. If you want a consistent way to compare finalists on strategy and analysis before your leadership team meets them, see how Glider’s skill assessments work.
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