Day in the life of
Digital Marketing Manager – Addys Guerra
My typical day begins with monitoring our ad accounts to see if we have received new leads on our various digital campaigns. I also make sure that the leads show up on our internal documents and transfer correctly. If there is an error, I have to reconfigure our CRM setup to fix this right away.
After that, I answer any questions we received via our social media channels regarding solar inquiries. I continue to answer any messages or comments we receive from social media throughout the day.
I spend most of the time writing and creating content for our solar website to rank higher on local search results. I write several 1,000-word articles that are targeting keyword phrases I researched to post on our website and link internally so that search engines will find this content and show it on the first page of search results.
Whenever a new month begins, I reevaluate our existing campaigns and edit, pause, or create new ads on our paid campaigns to obtain more solar leads.
Facebook ad campaigns
Pros
One BIG “pro” is that not everything has to be done between the standard business hours of 9 AM to 5 PM. For the most part, I can set my own hours and work when I need to. There are days when I need to create a new campaign or write a new blog post which are long projects that can take hours. I end up taking multiple breaks during these tasks so that I can finish each project without errors, always double checking my work, and making sure each campaign is set up properly and that each blog post is grammatically correct.
Another big “pro” is that for the most part my work can be done from anywhere as long as I have access to a computer with internet. I have checked up on my campaigns before while on vacation just to make sure everything was running smoothly. It gave me peace of mind. I can also move anywhere or live anywhere in the world if I choose to since I can work from home.
Being the digital marketing manager also has its perks in the “management” part of the job. Whenever there are menial, repetitive tasks, I can typically delegate those to my team which frees up my time to focus on the bigger projects. Even if there are too many tasks, there are a lot of automation tools I can use to take care of multiple projects at once. For instance, Google Ads’ automated rules let me control the bids more closely by pausing keywords that cost too much per click. Hootsuite is another well-known tool that allows me to schedule our social media posts ahead of time so that we can schedule our posts months in advance and free up our time from all future social media posting.
Google Analytics
Cons
I am responsible for thousands of dollars in paid campaigns and if we get no results, that falls directly on me. Many times, digital marketing paid campaigns can be trial and error because you can never know exactly what’s going to happen with each campaign since there are factors beyond my control. Things that can affect the success rate of my campaigns can be anywhere from how expensive the Google Ads auction will be, to how much our competitors are bidding, the seasonality of the industry/market, and more.
Another “con” that also deals with responsibility is that I create the marketing strategy for our goals. For our solar division, initially, I did not know anything about the solar industry, and in speaking with the CEO I learned more. I also had to do my own research to see how to even approach the solar market and successfully obtain leads. We lost thousands of dollars in tests at first. Figuring out a winning strategy for every product is a process of trial and error because you can follow all the correct procedures for a successful campaign and yet it could still fail. This stems from another digital marketing manager con: digital marketing is a new industry. Not everyone has all the answers yet, not even universities. Personally, I graduated with two bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and Marketing, but do you think these helped me do any of the tasks I do now? NO. I had to learn everything on-the-job since none of my marketing classes had taught me anything about pay-per-click campaigns, or SEO, or even graphic design which is now part of a digital marketing role. It was crazy knowing that I threw away four years for a degree that did not prepare me for my career, but it has been a whirlwind since then learning how to do it all and I have loved every step of the journey. Like they say, life is not all about the destination but the journey that takes you there.
A final “con” I can think of, which can actually make your job interesting yet challenging, is: you must always stay informed on the latest practices and tools. Search engines (like Google) and social media platforms (like Facebook) are always changing their algorithm. Not only that but also digital marketing is a new field that is ever-evolving. You must subscribe to several digital marketing and tech blogs to stay on top of the current trends because no one knows if major digital marketing players like Facebook will disappear tomorrow. Who knows? Maybe the new social media king will be Tik Tok. I read articles daily about digital marketing news and trends, it is a part of my job.
