1. Explain an example of a campaign that did not work out as you had planned?

It is important that you are able to recognize why a plan went wrong and to learn from the experience.

Your analytical and problem solving skills are under scrutiny. Campaigns often fail due to poor research and groundwork, inappropriate objectives, or ineffective communication.

2. Tell me when is it better not to engage on social media?

Again, it comes down to judgment. It might be tempting to respond to every negative comment on social media, but a good social media specialist will know how to distinguish between legitimate customer complaints and people who are just looking for attention.

3. Tell me what tools do you use to manage your channels?

Good social media managers won't just blast content onto their channels. They will have a deliberate strategy behind their campaigns and use professional tools to monitor their effectiveness. Dashboards like Hootsuite and Sprout Social give social media specialists the ability to both manage channels and perform basic analytics from one interface.

4. Explain me how you have effectively used digital marketing tools?

In answering this marketing manager interview question, focus on your skills in mobile and online marketing including search engine tactics and optimization, click-through advertising, writing for the Web using keywords, designing for customer usability, utilization of social media and tracking success of the campaign.

5. Please explain how do you use social media as a tool for customer service?

This is an opportunity for the professional to demonstrate both their strategic thinking as well as their judgment and soft skills. A good social media specialist should be able to work with your CS team to make sure that they're providing support that's helpful and on-brand, and also recognize when it's better to take the conversation off social media.

6. Tell me what is on-page and off page optimization?

☛ Off page optimization: It is the process of boosting your search engine ranking by getting external links pointing back to it

☛ On page optimization: On page optimization directly deals with the content and structure of the website.

7. Explain me examples of social media experiments you'd like to run with our business?

There is no single solution when it comes to social media. Trends change, communities evolve. A good social media specialist is constantly looking for new ways to engage with their audience. They should also know how to use the results of their experiments to inform future campaigns.

8. Say there's a crisis on one of our social media channels. How do you handle it?

Nobody likes it, but it's a fact in today's digital age: Sometimes things can go wrong on social media. A great social media expert can describe the steps they'd take to resolve the situation. If you have a set of best practices in place, they should follow that plan; if you don't have one, they should help create it.

9. Explain me what is an effective PPC keyword should be like?

An effective PPC keyword should be

☛ Relevant : List out the targeted keywords
☛ Exhaustive : Apart from most popular keywords it should include the “long tail of search”
☛ Expansive: PPC is iterative, therefore the keyword list should be constantly growing and adapting

10. Explain me a situation in which an innovative course of action was necessary?

Your ability to evaluate a situation, problem or opportunity and understand the action that needs to be taken is key to success as a marketing manager. Gaining a clear perspective is necessary before deciding on the focus of your innovation.

Taking into consideration the available resources and how they can be best used is important in determining the best course of action. Your ability to capitalize on the situation should be highlighted.

11. Tell me how will you determine the best channels for our marketing dollars?

The marketing channels we pursue most aggressively must be the channels that our target audience populates and participates in most. We can begin with educated assumptions based on our knowledge of our ideal customer persona. Then, we conduct small, precise experiments on the various channels that could be a good fit, and determine the optimal channels based on the data we gain from these experiments.

12. Explain me about a successful social campaign you've run from beginning to end?

Your social media specialist will be responsible for devising and executing campaigns, so you want to get some insight into how they approach their work. Great candidates should be able to articulate the problem they were trying to address, how they set goals, what tactics they used, and how they measured their results. It's not necessary that the campaign was a smashing success, as long as the professional approached it in a deliberate way while gaining insights that helped them develop better campaigns in the future.

13. Explain me what makes a piece of social media content successful?

A social media strategy is only as good as the content it produces. To be successful, a social media strategist needs more than a flair for click-worthy headlines (though that certainly helps). They need an eye for relevant, shareable content. If they've managed a blog before, ask them to share some examples of articles they consider successful.

14. Do you know how can we control our brand on social media?

This question should be on the mind of every brand leader since far too many PR disasters have originated on social media. The answer originates in the brand's core values. If the brand has established core values for how it will interact with its customers, suppliers, prospects, employees, partners, etc., then those brand values should be applied to social media. This means having serious conversations with every employee, management included, and a very clear understanding of the repercussions of acting outside the brand's core values.

While that may come across as a negative approach, the exact opposite approach is how we should proactively prevent such social media disasters. The brand's values should be so strong and so clear, and every new hire should be so immersed in the brand's values, that behavior on social media that does not reflect the brand would be completely out of character. That's very easy to say and very difficult to build, but the behavior of a company's employees is rooted in the culture that leadership builds and rewards.

15. Tell me how can you categorize the digital marketing?

The digital marketing/communication is categorized into two segments

☛ Inbound Marketing:
This techniques takes the help of social media, digital content in e-books, webinars or e-newsletter to increase the number of clicks on links and learn more about a company and its services.

☛ Outbound Marketing:
This segment includes placing ads, cold-calls, e-mails or reach out potential customers through digital mediums

16. Tell me what's your favorite CMS and why?

If you're doing digital communications, you'll probably be involved with content and content management systems. Hopefully your candidate will have used a few and have been paying sufficient attention to prefer some over others, and have intelligent reasons for doing so.

Do their points suggest an awareness of the strategic issues at play in choosing a CMS? Issues like security, updating, the availability of developers to work on a particular platform, data liberation, and open source will hopefully be raised.

17. Explain me what are the biggest challenges a marketing manager faces today?

Coming up with new and effective ways to market a product in such a competitive economy is a tough challenge. Keeping up with technological developments and trends is another challenge. Customers have more power than ever and marketing initiatives have to meet these new customer demands and give the customer what they want.

There is enormous accountability for marketing managers to ensure that the marketing operation is efficient and cost-effective and to show how marketing spend translates into growth and profitability for the company. In such a highly competitive market standing out from other organizations is an ongoing challenge.

18. Tell us are you afraid of penguins or pandas?

This is a slightly mean but actually very manageable question about search engine optimisation (SEO), designed to trip up charlatans. If knowledge of SEO is on the job description, don't be satisfied with waffle about keywords and page rank.

This question refers to two big changes to the workings of the Google search algorithm in the last year or so. These are the ‘Panda' and ‘Penguin' updates. So this question will tease out whether they keep up-to-date with search engine optimisation (SEO).

In short, Panda aimed to reward sites with quality content, and to punish sites with low quality and duplicate content. The Penguin update aimed to tackle sites that manipulate search engines to rank more highly than they deserve to be ranked. This includes tactics like stuffing pages with keywords, or obtaining links from disreputable websites in an attempt to pretend that a website is seen as useful.

19. Tell me what are the characteristics of “bad links”?

The characteristics of “bad links” are

☛ Links from sites that are unrelated to your sites
☛ Links from low Page Rank and Low traffic
☛ Links from link exchanges
☛ Links from those sites that are not in Google index
☛ Paid links
☛ Link from the same anchor texts coming from multiple sites
☛ Spammy links from blogs or articles.

20. Explain me where do you see yourself in five years' time in the digital marketing sector?

With this question, the employer is testing you to see how much ambition you have and to see how much you've thought about where your career is going to go. Now, we've addressed this one on our Blog before but in regards to digital marketing, if you really want this particular role, I'd urge you to think about the role you're being interviewed for and how you might be able to progress within that particular company before you give you answer.

It's OK to be ambitious – but you also need to be realistic too. If you're interviewing for a digital marketing executive role, you could say you'd like to be a digital marketing manager either in-house or in an agency – which will show the employer you're keen to progress and take on extra responsibility – possibly at their business. On the other hand, if you're applying for a digital marketing manager vacancy, you could say you see yourself in a Head of Digital role – or running your own digital marketing agency. Although the latter might put a few employers off, it shows you're keen to be successful and not just stagnate in one role.

21. Tell me how do you think your experience of digital marketing will benefit our business?

With this question, it's all going to come down to your own personal experience – so think about what you've done in the past and what skills you've picked up which they might not necessarily have in-house which could benefit the business overall. Also consider any particular digital marketing campaigns that you learnt a lot from – and how this particular knowledge could help the business or one of the business' existing clients.

In this instance, the employer is really asking what differentiates you from the rest of the applicants – so think carefully about what makes you unique (in terms of your digital marketing skills, knowledge, experience and contacts) and how this could have a positive effect on the business.

22. Explain me what are the key elements to optimize the conversion rates per PPC?

Conversion rate is nothing but to bring more visitors to your site. To increase the conversion rates you have to focus on following things

☛ Write compelling content on your site that is relevant to the keyword or search query
☛ Maintain a high degree of relevance between your ads and corresponding landing pages
☛ The webpage should easy registering process, signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase
☛ Check design of your landing page which should have right combination of color, layout and GUI to attract more customers

23. Tell us what's the scariest technical error you've ever encountered and how did you fix it?

We're looking for technical skills, strategic direction, problem solving, stakeholder management, expectation management, and a drive to learn from problems and improve processes. Don't hesitate to ask them to frame their answer differently if it's not making sense.

24. Tell me is SEO dead? Why or why not? If not, what is your plan for managing our SEO?

If SEO were dead, revenue from ads in Google search would not represent 98% of Google, Inc.'s annual revenue. That said, SEO has changed in that the visual aspect of social media and internet advertising has become the primary means of engagement with one's audiences. So, search is text and social is visual, but no matter what any individual is searching for, the individual must type a word or words into a search box somewhere, and the search results must be pulled from somewhere. Therefore, SEO remains of primary importance. Your plan to win at SEO consists of three primary components:

☛ Time – no matter how great your website or your content, it takes time-sometimes up to a year even when done perfectly-to climb the rankings of the billions of web properties represented in any Google search result.

☛ Care – Google has rules, which are the guts of their search algorithm. In order to rank highly, you must follow Google's rules such as mobile friendly, secure, fast, etc. Google is kind about showing you how to comply with their rules in Google Search Console. Implement and follow those rules religiously.

☛ Content – The highest ranking factor in Google's search algorithm is, and always has been, content. Fresh, real, consistent, authentic content applied on a web property that is fully compliant with Google's other rules will always win the day.

25. Fresh Digital Marketing Manager Job Interview Questions:

☛ What are common risks at (Company)? And how to face?
☛ How did you prepare for this work?
☛ How do you cope without motivation?
☛ How do you maintain a positive discussion?
☛ How did you react when faced with constant time pressure?
☛ What are your expectations regarding promotions and salary increases?

26. Difficult Digital Marketing Manager Job Interview Questions:

☛ What is your general experience with digital marketing?
☛ What is the difference between organic traffic and direct traffic?
☛ What factors in digital marketing do you enjoy most?
☛ Have you been involved with social media marketing and can you give examples?
☛ Are you experienced with web analytics tools? Have you developed reports and plans from traffic results?
☛ What is the benefit of social media advertising and engagement?
☛ Can you provide knowledge of PPC campaigns and any you've been involved in?
☛ What kind of experience do you have with mobile marketing including SMS and app-based marketing?
☛ Have you written and dispatched many email marketing campaigns?
☛ What digital marketing campaigns have you been involved with that didn't go so well and what did you learn from them?
☛ Explain to me your methods when it comes to researching new online media opportunities?
☛ Do you have experience with Photoshop and designing web banners or other web visuals?
☛ How do you keep up to date with current digital trends and tech news?

27. Situational Digital Marketing Manager Job Interview Questions:

☛ Tell me about your work experience? How has it prepared you for a career in (field)?
☛ When was the last time you were in a crises?
☛ Give an example of risk that you had to take. Why did you decide to take the risk?
☛ How do you react to instruction and criticism?
☛ Why did you leave your last job.
☛ How do you react if you find that someone you work with does not like you?

28. Phone based Digital Marketing Manager Job Interview Questions:

☛ Have you ever dealt with company policy you weren't in agreement with?
☛ Describe a situation when you had to convince others.
☛ What type of salary are you looking for?
☛ What can you contribute to our digital marketing team?
☛ When was the last time you were in a crisis?
☛ Share an example of how you were able to motivate employees or co-workers.

29. Tricky Digital Marketing Manager Job Interview Questions:

☛ How important is it for you to have a career in marketing or business?
☛ Did you have a strategic plan?
☛ What would you say are your strong points?
☛ Example of a time you have placed yourself in a leadership position.
☛ When given an important assignment, how do you approach it?
☛ Have you ever had difficulty working with a manager?

30. Role-specific Digital Marketing Manager Job Interview Questions:

☛ Talk about one of your most effective campaigns. What made them so effective?
☛ How do you know when a campaign has failed? What metrics do you use?
☛ What does the conversion funnel look like at your company?
☛ How many people are on your current marketing team? What are their roles?
☛ How would you describe your current brand's tone of voice and visual identity?
☛ How do your customers inform your approach to brand-building?
☛ How do you get product feedback from your customers?
☛ What tools do you use to stay organized?
☛ Talk about your experience with editorial calendars.
☛ What is the relationship between SEO and content marketing?
☛ What are some common SEO mistakes in digital content production?
☛ What are the most important and effective social media channels for your brand?
☛ What is your experience with marketing automation?
☛ What role does paid advertising play in your overall strategy?
☛ What is your experience with co-marketing campaigns?
☛ What is the importance of thought leadership at your current organization?
☛ Describe a time you worked with a team to create a campaign on a tight budget.
☛ What is your approach to structuring a marketing budget?
☛ What is your approach to editing copy?
☛ 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?
☛ How would you handle negative feedback about your brand?
☛ What's interesting about our current marketing? What could we do better?

31. Basic Digital Marketing Manager Job Interview Questions:

☛ How interested are you in a #Digital Marketing job?
☛ Do you have the right skills to be a Digital Marketer?
☛ Are you a good fit for the company culture?
☛ Are you a learner?
☛ Do you take initiatives on your own?
☛ Are you a team player?
☛ What problem solving skills do you have to work under pressure?

32. Tell me how you have effectively managed a tight budget to accomplish a marketing activity?

Focus on your planning and organizing skills to get the best return on the marketing budget. Detail what controls were put in place to track and stay on top of expenditure and how plans were adjusted when necessary. Discuss your ability to react quickly and accurately to meet new demands and constraints.

33. Tell me what do you think of our current social media efforts? What could we be doing better?

You want a professional who is deliberate and thoughtful. They should be able to articulate what they think is working well and what isn't. If you have a strategy in place, they should be able to offer ways to build on it. If you don't have one, they should be able to offer ideas that align with your business goals.

34. Have analytics ever shown you something difficult or strange or surprising? What did you do next?

This question isn't coming from a particular angle, but should hopefully see how they combine problem solving, instincts, data, initiative and creativity, as well as their ability to deal with uncertainty.

35. Explain me in what specific ways are you more skilled and better able to do your job than this time last year?

Things are changing fast, so if you can't say how you've bettered yourself in the last year you're pretty much moving backwards. Hopefully you've learned from your own experience, and from changes in the wider world of digital communications.

They may well use a mixture of twitter, in person meetups and RSS feeds. Ask them to name a couple of favorite sources of information – they can be people or organisations or websites.