Digital Marketing Coordinator

A Digital Marketing Coordinator runs the day-to-day execution of a company's online marketing: scheduling social posts, building and sending email campaigns, updating website pages, setting up and monitoring paid ads, and pulling together performance reports. The job sits between strategy (usually set by a manager or head of marketing) and delivery, so much of the work is making campaigns actually happen on time and across the right channels. Coordinators work in in-house marketing teams at almost any kind of organisation, or inside agencies delivering work for client brands.

Starting salary: £24k–£30k
Live graduate jobs: 5 open now
Main way in: Direct application to a coordinator or executive-level vacancy…
They usually ask for: A degree is usually asked for but the subject often does not…

Approximate graduate salary

Typically around £24,000–£30,000 to start, though this varies widely - London and larger consumer or tech employers sit at the upper end or above, while small businesses, charities and roles outside major cities often start lower. Agency starting salaries are frequently modest relative to the workload.

What you'd actually do

Planning and scheduling social media content for the week - writing captions, sourcing or briefing images, loading posts into a scheduling tool, then replying to comments and messages
Building email campaigns in a platform such as Mailchimp, Klaviyo or HubSpot: writing or editing copy, laying out the template, segmenting the mailing list, testing links and sending
Updating website content through a CMS (content management system, the admin area where you edit pages without coding) - adding blog posts, landing pages, product descriptions or event listings
Pulling numbers from Google Analytics, social platform dashboards and ad accounts into a weekly or monthly report, and writing a short summary of what moved and why

Show 3 more

Setting up or adjusting paid campaigns - Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn - including writing ad variations, uploading audiences and checking budget pacing
Coordinating other people: chasing a designer for assets, briefing a freelance copywriter, getting sign-off from a product team or a client, keeping a campaign calendar up to date
Smaller recurring tasks - updating SEO page titles and meta descriptions, tidying the CRM, checking competitor activity, uploading photos from an event

How graduates get in

Direct application to a coordinator or executive-level vacancy after graduating - this is by far the most common route, as most digital marketing teams hire individually rather than through graduate schemes
Internships or placement years in a marketing team, which are common in marketing, business and communications degrees and often convert into a first job or at least provide the portfolio employers want to see
Formal graduate schemes - these exist at larger consumer brands, retailers, media owners and some agencies, usually as a rotational marketing scheme rather than a 'digital marketing coordinator' title specifically. They are competitive and far fewer in number than direct-entry roles
Starting in an adjacent junior role - agency account executive, social media assistant, content assistant, sales or customer service in a company with a small marketing team - and moving across within a year or two. Very common and completely respectable

Show 2 more

Building demonstrable experience outside employment: running social accounts for a student society, a charity, a small local business or your own project, plus free certifications (Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta Blueprint, HubSpot). This matters more than it does in most graduate fields because the work is so easily evidenced
Apprenticeships and non-graduate entry are genuinely common here too, so you will sometimes be competing with people who have two or three years' hands-on experience and no degree

What employers ask for

A degree is usually asked for but the subject often does not matter much. Marketing, business, communications, English, media and psychology are common, though plenty of coordinators come from unrelated subjects
Grades are rarely a hard filter - a 2:2 with a portfolio of real campaign work is frequently more persuasive than a first with none. Some larger graduate schemes do set a 2:1 minimum
Evidence of hands-on experience with at least some of: a social scheduling tool, an email platform, a CMS, Google Analytics, or an ad account. Employers want to see you have touched the tools, not just studied them
Free online certifications (Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta Blueprint, HubSpot Academy) are widely recognised and cheap to get. They do not replace experience but they signal effort and basic literacy

Show 2 more

Professional qualifications from the CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing) or the DMI (Digital Marketing Institute) exist and are respected, but are usually taken a few years in rather than as an entry requirement, and are often employer-funded
Writing samples or a small portfolio - a few posts, a blog article, a campaign you ran - is increasingly expected at application or interview stage

Skills that matter

Copywriting for short formats

A huge share of the job is writing subject lines, ad headlines, captions and CTAs that are clear and on-brand within a tight character count.

Comfort with spreadsheets and basic data

You will be exporting campaign data, combining it, working out things like cost per click or open rate, and spotting when a number has moved for a boring technical reason rather than a real one.

Analytics literacy

Being able to navigate Google Analytics or a platform dashboard and explain in plain English what happened to traffic or conversions is what separates a coordinator from an assistant.

Project coordination and chasing

Campaigns involve designers, developers, approvers and sometimes clients, and the coordinator is usually the person holding the deadline together.

Attention to detail under time pressure

A broken link in an email to the full list, or a typo in a live ad, is visible to everyone immediately and cannot always be undone.

Willingness to learn new tools quickly

Platforms, ad interfaces and AI tools change constantly, so most of what you use in three years' time you will have taught yourself.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Coordinator or executive level for roughly the first one to three years, building breadth across channels and taking ownership of one or two areas
Senior executive or specialist - many people narrow here into paid media, SEO, email/CRM, content or social, because specialists tend to be paid more and promoted faster than generalists
Digital Marketing Manager or channel manager, owning budget, strategy for a channel and often line-managing one or two juniors. Timelines vary a lot: fast in small companies and agencies, slower but more structured in large corporates
Head of Digital, Marketing Manager across all channels, or Account Director on the agency side
Longer term: Marketing Director or CMO in-house, agency leadership, or going freelance/consultant - freelancing is unusually accessible in this field because the work is project-based and results are easy to evidence. Senior timelines vary enormously and are not worth predicting

What people get wrong

“It's mostly being creative and coming up with campaign ideas.”

Strategy and big creative concepts usually sit with a manager or an agency. A coordinator's week is largely execution and admin: scheduling, building, checking, reporting and chasing other people. The creative input grows as you become more senior.

“It's basically 'posting on social media', so anyone who uses Instagram can do it.”

Social is one channel among several, and the parts employers care about most - paid ad setup, email automation, analytics, SEO - look nothing like personal social media use. The measurable, technical side is what gets you promoted.

“You need a marketing degree.”

Many coordinators have degrees in unrelated subjects. Demonstrable hands-on work with the tools, plus decent writing, usually counts for more than the subject on your certificate.

“The title means roughly the same thing everywhere.”

'Coordinator', 'executive' and 'assistant' are used almost interchangeably in UK digital marketing, and the actual scope ranges from one task area to running an entire small company's marketing single-handedly. Always read the duties, not the title.

Where this varies

The biggest split is agency versus in-house. In an agency you juggle several client brands at once, work to tight billable deadlines and learn a lot fast, but have less control over strategy; in-house you work on one brand in more depth, often at a slower pace, and get closer to the product and the commercial results. Company size matters just as much: in a small business you may be the entire marketing function, doing everything from the website to the print flyers, whereas in a large organisation you might work on a single channel within a specialist team. Sector changes the work too - e-commerce roles lean heavily on paid ads, email and conversion data; B2B and professional services lean on LinkedIn, content and lead generation through a CRM; charities and the public sector tend to have smaller budgets and more emphasis on organic content and community. Hybrid working is common but not universal.

See all 5 live Digital Marketing Coordinator jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.