Digital Marketing Executive
A digital marketing executive runs the day-to-day online marketing activity for a business or its clients — things like email campaigns, social media accounts, paid ads, website content and search engine optimisation (SEO, the work of getting a website to appear higher in Google's unpaid results). Most of the job is hands-on execution: building and scheduling campaigns, writing copy, uploading content and checking what the numbers did afterwards. You'll either work in-house for one brand, or in an agency where you split your time across several client accounts.
Approximate graduate salary
Typically somewhere around GBP 22,000–30,000 to start, though this varies widely — London and larger consumer brands sit at the higher end, small businesses, charities and agencies outside major cities often at the lower end.
What you'd actually do
- Writing and scheduling social posts, then replying to comments and messages and flagging anything that needs a senior decision
- Building email campaigns in a marketing platform — writing the subject line and body copy, choosing which segment of the mailing list receives it, testing how it renders on mobile, and sending it
- Setting up or adjusting paid search and paid social adverts: writing ad copy, uploading images, setting budgets and audiences, and pausing ads that aren't performing
- Updating website pages through a content management system (CMS) — publishing blog posts, fixing broken links, adding page titles and descriptions for SEO
- Pulling numbers out of analytics tools and ad dashboards to build a weekly or monthly report showing traffic, clicks, sign-ups or sales, usually into a template someone else designed
- Briefing designers, videographers or freelance writers on what you need, chasing them for it, and checking what comes back against the brief
- Sitting in campaign planning meetings, keeping the content calendar up to date, and doing the small unglamorous admin that keeps campaigns live
How graduates get in
- Direct application to an advertised graduate or junior digital marketing role — by far the most common route. Many are advertised simply as 'marketing executive' or 'digital marketing assistant' rather than as a graduate scheme.
- A formal graduate scheme in marketing, usually at larger consumer brands, retailers, banks or media groups. These exist but are a minority of entry points and are competitive; most people get in through ordinary vacancies instead.
- Agency entry as an account executive, paid media assistant or SEO executive, then broadening out. Agencies (marketing, PR, media or digital agencies) hire a lot of juniors and are a common first job.
- Internships and placement years — a year in industry as part of a sandwich degree, or a summer marketing internship, is a strong route and often converts into a job offer.
- Sideways entry from a related first job: sales, customer service, retail head office, admin or content roles where you volunteered for the social media or email work, then moved across.
- Apprenticeship routes exist (digital marketing apprenticeships at various levels), and some graduates do take a degree-level or higher apprenticeship, but this is less common for people who already hold a degree.
What employers ask for
- A degree is usual but the subject often doesn't matter much. Marketing, business, communications, English, media and psychology are all common; so are unrelated subjects. Employers care more about whether you can show relevant work.
- Grade requirements are generally looser than in law, finance or consulting. Many employers ask for a 2:2 or above, or don't specify a classification at all. A minority of large graduate schemes still ask for a 2:1 and set A-level or UCAS requirements.
- Evidence you have actually done some of the work — a society's Instagram account, a student newspaper, a personal blog with real traffic, a side hustle's online shop, freelance content writing, or a placement. This matters more than most other credentials for this role.
- Familiarity with common tools is often asked for but rarely required at expert level: analytics, a CMS such as WordPress, an email platform, a social scheduling tool, and basic spreadsheet work.
- Free or cheap certifications (for example the analytics and ads certifications the major platforms publish, or an introductory qualification from a professional marketing body) are commonly listed as 'desirable'. They help a CV stand out for a first job but nobody is hired on a certificate alone.
- Professional qualifications from bodies such as the Chartered Institute of Marketing or the Institute of Data & Marketing are usually taken while working rather than before, and are more common in some sectors than others.
Skills that matter
Clear, fast copywriting
Most of the output is words — subject lines, ad headlines, captions, landing page text — and it has to be written quickly and to a brand's tone of voice, not polished for a week.
Comfort with spreadsheets and numbers
You'll spend real time pulling campaign data into spreadsheets, working out cost per click or conversion rate, and spotting whether a change actually made a difference or is just noise.
Reading analytics without over-claiming
Juniors are often asked what a campaign achieved, and the useful answer distinguishes what the data genuinely shows from what someone hoped it would show.
Attention to detail under time pressure
A typo in a subject line, a broken link or a wrong audience setting goes out to thousands of people and can't be recalled, so checking work is a core part of the job rather than a nicety.
Learning new platforms quickly
Ad platforms, email tools and social channels change their interfaces and rules constantly, so you need to be the kind of person who clicks around and works it out rather than waiting for training.
Managing lots of small parallel tasks
A typical week is several campaigns at different stages plus other people waiting on you, so keeping track of deadlines and chasing people is what stops things quietly slipping.
Where it leads
Digital marketing executive for roughly one to three years, moving from 'doing what you're told' to owning a channel — for example being the person responsible for email or for paid social.
Senior executive or specialist, where you either go deeper into one discipline (paid media, SEO, CRM/email, content) or stay a generalist at a smaller organisation. Timelines vary a lot; agency progression is often faster in title but the jumps are smaller.
Marketing manager or channel manager, running campaigns end to end, holding a budget, and often line-managing an executive or two. Some people reach this in three to five years, others take longer, and it depends heavily on employer size.
Head of digital, head of marketing or agency account director, with responsibility for strategy, budget and team. In small companies this can arrive quickly because there are few layers; in large ones it's a long climb.
Common sideways moves instead of upwards: into specialist consultancy or freelancing, into product marketing, ecommerce, marketing analytics, or moving from agency to a client-side in-house role (or the reverse).
What people get wrong
“It's a creative job about coming up with clever campaign ideas.”
At junior level it's largely execution and measurement — building, scheduling, checking, reporting. The creative concepting sits with more senior people, agencies or designers, and you contribute ideas around the edges before you own them.
“Being good at social media personally means you'll be good at the job.”
Running a brand account is mostly process, approvals, planning calendars and defending decisions with data. Personal social skill helps with tone but the job rewards organisation and analytical thinking far more.
“You need a marketing degree.”
Many people in the role studied something else entirely. Employers usually weight demonstrable hands-on experience — even small, self-started projects — above the degree subject.
“It's a non-technical, non-numerical job for people who dislike maths.”
A large part of the role is budgets, conversion rates, cost per acquisition and A/B testing, and the people who progress fastest are usually the ones most comfortable with data.
Where this varies
The role differs a lot depending on where you do it. In a small business you may be the entire marketing function, doing everything from the website to printing event banners, with little supervision but broad ownership. In a large in-house team you'll likely be assigned one channel and work within established processes and brand rules. In an agency you'll juggle several clients, record your time, and face client-facing pressure and deadlines that in-house roles don't have. Sector matters too: ecommerce and direct-to-consumer roles are heavily data- and sales-driven; B2B (business-to-business) roles lean more on content, email and lead generation over long sales cycles; charity and public sector roles tend to have smaller budgets and more emphasis on campaigns and communications. Job titles are inconsistent across the market — 'digital marketing executive', 'marketing executive', 'digital marketing assistant' and 'marketing coordinator' can all describe near-identical work, so read the duties rather than the title.
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.