The Job Nobody Can Quite Explain at a Dinner Party
Ask five different people what a digital marketing strategist does and you’ll get five different answers. One person says “social media stuff.” Another says “SEO, I think.” A third throws out “basically Google ads and analytics.”
They’re all partially right, which is part of the problem.
A digital marketing strategist is the person who looks at your entire online presence, figures out what’s working, what’s bleeding money, and builds a plan that actually connects everything together. Not just one channel. All of them, in coordination.
Think of it like this: running paid ads without an SEO plan is like driving fast in the wrong direction. A strategist is the one who checks the map before anyone hits the gas.
What They Actually Spend Their Time Doing
Here’s where it gets more concrete. A digital marketing strategist spends time across a few core areas, and the mix depends heavily on your business model.
Audience research and positioning. Before any campaign goes live, someone has to understand who the customer actually is. Not just age and income bracket. What language they use, what problems they’re solving, and where they’re already spending time online. Strategists dig into that first.
Channel strategy. Should you be on TikTok? Should you double down on email? Is LinkedIn actually worth it for your niche? These aren’t obvious answers, and a lot of businesses waste money testing every platform at once instead of being selective. A good strategist helps you pick based on data, not trends.
Campaign planning and messaging. Once the channels are clear, someone has to build the messaging framework. What’s the hook? What’s the offer? How does someone move from seeing an ad to trusting the brand? Strategists map that path out before anything goes to a copywriter or designer.
Tracking and attribution. This is the part most business owners don’t think about until they’re sitting in a meeting unable to explain which campaign drove revenue. A strategist sets up the measurement framework so that when results come in, everyone knows what caused them.
The Difference Between a Strategist and a Specialist
This confusion trips a lot of people up when they’re hiring.
A paid ads specialist runs your Google or Meta campaigns. An SEO specialist handles keyword rankings and technical site health. A content writer produces articles and social posts. All of them are executing inside their lane.
A digital marketing strategist sits above all of that. They’re the one making sure every specialist is working toward the same goal, that the ads are reinforcing what the SEO content says, and that the email funnel picks up where the social posts leave off.
Without that coordination, you get disconnected efforts that each look fine on paper but don’t add up to actual business growth.
One agency owner described it well: she hired three freelancers for ads, SEO, and email separately, and they all performed. But revenue barely moved. When she brought in a strategist to connect the work, the same budget started producing 2-3x the results within a quarter. Nothing about the individual tactics changed. The strategy changed.
Common Mistakes Businesses Make Before Hiring One
If you’ve been running your own marketing, chances are you’ve made at least one of these.
- Chasing the shiny platform. Every few months a new channel becomes “the future of marketing.” A strategist helps you ignore 90% of that noise and stay focused on what actually works for your specific audience.
- Measuring vanity metrics. Likes, followers, impressions. These feel good but don’t tell you if the marketing is working. A strategist shifts the conversation to leads, conversion rate, and cost per acquisition.
- Skipping the funnel. A lot of brands create top-of-funnel content (awareness) and bottom-of-funnel ads (buy now) but nothing in between. That gap is where customers fall out. Strategists build the middle.
- No testing structure. Running ads without a clear test-and-learn framework means you’re spending money without knowing how to improve. Strategy includes how you’ll experiment, not just what you’ll run.
If you’re running digital marketing services without someone holding the strategic view, most of the effort ends up being reactive instead of intentional.
How to Know If You Actually Need a Strategist Right Now
Not every business is at the stage where a full-time strategist makes sense. Here’s an honest read on timing.
You probably need one if:
- You’re spending more than $3,000 a month on ads and not sure what’s working
- You’ve tried multiple channels but nothing seems to get traction
- Your team is executing but results are inconsistent
- You’re about to launch something new and need a go-to-market plan
You might not need one yet if:
- You’re still in early product validation phase
- Your marketing budget is very small and you’re still figuring out the offer
- You just need one specific thing done, like a website or a single campaign
In that second case, sometimes starting with a solid set of digital marketing tools is a smarter first step. Get familiar with what the platforms can do, then layer in strategic thinking once you’re ready to scale.
What to Look For When You’re Ready to Hire
This is where a lot of businesses make expensive mistakes.
The portfolio matters, but not in the way you think. Don’t just look at results from their past clients. Ask how they got those results. Ask what didn’t work. Ask what they would have done differently. A strategist who can articulate failure clearly is usually far more valuable than one who only shows highlight reels.
Ask about their process for learning your business. If they want to jump straight to tactics before understanding your offer, customers, and goals, that’s a sign they’re used to running playbooks rather than building actual strategy.
Also, according to HubSpot’s Marketing Industry Report, businesses that document their marketing strategy are 313% more likely to report success than those that don’t. A strategist who can put that documented plan in writing, and defend every choice in it, is worth the investment.
For freelance platforms and hiring, LinkedIn’s B2B Marketing research is a solid reference point for understanding what skills and credentials actually correlate with performance in digital strategy roles.
The Real Value Is in the Thinking, Not Just the Doing
The honest truth is that most marketing execution can be hired out pretty cheaply. Designers, writers, ad managers, and SEO specialists are everywhere. What’s rare is the person who can look at a full business and build a plan that actually makes the pieces work together.
That’s what a digital marketing strategist really is. Not a doer of one thing. A thinker of the whole thing.
If your business is in a place where random marketing activity isn’t adding up to predictable growth, it might not be a budget problem or a platform problem. It might just be a strategy problem.
And those are a lot easier to fix once you know that’s what you’re actually dealing with.
