Hire Head of Digital Marketing — every digital channel, one owner
A Head of Digital Marketing owns the full digital footprint: paid acquisition, SEO, email and lifecycle, social, and the website that converts it all. They decide the channel mix, set targets per channel, manage the specialists or agencies behind each one, and build the attribution that shows what digital actually earns. This is the hire for companies where digital is the business, but no single person owns it.
I'm Omer Muneer Qazi, a Dubai-based Fractional CTO & Solutions Architect with 15+ years of experience and 100+ projects delivered across 6 countries. Digital leadership is where marketing meets technology — tracking, CRO, martech — so I vet candidates on both sides of that line. For paid-only leadership, see head of performance marketing.
Digital owned end to end
Digital strategy & channel mix
One plan for all digital: where paid, organic, email, and social each fit, what each must deliver, and how budget shifts between them as results come in.
Paid acquisition leadership
Ownership of paid targets and the people or agencies running the accounts. Creative testing cadence, CAC guardrails, and scale decisions made weekly.
SEO & content direction
Organic as a managed program: technical health, content roadmap, and authority building with targets attached — not a blog that publishes into the void.
Email & lifecycle ownership
The retention engine: flows, campaigns, segmentation, and deliverability, with revenue attribution per program. Email stops being an afterthought.
Website & CRO
The site treated as a channel: conversion audits, testing roadmap, and landing page standards. Traffic is only half the job; the other half is what it converts into.
Attribution you can defend
Multi-touch reality instead of last-click fiction: agreed rules, clean tracking, and reporting that survives finance’s questions.
From fragmented channels to one digital P&L
A structured engagement with no surprises — you’ll always know what’s happening and what’s next.
Channel audit
Every digital channel gets scored: spend, return, ownership, and data quality. The audit usually finds both waste and underfunded winners.
Strategy & targets
Channel mix, budgets, and targets set for the quarter. Each channel gets an owner and a number.
Operating cadence
Weekly channel reviews, monthly reallocation, quarterly strategy reset. Digital becomes a managed portfolio.
Scale what proves out
Budget follows evidence. Winning channels get more; losers get fixed or cut. The mix evolves instead of calcifying.
Why hire a head of digital marketing through a Fractional CTO
Digital marketing leaders fail when they are channel specialists wearing a generalist title — brilliant at paid, blind at SEO — or when they cannot tell good tracking from bad. I test for genuine multi-channel fluency and for the technical literacy to own attribution: they must understand pixels, server-side tracking, and CRM data, not just campaign dashboards.
I stay involved while the measurement foundation is built, because every digital decision downstream depends on it. To discuss your digital leadership gap, contact me.
Frequently asked questions
Fractional or full-time Head of Digital Marketing?
Full-time runs $130k–$190k in most markets. Fractional works well when digital spend is under roughly $100k a month — you get the strategy and oversight without carrying the full salary.
What team do they lead?
Usually channel specialists (paid, SEO, email) or agency relationships per channel. A strong head can also run lean: one or two strong generalists plus freelancers.
What does the first 90 days deliver?
Clean attribution, a channel audit with reallocation decisions, targets per channel, and a weekly review cadence. Paid waste usually gets cut in month one.
How do they prove digital is working?
Blended CAC, CAC by channel, LTV:CAC, and attributed revenue — reported against targets monthly. The attribution model gets agreed with finance upfront so nobody relitigates it later.
How is this different from a Head of Performance Marketing?
Performance owns paid acquisition. Digital owns everything online: paid plus SEO, email, social, and the website. If organic and lifecycle matter to you, you want the broader seat.
Put one owner on all digital
List your active digital channels and monthly spend — I will tell you what leadership shape fits and what the first quarter should fix.