Search Marketing Manager Onboarding Plan: Your Shortcut to Onboarding Success

Are you trying to figure out the magic formula to successfully onboad your new Search Marketing Manager?

The last thing you want is being bombarded with a flurry of questions, confused expressions, and less than stellar performance.

Gone are the days of generic, one-size-fits-all approaches. We're giving you a roadmap, cheat sheet, and step-by-step guide specifically tailored to onboarding your Search Marketing Managers.

And we're not stopping at just telling you what to do. We'll show you how it's done, why it works, and where it leads.

 ✈️ Why is onboarding important for search marketing managers?

Search marketing managers play a vital role in any organization: they ensure the company's products and services are visible to potential customers. 

An effective search marketing manager will:

• Know how search engines work and what keywords and phrases will likely lead users to a company's website.
• Create and implement effective campaigns targeting these keywords and maximize the company's visibility in search engine results pages.

However, all this knowledge and experience is worthless if a search marketing manager is not adequately onboarded into their new role.

A good onboarding process for new hires will ensure they understand their responsibilities and have the necessary tools and resources to succeed.

Without an onboarding strategy, it is tough for even the most experienced and knowledgeable search marketing manager to make a positive impact because they won't be able to apply that knowledge to your company's specific needs.

📝 Search marketing manager onboarding 30-60-90 day plan template

 A search marketing manager's 30-60-90 day onboarding plan should be designed to help them hit the ground running and be successful in their new role. 

Preboarding 

Compliance focus

• Send them their official employee agreements, with the agreed-upon benefits and insurance details.
• Prepare access details for the SEO tools they'll be using and the website login credentials.
• Order and send all the equipment and platform details they'll need, and conduct proper IT onboarding before they start.

Connection focus

• Identify the main stakeholders, like the marketing and customer success department.
• Schedule an informal gathering with the whole team.
• Schedule a follow-up formal meeting with the people they will work with.
• For an in-office job, invite them to the office and give them a tour.

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Week 1 

Wind up essential formalities, training, and introductions during this week. A successful week 1 will speed up onboarding and make the following weeks easier.

Main activities

• Give them access to their employee onboarding portal.
• Introduce them to existing writers, marketers, strategists, web developers, and, if relevant, contractor SEO on the team.
• Train them on the company's marketing automation systems.
• Give them an overview of the company's current and past PPC campaigns.
• Brief them about the channels they will use and any ongoing SEO experiments or campaigns.
• Brief them on the current SEO goals for the company. E.g., tell them if you're trying to raise awareness, start conversations, or increase conversions on the website.
• Share and answer questions on your central people policies, such as performance reviews, development programs, career growth, etc. 

➡️ For similar tips, check out 9 other ideas to welcome your employees.

Learning focus: SEO strategy

• Identify and connect with external partners.
• Have a keen understanding of how Google Analytics works.
• Understand the technical SEO roadmap to be followed.
• Learn how to take a data-driven approach to formulate the SEO strategy.
• Learn to make and understand website heatmaps.
• Learn to identify promising pages and refresh them for increased visibility.

Success metrics you could use

• Proficiency in technical and on-page SEO (assessed through quizzes, presentations, or hands-on tasks).
• The number of established contacts with journalists for PR outreach.
• Number of client accounts interacted with.
• Level of proficiency with SEO tools and the playbook (can be gauged through tests or task outcomes).

➡️ Adapt our goal tracking template for keeping an eye on employee progress during onboarding.

First 30 days

The first 30 days should be focused on learning the ropes, getting a lay of the land, and working with the rest of the marketing team. This includes learning about the company's products, services, target market, and competition.

Main activities

• Build proficiency in technical and on-page SEO.
• Set up link-building campaigns.
• Nurture relationships with journalists for PR outreach.
• Tune into ongoing and future PPC campaigns.
• Learn to communicate with the main client accounts.
• Understand the target audience and the keywords they are likely to search for.

Learning focus: SEO tools and relationship-building

• Understand the tools used to conduct keyword and cluster research (e.g. SE Ranking).
• Learn to optimize content.
• Create repeatable processes for in-house writers and freelancers to follow.
• Read the playbook to learn the rules for creating content in that industry.
• Sit in on meetings to pick up efficient communication skills with clients. 

Days 30-60

The following 30 days should focus on diving deeper into the job's specifics and developing a solid understanding of the company's search marketing strategy.

New goals

• Create a plan to implement your updated SEO strategy.
• Produce and enhance the content that works internally or in collaboration with a content marketing provider.
• Organize and manage link-building initiatives.
• Keep track of and handle technical SEO.
• Optimize content conversion rates.
• Create an SEO audit checklist to evaluate the website regularly.

Activities

• Use performance indicators to determine if previously optimized content is doing well.
• Set key metrics that must be achieved for all the produced content.
• Conduct a simple Google search to view the rankings of already optimized blogs.
• Analyze landing pages for their effectiveness and potential areas of improvement. 
• Check in on the domain rating.
• Respond to journalist queries and thank them for any mentions to maintain PR relations. 

Success metrics you could use

• Quality and acceptance of the plan for clients' SEO strategy (can be assessed by peers or supervisors).
• The number of link-building initiatives organized.
• The number of improvements in technical SEO issues (measured by decreased issues or improved website performance).
• Content conversion rates before and after optimization.

The end of the first 60 days would be the perfect time for a mid-probation review.

➡️ Download our free mid-probation review template, your shortcut to new hire success. 

Days 60-90

Finally, the last 90 days should be all about execution, implementing the search marketing plan, and measuring results.

Goals

• Master your marketing tool stack, especially SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush.
• Take complete ownership of SEO functions and objectives.
• Align SEO and marketing objectives.
• Set key metrics and timelines for meeting those metrics.
• Attend a probation period review.
• Based on this, schedule a meeting for a feedback session on improving performance and meeting key metrics.
• Execute SEO strategies for the website and track its performance.
• Collaborate with the social media team to align SEO strategies with social media efforts.
• Work on the content calendar with SEO-optimized blog post ideas.
• Establish an SEO reporting framework to measure success and identify areas of improvement.

Success metrics you could use

• Improvement in proficiency with SEO tools (can be measured through faster task completion, increased usage, or complex task handling).
• SEO goal achievement rate
• Aligning SEO and marketing objectives (can be measured by how many marketing campaigns consider SEO guidelines).
• Achievement of set key metrics and timelines
• Positive feedback in the probation period review.

🆘 Struggling to find the best ways to give feedback to new employees during onboarding? We have gathered multiple practical tips to help you.

HR tasks: Onboarding survey

• Speak to the onboarding buddy for updates.
• Collect feedback on how the onboarding process can be improved. 

If you need other templates, we have you covered. Check out our different automated templates.

👀 6 Elements for an effective search marketing manager onboarding process

Here are 6 aspects you need to look after to maximize the effects of all 4 onboarding phases.

Review of the company's marketing goals

A search marketing manager needs to review the company's marketing goals during onboarding for several reasons:

• It helps familiarize the manager with the company's objectives and target market. This information is essential for developing an effective search marketing strategy.
• The review allows the manager to identify areas where their skills and knowledge could be used to improve the company's marketing efforts.
• The review gives your new hire a chance to ask questions and get clarifications on what their role demands. You also have an opportunity to spot gaps in your current strategy as a result of those questions.

Analysis of the target audience

A search marketing manager needs to deeply understand the target audience to create campaigns that will reach the right people.

 Otherwise, the company risks wasting time and money on ads that the wrong people with zero purchase intent will see. A target audience analysis can also help identify the most effective keywords and phrases for a search marketing campaign.

Competitive analysis 

A competitive analysis is important for onboarding a search marketing manager because it provides insights into your competitors' strategies to rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs). 

This information can be used to develop your SEO strategy and ensure you use the most effective keywords and tactics. It can also help you identify gaps in your competitor's strategies, which you can exploit to further improve your ranking.

Brief on search marketing tools

This is important for onboarding a search marketing manager so that they can be aware of all the options available to them. 

With so many different tools out there, it can be hard to know which ones are the best to use.

A good brief will help to narrow down the choices and provide information on the features of each tool. This will allow the manager to decide which ones are best suited to their needs. 

It is also important to remember that no single tool is perfect for every situation. The manager should understand all the options available to them to choose the right tool for each task.

Overview of marketing strategies

As any business owner knows, marketing is essential to the success of any company. Without a well-crafted marketing strategy, reaching potential customers and generating interest in your products or services can be difficult.

That's why it's so important to give a thorough overview of your marketing strategies to your SEO manager during onboarding. By doing so, you'll ensure that your SEO manager is aware of your overall marketing goals and can help to create a customized plan that will get results.

Additionally, an overview of your marketing strategy during onboarding will help to ensure that your SEO manager is up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in the ever-changing world of search engine optimization.

Overview of the current company website 

It is always essential to give an overview of the current website during the onboarding of an SEO manager. By doing so, the manager will be able to understand the website's structure and also get an idea about the work done on it to date. 

This will help the manager formulate strategies for improving the website's ranking on search engine results pages. In addition, giving an overview of the current website will also help the manager identify potential areas with scope for improvement.

➡️ Implement next-gen onboarding with Zavvy 

These are the steps to developing an onboarding plan that sets your new hire up for success:

• Define the role's objectives and create specific goals that the search marketing manager will be responsible for achieving, as well as who they will report to within the company hierarchy.
• Establish what type of training the new hire will need to succeed in their role (for example, budgeting & forecasting skills, knowledge of Google AdWords or other PPC platforms.)
• Ensure everyone involved in the onboarding process – from managers to co-workers– is familiar with what is expected of them and knows how to support the new hire once they start working at your company.

 The steps detailed above are a lot of work. Our employee enablement platform gives you access to preboarding, onboarding, and event scheduling software that tailors and automates this entire process for you.

Here are a few key features that will especially help you out:

•  👬 Onboarding buddies: Automatically guide new hires and buddies over weeks and months via Slack.
• ⚙️ Automation: Automatically assign journeys based on team, location, and hiring date. We also call it "zero-touch onboarding." Once you have integrated our automation with your HRMS system, you don't have to do ANYTHING anymore.
• 💬 Slack & Teams integrations: Meet your employees where they spend most of their time. 
• 🏞 Rich content embeds: Use all the tools you love. Embed content from places like Youtube, Google Drive, Typeform, and Loom, without having to maintain it in yet another place.
• 📅 Automatic event scheduling: Automatically schedule your orientation events.
• ✅ Quizzes: Make training more engaging and fun. 

📅 Book a demo to see how these features can change your onboarding processes forever.