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Account Strategists act as a business’s gatekeeper, ensuring client proposals are constructed to ensure the company can deliver what it promises.
As a consultative arm for Sales and Account Management, our Strategy team provides recommended solutions to meet clients’ short- and long-term objectives, goals, budgets, and/or timelines.
In this post, we will look at the day-to-day responsibilities of an Account Strategist and the skills and qualities required to succeed in this role.
⚡ Insights into Account Strategist careers ⚡
Zippa, a career guidance website, ranked the top skills for Account Strategists based on how often specific skills appeared on resumes.
With digital marketing, we promote products or services through digital channels such as search engines, websites, social media, email, and mobile apps.
In our job, this looks like:
💡 Our Pro-Tip: Find what interests you the most about digital marketing, whether paid search or display advertising and read about it as much as possible. When you’re on a team, you can lean into each other for specialized knowledge.
We also develop marketing plans and provide strategic guidance to clients, so having a deep understanding of media (and/or programmatic) strategy and thinking critically is key.
Day-to-day, this looks like
⚡ Dani’s Advice: I believe the most important skill is possessing a strong sense of critical thinking and the ability to approach things analytically to identify any potential issues in advance.
We have to work closely with clients to understand their goals and objectives, develop strategies to meet their needs, and communicate progress and results like:
💡 Our Pro-Tip: Communication skills constitute a significant part of our job responsibilities, including identifying issues, explaining decisions, and collaborating with others. An ideal candidate should be a quick learner, a good communicator, and willing to do the work necessary to understand the client’s problems thoroughly.
Our positive work culture fosters collaboration, innovation, and growth for all team members. Even if you don’t see a job opening that suits your interests and experience, apply to our Talent Pool today.
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Account Strategists provide strategic guidance and support to clients to achieve their marketing goals.
On a day-to-day basis, we work closely with multiple internal teams to evaluate client RFPs and determine the best strategic approach for a media plan proposal. This includes assessing the objectives, goals, budget, media tactics, and targeting, among other factors, to ensure that the plan is realistic and achievable for the client.
The process looks something like this:
Sometimes, we’re pulled into client conversations. The level of involvement depends on the client and our relationship with them, but for the most part, we’re only pulled in if Account Management needs assistance.
The Strategy team often proactively generates a KORTX Intelligence report for new products, competitors, or the client’s vertical, providing a tactical advantage before the campaign launch.
Our team is responsible for setting up the initial campaign structure, identifying target audience segments, and ensuring key performance indicators (KPIs) are aligned to measure success.
We also measure the effectiveness of campaigns and set performance benchmarks, using analytics and other tools to determine what could be improved in future campaigns (KPIs, media tactics, targeting, etc.).
Example: We’re tasked with creating a paid social campaign for a health food brand. Sales provides the client’s campaign goals (e.g., increase website traffic, boost sales), and we build a plan to meet those goals. If the client’s goal is web traffic, we will build a campaign that optimizes site clicks, whereas if the goal is sales, the campaign will optimize to a point-of-sale conversion.
After we finalize a tactical media plan, the process is handed off to Ad Operations and Account Management. They have the expertise and daily insights to optimize, make mid-flight recommendations, and identify any potential issues early in the campaign.
Our job involves a significant amount of custom research, whether analyzing current industry trends or studying consumer behavior, and we use many tools to gather data and insights for clients, like DSPs, where we build out audiences to forecast performance, as well as our CDP-lite, Axon Audience Manager.
KORTX subscribes to a suite of sophisticated industry tools that most agencies and brands cannot access, which provides value throughout the RFP and proposal process. Categories include site and audience analysis, on-domain and off-domain trends, and First-Party insights via Axon that help ensure each campaign reaches the target audience with the ideal mix of digital tactics.
We also often consult with other agency team members or one another so that the campaign aligns with the client’s goals and objectives.
Outside of this, we work independently and use various methods and tools depending on the client and industry.
📊 What makes for a great Account Strategist?
“Effective account strategists tap into their wide knowledge of digital media and apply it in a variety of ways based on the unique variables that come with every individual RFP or campaign. Recognizing instances where digital media programs are not structured for success is key, and we will proactively offer better-positioned alternatives to meet performance goals. Balancing the art and science of media strategy ensures that end clients and internal KORTX teams are aligned to achieve success.”
–Corey Rice, Director of Strategy, KORTX
No single path to becoming an Account Strategist exists. All of us have started in different positions.
Let’s look at how we became Account Strategists:
I have a degree in Communications and started my career as a Media Assistant, then worked my way up to a Media Planner and eventually became a Supervisor of Brand Experience. But despite my career growth, I still felt like something was missing.
I enjoyed the strategy end of planning on the agency side but found the client management aspect draining.
When I applied for the Account Strategist position at KORTX, I was excited to focus more on strategy and less on client management. It’s been a great fit for me, and I love the puzzle-solving aspect of building out plans. I see myself staying in strategy for as long as possible.
That said, I wouldn’t mind returning to account management eventually, but probably not for a few more years. I needed a break from it.
After dropping out of college during my Sophomore year, I became fascinated with Digital Marketing. I immersed myself in the subject, watching Gary Vaynerchuk videos and devouring everything I could find about marketing.
My first foray into the industry was as a Trade Show Coordinator. I traveled and sold products while also getting a taste of marketing. I later moved on to a Sales position at a small digital marketing company, but the COVID pandemic disrupted my plans.
Eventually, I found a job as a Project Manager at another digital marketing company. This role gave me my first exposure to the creative and branding aspects of marketing. I became an Account Strategist and managed accounts, focusing mainly on paid social and search campaigns.
That’s when KORTX recruiter, Laurie McNamara, contacted me about a position. Despite not having any experience in programmatic advertising, I felt it was an excellent opportunity and a great fit for me.
It exposed me to a different level of advertising that I had never considered before. This experience helped me acquire new skills and add more tools to my marketing skillset.
I’m passionate about digital marketing, and I find it fascinating. It’s enjoyable to be part of the conversations where we can explore new ideas beyond the typical plans focusing on cross-platform display with a CTR KPI.
Account Strategists are a business’s gatekeepers, ensuring that proposals are achievable and the company delivers on its promises.
They help clients achieve their short and long-term goals by establishing business strategies, conducting risk assessments, identifying weaknesses and strengths of existing procedures, and resolving client concerns.
To succeed in this role, one should be a quick learner, a good communicator, and possess a strong sense of critical thinking and the ability to approach things analytically.
As a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company, we’re proud of our positive work culture that promotes collaboration, innovation, and growth for our team members.
If you’re interested in joining our team but don’t see an opening that matches your interests and experience, apply to our Talent Pool today.
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Dani Rusas is an Account Strategist at KORTX. She spends her free time hanging out with her 2 border collies, cooking, and crafting.
Josh Pheneger is an Account Strategist at KORTX. He likes to play golf, explore the city, and spend time in coffee shops.
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