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Marketing and search foundations interview questions

Interview questions on marketing and search foundations: warm-ups, then what each harder question tests and how a good answer starts.

12 questions: 4 warm-ups and 8 with model answers · Levels: Fresher to senior

Warm-up questions

Short questions with short answers, each answered in full.

Fresher to mid

How do owned, earned and paid media differ?

Answered in the lesson Digital marketing: channels, media and the funnel
Fresher to mid

What goes into a positioning statement?

Answered in the lesson Audiences, positioning and value propositions
Fresher to mid

What is break-even ROAS, and how do you work it out?

Answered in the lesson Goals, KPIs and unit economics
Fresher to mid

How are crawling, indexing and serving different?

Answered in the lesson How Google Search works: crawl, index, serve

Questions with model answers

What each question tests, the first step of a good answer and the follow-ups to expect.

Fresher to mid

A bakery spends a third of its marketing money on boosted reels and gets thousands of likes but few orders. How would you decide what to keep, change or stop?
What it tests

Telling inputs from results, mapping activities to media types and journey stages, and testing a channel's effect on orders instead of trusting likes.

First step

Ask what happens after a like: does anyone visit the site, message the shop or order? Then map every activity to its media type and journey stage. The boosts are paid media at the awareness stage, so look at the stages that get little or nothing, such as the loyalty stage where reviews and reorders come from.
Follow-ups
- How would you check whether the boosts bring any orders at all?
- Which stage would you fund with the money you take from the boosts?
- The owner says reviews do not matter. What would you show her?
From the lesson Digital marketing: channels, media and the funnel
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In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes
Fresher to mid

A new dental clinic has no ad budget and has never asked patients whether they want messages. It wants "SEO, ads, social and email, all at once". What do you recommend first, and how do you defend it?
What it tests

Choosing a first channel from customer behaviour and constraints, and declining to spread a small team across every channel at once.

First step

Ask where patients look for a dentist today. If most search on their phones for one nearby, the Business Profile answers that search and costs nothing to create, while ads need a budget and messages need patients who agreed to receive them.
Follow-ups
- What facts would make you start with search ads instead?
- How will you know after 60 days whether the first channel works?
- When, and with what, would you add a second channel?
From the lesson Digital marketing: channels, media and the funnel
Model answer, Pro.
In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes
Fresher to mid

A gym's founder insists the new website say "the best gym in the city". How do you replace the claim, and how do you bring the founder round?
What it tests

Telling checkable claims from empty ones, building claims from evidence, the rules on substantiation, and handling a stakeholder with facts instead of opinion.

First step

Ask what the gym can prove: opening hours, the number of trainers and their certifications, class sizes, member reviews, how many members renew. Each fact that survives becomes a candidate claim; "best" survives none of these tests, because no record could show it.
Follow-ups
- The founder says every competitor writes "best". Why not do the same?
- Which proof would you put first on the home page, and why?
- How would you test whether the new claim works better?
From the lesson Audiences, positioning and value propositions
Model answer, Pro.
In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes
Mid to senior

You have three months of orders, 200 reviews and a Search Console export, and no budget for research. How do you describe the audience, and how do you check that your description is right?
What it tests

Turning first-party data into segments and needs, counting before concluding, reading what a count misses, and validating personas by the decisions they change.

First step

Count before you describe. Tag every review and order note with the needs it mentions, count them, and read the ones that match no tag. Then join the counts with the orders: which needs come with which occasions, sizes and times of day.
Follow-ups
- What would you do with comments in a language your word list does not cover?
- How many personas would you keep, and how do you decide?
- What would make you change the description six months later?
From the lesson Audiences, positioning and value propositions
Model answer, Pro.
In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes
Fresher to mid

An agency reports a ROAS of 2.2 on a product with a 40 % contribution margin and calls the campaign a success. Do you agree, what do you tell the client, and what would you change?
What it tests

Working out break-even ROAS from the margin, turning a ROAS into profit or loss, and proposing changes that move the campaign above break-even.

First step

Work out the break-even ROAS: 1 ÷ 0.40 = 2.5. A ROAS of 2.2 is below it, so every 1 of ad spend brings 2.2 of sales and 0.88 of margin, a loss of 0.12. Then check the margin itself: are all the costs of an order in it?
Follow-ups
- The agency says the ads also bring repeat customers. How do you test that claim?
- Which three changes could move the campaign above break-even?
- Should the client stop the ads at once?
From the lesson Goals, KPIs and unit economics
Model answer, Pro.
In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes
Fresher to mid

A founder wants "10,000 Instagram followers by the festive season" as the marketing goal. How do you turn that into goals and KPIs the business can run on?
What it tests

Separating inputs from results, deriving objectives from a business goal and the value of an order, and setting KPIs with owners, sources and review dates.

First step

Ask what the followers are for. If the business wants festive revenue, start there: divide the revenue goal by the average order value to get the orders needed, split them into returning and new customers, and give each objective one KPI with a source, an owner and a review date.
Follow-ups
- The founder insists followers matter. Where do they fit?
- How many KPIs would you set, and who would own each?
- What would you report every Monday?
From the lesson Goals, KPIs and unit economics
Model answer, Pro.
In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes
Fresher to mid

A client's new service page has not appeared in Google three weeks after it went live. How do you work out why, and what would you do at each stage?
What it tests

Using Google's three stages to structure a diagnosis, reading Search Console's reasons, and knowing which fix belongs to which stage.

First step

Inspect the URL in Search Console. Is the address known at all, was it crawled, is indexing allowed, and which canonical did Google choose? The answer names the stage where the page stopped, and the fix depends on that stage.
Follow-ups
- URL Inspection says "URL is unknown to Google". What do you do?
- It says "Crawled - currently not indexed". What then?
- The page is indexed but gets no impressions for the service's name. Where do you look?
From the lesson How Google Search works: crawl, index, serve
Model answer, Pro.
In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes
Mid to senior

Organic clicks fell by a fifth in the week a core update began, and the client wants every page rewritten now. What do you do, and how do you decide whether the update caused the fall?
What it tests

Lining a drop up with updates, site changes and seasonality, measuring an update the way Google advises, and resisting quick fixes while keeping the client informed.

First step

Line the fall up with three sets of dates: the update's rollout on the Search Status Dashboard, the site's own change log, and the same weeks a year before. If only the update lines up, wait a full week after it ends, then compare that week with the week before it began.
Follow-ups
- The site also moved to a new theme the same week. How do you separate the two?
- A full week after the rollout, clicks are still 18 % lower. What do you review?
- How long might a recovery take, and what do you promise the client?
From the lesson How Google Search works: crawl, index, serve
Model answer, Pro.
In the answer:
- Model answer
- Follow-up answers
- Common mistakes
- Rubric
- Variants
- about 3 minutes

The lessons of this module

Digital marketing: channels, media and the funnel Free lesson, Pro answers: 20 minutes
Audiences, positioning and value propositions Free lesson, Pro answers: 20 minutes
Goals, KPIs and unit economics Free lesson, Pro answers: 20 minutes
How Google Search works: crawl, index, serve Free lesson, Pro answers: 20 minutes

All SEO & Digital Marketing interview questions · The SEO & Digital Marketing track

Warm-up questions

How do owned, earned and paid media differ?

What goes into a positioning statement?

What is break-even ROAS, and how do you work it out?

How are crawling, indexing and serving different?

Questions with model answers

A bakery spends a third of its marketing money on boosted reels and gets thousands of likes but few orders. How would you decide what to keep, change or stop?

A new dental clinic has no ad budget and has never asked patients whether they want messages. It wants "SEO, ads, social and email, all at once". What do you recommend first, and how do you defend it?

A gym's founder insists the new website say "the best gym in the city". How do you replace the claim, and how do you bring the founder round?

You have three months of orders, 200 reviews and a Search Console export, and no budget for research. How do you describe the audience, and how do you check that your description is right?

An agency reports a ROAS of 2.2 on a product with a 40 % contribution margin and calls the campaign a success. Do you agree, what do you tell the client, and what would you change?

A founder wants "10,000 Instagram followers by the festive season" as the marketing goal. How do you turn that into goals and KPIs the business can run on?

A client's new service page has not appeared in Google three weeks after it went live. How do you work out why, and what would you do at each stage?

Organic clicks fell by a fifth in the week a core update began, and the client wants every page rewritten now. What do you do, and how do you decide whether the update caused the fall?