Use this checklist before you pick a platform to hire a campaign manager or marketing specialist, and again before you spend anything on it. The best platforms to hire campaign managers and marketing experts are the ones that match your hiring speed, your tolerance for vetting risk and your budget, in that order. Most bad outcomes I've seen come from choosing the platform first and the brief second.
It's written for recruiters, hiring managers and talent acquisition leads, and it assumes you've already got headcount approved.
Decide what kind of hire this is
- Permanent, contract or project. A permanent campaign manager is a different search from a three-month freelancer covering a product launch. Job boards suit the first, talent marketplaces suit the second, and mixing them up wastes a fortnight.
- Channel and seniority, written down. "Campaign manager" covers paid social executives, lifecycle owners and integrated leads running six-figure budgets. If the brief doesn't say which, candidates will guess, and so will the platform's matching.
- Onshore, hybrid or overseas. If the work is performance marketing, email or reporting, much of it can be done well from the Philippines or Eastern Europe, and that widens your pool considerably. Brand-led roles tied to UK media relationships usually can't.
- Hard deadline. If you need someone in a month, rule out any route that depends on a notice period longer than four weeks. Send that work to contractors or interim talent.
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Match the platform type to the job
| Route | Best for | Main trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| General professional network (LinkedIn) | Passive senior candidates, employer brand | Cost climbs fast, response rates are patchy |
| Specialist marketing job boards | Permanent mid-level roles | Volume of applicants, thin vetting |
| Freelance marketplaces | Short projects, fast starts | Quality varies wildly, little continuity |
| Recruitment platforms with video applications | Screening communication skills early | Smaller candidate pool than the giants |
| Retained headhunters | Heads of marketing, confidential searches | Highest fee, slowest to brief |
| Employer of record plus overseas sourcing | Ongoing remote campaign roles | Setup effort, compliance to manage |
None of these is the best option in every case. If you need a mid-level campaign manager in six weeks on a modest budget, a specialist board or OHUB's employer tools will get you further than a headhunter. If you're replacing a head of growth quietly, the headhunter wins and the board loses.
For a wider comparison of marketing and PR sources, the earlier piece on the best platforms to hire marketing and PR talent in 2026 covers ground I won't repeat here. If LinkedIn Recruiter is your default and the bill is bothering you, there's a separate look at LinkedIn Recruiter alternatives.
Check what the platform actually lets you see
- Work samples, not just CVs. A campaign manager's value sits in briefs, dashboards and results. Platforms that let candidates attach a campaign breakdown or record a short video walkthrough give you something to judge before a first call. Video-first applications are underused here, and they filter out weak communicators faster than any keyword screen.
- Tool fluency you can verify. Ask whether candidates can show Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, HubSpot, Braze or GA4 work, depending on your stack. A listed skill proves nothing. Screenshots and a walkthrough prove a lot.
- Ratings you can trust. On freelance marketplaces, read the written reviews, not the star average. A run of five-star ratings with no detail tells you the platform has a review problem.
- Candidate location and right to work. Filter early. Chasing someone who can't work in the UK, or who expects a salary three times your band, burns days.
Price the real cost, not the listing fee
- Add up recruiter time. A cheap job board that delivers 200 unqualified applicants costs more in screening hours than a pricier source that delivers eight good ones. Count your own hours.
- Ask about fee structure up front. Subscription, pay per post, success fee or retainer all behave differently when a role goes unfilled. Know what you owe if nobody's hired.
- Budget for replacement risk. Contractors who walk away mid-campaign cost you the launch window, not just the fee. Ask what guarantees or replacement terms exist.
- Salary bands, sanity-checked. In the UK, campaign manager pay varies sharply by city, sector and budget responsibility. Check your offer against live adverts before you go to market, not after your first rejection. ONS data gives a general picture of wage movement but won't price a niche role for you.
Vet before you commit
- A paid test brief. Give shortlisted candidates a small, real problem: restructure a poor-performing campaign, or draft a testing plan. Pay for it. You'll learn more in a day than from three interviews.
- Reference calls with a specific question. Ask what budget they owned and what they'd have done differently. Vague answers usually mean vague ownership.
- Contract and compliance for overseas hires. If you're hiring offshore, an employer of record handles payroll, tax and local employment rules so you don't have to set up an entity. It's slower to start than hiring a freelancer, and much safer for anyone you intend to keep. The gov.uk site covers UK right to work checks for onshore hires.
- Fair process. Structured scorecards and the same questions for every candidate protect you under the Equality Act 2010 and tend to produce better hires anyway. OHUB's diversity hiring tools are one route if you want to widen who sees the role.
Plan the first 30 days
- Access and tools ready on day one. Ad accounts, analytics permissions and a named point of contact. I've watched strong hires lose their first fortnight waiting on logins.
- A first deliverable, defined. A channel audit or a 90-day plan, due by a set date. It gives you an early read on fit.
- A check-in rhythm for remote hires. A short weekly call and a shared dashboard beat sporadic long catch-ups, particularly across time zones.
The broader playbook is in the earlier guide on how to hire marketing specialists if you want the process behind these steps.
The item people skip most often
The written brief. Not the job advert, the internal one: what the campaign needs to achieve, who owns the budget, what success looks like at 30, 60 and 90 days, and which decisions the hire can make alone. Teams skip it because it feels like admin, then wonder why every platform returns the wrong people. A platform can only match you to what you've defined. If you can't write the outcome in three sentences, you aren't ready to hire yet.
