CBA Standard · Management
Digital Marketing Professional
The CBA Standard for Digital Marketing Professional states what competent practice in the discipline consists of: the domains of the work, their relative weight, and the learning objectives a competent practitioner meets in each.
- Version
- 1.0
- Domains
- 6weighted
- Learning objectives
- 35
- Published
- 2026
1Campaign Planning, Economics and Budgets
16%2Multilingual Content, Creative and Claims
14%3Organic and Paid Search
18%4Social, Creator and Messaging Channels
18%5CRM, Email and Conversion Optimisation
14%6Measurement, Attribution and Testing
20%
Show as a table
| Domain | Objectives | Weighting |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Campaign Planning, Economics and Budgets | 6 | 16% |
| 2. Multilingual Content, Creative and Claims | 5 | 14% |
| 3. Organic and Paid Search | 6 | 18% |
| 4. Social, Creator and Messaging Channels | 6 | 18% |
| 5. CRM, Email and Conversion Optimisation | 6 | 14% |
| 6. Measurement, Attribution and Testing | 6 | 20% |
Domains and learning objectives
A domain’s weighting is its share of the discipline, and the share of the examination paper drawn from that domain. The study material and the examination questions are written to the objectives.
Domain 1
Campaign Planning, Economics and Budgets
16%
- 1.1Select the campaign objective and success measures for a stated business goal, distinguishing outcome measures from activity and vanity measures.
- 1.2Select a channel mix that meets a stated reach goal within budget, using audience reach and cost data rather than platform popularity.
- 1.3Calculate customer lifetime value from margin and repeat-purchase data, and the highest acquisition cost it supports within a stated payback period.
- 1.4Calculate break-even return on ad spend from contribution margin, and identify campaigns whose reported return hides a loss.
- 1.5Evaluate a channel budget split using marginal rather than average returns, and select the reallocation that most improves total contribution.
- 1.6Interpret seasonal and time-of-day demand data to phase budget around public and religious holidays, national days and sales seasons.
Domain 2
Multilingual Content, Creative and Claims
14%
- 2.1Evaluate a content brief for a stated audience and channel, identifying gaps in message, proof points, format limits and brand voice.
- 2.2Distinguish content to translate, transcreate or create afresh for another language's audience, based on idiom, humour, cultural references and regulated wording.
- 2.3Identify defects in a multilingual copy deck, such as text over placement limits, missing versions and offer terms that differ between languages.
- 2.4Distinguish substantiated from unsubstantiated factual, comparative, price and environmental claims in draft copy, against the evidence supplied.
- 2.5Select whether to publish, label, amend or withhold an AI-generated, third-party or creator asset, given stated rights, platform and disclosure rules.
Domain 3
Organic and Paid Search
18%
- 3.1Select keyword targets from search data, classifying intent and weighing language, dialect, transliterated and alternative-spelling variants of each query.
- 3.2Interpret crawl, indexing, language-version and page-speed findings to diagnose a loss of organic visibility, and select the fix to prioritise.
- 3.3Evaluate a page's organic visibility for a stated query, weighing indexability, intent match, original content and earned rather than bought links.
- 3.4Interpret a fall in organic traffic to distinguish lost rankings, lower seasonal demand and clicks lost to answers on the results page.
- 3.5Evaluate a paid search campaign's structure, query matching, negative keywords and landing-page relevance, and identify where spend is wasted.
- 3.6Calculate the affordable cost per click and budget for a lead goal, and judge whether quoted click costs make it reachable.
Domain 4
Social, Creator and Messaging Channels
18%
- 4.1Select the optimisation event and audience exclusions for an automated campaign, given a stated goal, weekly conversion volume and existing-customer data.
- 4.2Interpret frequency, cost, click-through and conversion trends to distinguish creative fatigue, audience saturation, a weak offer and tracking loss.
- 4.3Interpret social post results by format, theme and timing, using rates rather than raw counts, to decide what to repeat or drop.
- 4.4Evaluate a creator shortlist using audience location, authenticity and engagement-rate data against stated criteria, and select the creators to engage.
- 4.5Calculate conversion by first-response time band for a messaging sales journey, and select the staffing or automated-reply change it supports.
- 4.6Distinguish social comments and complaints that should be answered publicly, moved to a private channel or escalated, under a stated policy.
Domain 5
CRM, Email and Conversion Optimisation
14%
- 5.1Distinguish valid from invalid consent for email, SMS and messaging under stated rules, including pre-ticked boxes, bundled consent and purchased lists.
- 5.2Identify contacts to suppress before a send or an advertising-platform list upload, including unsubscribes, complaints and lapsed retention periods.
- 5.3Select the trigger, audience and exit rule for an automated lifecycle message, such as welcome, abandoned-basket, renewal or win-back.
- 5.4Calculate stage conversion rates from funnel data, locate the largest loss and select the landing-page or form change to test first.
- 5.5Distinguish list quality, relevance and deliverability problems using delivery, complaint, unsubscribe and click rates rather than open rates.
- 5.6Select a lead-scoring threshold that matches stated sales capacity, using the volume and quality of leads each threshold produces.
Domain 6
Measurement, Attribution and Testing
20%
- 6.1Identify tracking defects in campaign data, such as inconsistent campaign parameters, duplicate conversions and broken tags, and select the fix at source.
- 6.2Interpret how a change in tracking consent rate alters observed and modelled conversions, separating a measurement effect from a real sales change.
- 6.3Calculate channel credit under rule-based attribution models from supplied journeys, and interpret how each, and an algorithmic model, would shift budget.
- 6.4Select the measurement method for a stated decision, distinguishing attribution, incrementality testing and marketing mix modelling by the question each answers.
- 6.5Calculate incremental conversions and cost per incremental conversion from a holdout or geographic test, and compare them with platform- or retailer-reported results.
- 6.6Evaluate an A/B test readout for multiple changes, early stopping and novelty effects, and select whether to roll out, extend or stop.
Competence at award
What a holder of the CBA-DMP credential has demonstrated, at Practitioner level.
- Plan campaigns from a business goal, setting outcome measures, a channel mix and a seasonal budget grounded in lifetime value, acquisition cost and contribution.
- Brief and approve content across languages, including AI-assisted work, so that meaning survives adaptation, copy decks are complete and consistent, and claims, rights and disclosures are cleared before release.
- Build search activity across languages, organic and paid, that matches intent, cuts wasted spend and holds visibility where results pages answer the query directly.
- Run paid and organic social, creator and messaging activity that gives automated campaigns sound inputs, selects creators on audience evidence, handles public comments and turns conversations into orders.
- Design consent-based email, SMS and messaging lifecycle programmes, keep suppression lists current, and raise conversion through funnel diagnosis and lead thresholds matched to sales capacity.
- Measure and test marketing results under consent limits, separating what rule-based and algorithmic attribution report from what spending caused, and choose among attribution, experiments and marketing mix models.
- Apply consent, suppression, disclosure and claim-substantiation rules, as stated for the market concerned, across campaigns, content, audience lists and measurement.
