Lesson #283: Marketing Roles and Compensation

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As your company scales, marketing becomes a bigger and bigger driver of your success.  You will experience expansion in each of your marketing team, tactics and budgets.  I recently read a great blog post by Andy Crestodina at Orbit Media Studios, who studied the key marketing roles and salary trends based on the reports of 67,736 individuals as reported through Glass Door and PayScale.  

The conclusion was marketing salaries are on the rise, as there appears to be a shortage of really good marketing talent in the market, that is best skilled to deal with this generation of marketing needs.  And, in my opinion, that specifically means finding marketers that are well-versed in omni-channel marketing combined with a data-first, marketing ROI driven mindset.  That often means people that are deep in data and analytics, more than the softer branding and creative skills (which are freely available in the market.)

THE KEY MARKETING ROLES

Here is a summary of the key marketing roles inside the organization, in reverse order of seniority and experience.  

Marketing Coordinator.  Supports external teams through project support, program execution, collateral development, sales programs, as well as via ad hoc requests.  The average salary in 2017 is $50,291.

Marketing Associate.  Support online and offline marketing and advertising initiatives with the goal of expanding brand awareness within targeted, relevant audiences. The average salary in 2017 is $57,140.

Social Media Manager.  Engage with communities and clients through social media channels, with the goal of web traffic, lead generation and revenue. Create, execute and revise social media strategy and social media marketing blueprint. The average salary in 2017 is $48,285.

Content Strategist.  Works closely with interactive designers, visual designers, product and project managers to: gather business and technical requirements, analyze user and business needs, define user requirements, and inventory and analyze existing content.  The average salary in 2017 is $90,402.

Marketing Manager.  Manage brand messaging via marketing, advertising and promotional activities. Ensures relevant metrics are measured, benchmarks met, staff performance enhanced, and managed communities enriched through assigned goals and objectives.  The average salary in 2017 is $80,668.

Director of Marketing.  Demonstrate leadership and expertise in marketing. Be savvy in various forms of online and offline demand generation. Charged with leading a wide range of community experiences and becoming the brand voice.  The average salary in 2017 is $113,503.

Vice President of Marketing.  Responsible for determining and leading the strategic direction for organization’s marketing functions including positioning, brand awareness, driving demand generation and lead nurturing, as the head of the department managing the team.  The average salary in 2017 is $167,194.

If you want more-detailed job descriptions for each role above, please visit Andy's original blog post at this link.

MARKETING COMPENSATION TRENDS

What was interesting is how fast salaries are rising in the marketing department.  Overall, they were up 22.6% year-over-year.  Here is a summary of how they changed by role, with Content Strategist and Social Media Managers in the most demand.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Most entrepreneurs do not give marketing enough focus in their businesses.  This is really important stuff, as marketing drives leads which drives sales.  The better your marketing team, the higher odds of revenue success and growth you will have.  You won't be able to afford all of these people out of the gate, so maybe two people could be filling the roles of six to start.  But, as soon as you can afford to put full-time people in place, you should.


ADDENDUM (9/24/18):  I found this great updated marketing compensation chart for 2019 on MarketingProfs.com.  It includes a lot more roles than the above and updates for the most current year's data.  So, check it out.

For future posts, please follow me on Twitter at: @georgedeeb.