So you decided to pursue a marketing career path and want to take a sneak peek at what your progression might look like in a few years?
Or, maybe, you're still deciding if a marketing career path is the right track for you.
Either way, we've got you covered! In this article, we'll be sharing:
- Marketing Careers To Pursue
- The Marketing Career Path: Roles, Skills & Progression
- Marketing Salaries (Entry-Level, Mid-Level & Senior Level)
- Level-Up Your Game: How To Step Into A New Marketing Role
Without further ado, let's begin with…
Marketing Careers To Pursue
There are several different career opportunities you can track within the marketing field. However, different industries might require more focus on distinctive areas.
For example:
- A marketing role at a tech startup might focus heavily on inbound marketing, SEO, and email marketing to attract and convert potential customers through digital channels.
- A marketing role at a fashion or beauty company could emphasize influencer marketing, brand management, and advertising to build brand awareness and drive sales through collaborations with social media influencers.
- A marketing role at a global consumer goods company could offer opportunities in brand management marketing, product marketing, and advertising to maintain brand consistency and launch new products across multiple markets.
Not all companies will demand every specialty, but every specialty has a place within many different companies!
So, if you're thinking about which marketing career you should pursue, it might be a good idea to first consider what kind of company you would like to work for.
Maybe, you'd like to work for a company in big tech.
Maybe you're aiming for a recognized brand in consumer services.
Or, maybe, you'd like to join a startup.
You will find different marketing opportunities with different scopes and setups. So, having clarity about where you'd like to be within a certain timeframe is key to deciding which path is right for you.
But don't get too worked up about this. Most skills you need for a marketing career are transferable across different roles, industries, and companies. The purpose of the exercise is so you can look at the opportunities on your horizon and decide where you'd like to be in the short term and eventually down the road!
💡 Pro Tip:
If you're struggling to find out where you'd like to be, check out the article “What Should I Do With My Life? A Step-By-Step Guide” and read it from top to bottom. If “marketing” still feels like the right path, head back here and continue reading!
Once you've set your mind on your career path, it's time to understand what roles might be a good fit for you.
The Marketing Career Path: Roles, Skills & Progression
We've selected the most common marketing roles for each level and their job descriptions. Take a look below!
Entry-Level Marketing Roles
Most people begin their Marketing careers in specialist roles, such as:
Marketing Specialist
This role offers broad exposure to different marketing activities and doesn't usually require extensive experience.
📝 Marketing Specialist Job Description: Responsible for supporting the Marketing team in their strategies and campaigns, assisting with the creation of marketing materials, event coordination, market research, and more.
✅ Skills Required: Strong communication skills, creativity, and analytical thinking are a few major skills companies look for in Marketing Specialists.
⬆️ Possible progression: Marketing Specialists can progress into a Marketing Manager or Digital Marketing Specialist role.
Content Marketing Specialist
Although this role does require a basic understanding of content marketing principles, it's a great entry-level role for people with strong writing skills.
📝 Content Marketing Specialist Job Description: Responsible for creating, editing, and publishing content that aligns with the company's marketing goals. This role may involve activities like writing blog posts, creating social media content, managing content calendars, and optimizing content for SEO.
✅ Requirements: Strong verbal and written communication skills, creativity, and SEO knowledge are the most required skills for this role.
⬆️ Possible progression: Content Marketing Specialists can progress into a Content Marketing Manager or Content Strategist role.
Social Media Specialist
This role generally requires creativity and a good understanding of social media platforms, but doesn't typically require extensive experience.
📝 Social Media Specialist Job Description: Responsible for managing the company's social media presence. Activities include creating and scheduling social media posts, engaging with followers, monitoring social media trends, and analyzing performance metrics.
✅ Requirements: Strong verbal and written communication skills, creativity, in-depth knowledge of social media platforms, and analytical proficiency are the most required skills for this role.
⬆️ Possible progression: Social Media Specialists can progress into a Social Media Manager, Community Manager, or Digital Marketing Specialist role.
Mid-Level Marketing Roles
As you gain experience, mid-level roles often involve more responsibility and the opportunity to lead projects or teams. Some common mid-level marketing roles include:
Marketing Manager
At this level, professionals are responsible for overseeing marketing campaigns, managing a team, and ensuring that the marketing strategy aligns with company goals.
📝 Marketing Manager Job Description: Responsible for developing, implementing, and executing strategic marketing plans for an entire organization or specific business units. This includes managing budgets, team leadership, campaign analysis, and optimizing marketing efforts to drive growth.
✅ Skills Required: Leadership, project management, data analysis, and strategic thinking are crucial for success in this role.
⬆️ Possible progression: Marketing Managers can advance to roles like Marketing Director or Head of Marketing.
Content Marketing Manager
This role focuses on the strategic planning and management of content across various platforms, requiring a deeper understanding of content marketing than entry-level roles.
📝 Content Marketing Manager Job Description: Responsible for leading content creation efforts, developing content strategies, managing content calendars, and analyzing the effectiveness of content marketing initiatives.
✅ Skills Required: Strong writing and editing skills, content strategy, SEO knowledge, and project management.
⬆️ Possible progression: Content Marketing Managers can move into positions such as Content Director, Head of Content, or Marketing Director.
Digital Marketing Specialist
This role is more specialized than entry-level roles and requires a solid understanding of digital marketing tools and techniques.
📝 Digital Marketing Specialist Job Description: Responsible for planning and executing digital marketing campaigns, including SEO/SEM, email marketing, social media, and display advertising. Analyzing performance metrics and optimizing campaigns for better results is also part of the role.
✅ Skills Required: Proficiency in digital marketing tools, analytical skills, creativity, and a strong understanding of online marketing trends.
⬆️ Possible progression: Digital Marketing Specialists can progress to roles like Digital Marketing Manager.
Senior-Level Marketing Roles
Senior-level roles involve greater strategic oversight and leadership, often requiring professionals to guide larger teams and make high-level decisions.
Marketing Director
Marketing Directors are responsible for shaping the overall marketing strategy and ensuring that all marketing efforts align with the company's objectives.
📝 Marketing Director Job Description: Responsible for overseeing the marketing department, developing high-level marketing strategies, managing large budgets, and working closely with senior leadership to drive company growth.
✅ Skills Required: Strategic thinking, leadership, budget management, and strong communication skills.
⬆️ Possible progression: Marketing Directors can move up to roles such as Vice President of Marketing or Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).
Content Director
This role requires overseeing the entire content strategy for a company, often managing a team of content creators and strategists.
📝 Content Director Job Description: Responsible for developing the overarching content strategy, managing content production teams, ensuring content aligns with brand messaging, and optimizing content for various channels.
✅ Skills Required: Leadership, strategic thinking, content strategy, and a deep understanding of audience engagement.
⬆️ Possible progression: Content Directors can advance to roles like VP of Content or CMO.
Digital Marketing Manager
A more senior role compared to the Digital Marketing Specialist, focusing on the broader digital marketing strategy.
📝 Digital Marketing Manager Job Description: Responsible for leading the digital marketing team, overseeing all digital campaigns, optimizing online presence, and ensuring that digital efforts are integrated with the overall marketing strategy.
✅ Skills Required: Advanced knowledge of digital marketing tools and trends, leadership, analytical skills, and strategic thinking.
⬆️ Possible progression: Digital Marketing Managers can move into roles like Head of Digital Marketing.
It's important to note that the career paths outlined above may vary slightly from company to company. Some companies have more hierarchical structures, meaning there might be intermediate roles at each level. For example, a Marketing Manager can progress into a Senior Marketing Manager role before taking a Head Of Marketing position.
Plus, progress isn't always linear. Marketing professionals can often make lateral moves and explore different areas within the industry, shifting from generalist roles to specialized roles. Additionally, they can also take a technical route or embrace a leadership position.
At the end of the day, while there are some typical progressions within the marketing careers, your path is unique and will depend on your strengths, interests, soft and hard skills, and even priorities in life.
Marketing Salaries (Entry-Level, Mid-Level & Senior Level)
Now that we’ve covered the most common marketing career paths, you might be asking yourself what the pay range is for each role.
To answer this question, let’s head over to one of our favorite tools for salary research: Glassdoor.
Glassdoor is one of the world’s top job and recruiting websites, where users can anonymously provide information about their companies – including their current salary. Glassdoor provides an average salary range for various roles based on the information sent by its users.
According to Glassdoor, the base salary for the most common marketing roles in 2024 are:
Marketing Roles:
- Marketing Specialist (Entry-Level): $55K – $95K
- Marketing Manager (Mid-Level): $86K – $155K
- Marketing Director (Senior-Level): $119K – $221K
Content Marketing Roles:
- Content Marketing Specialist (Entry-Level): $49K – $82K
- Content Marketing Manager (Mid-Level): $73K – $128K
- Content Director (Senior-Level): $97 – $166K
Digital Marketing Roles:
- Social Media Specialist (Entry-Level): $43K – $72K
- Digital Marketing Specialist (Mid-Level): $50K – 87K
- Digital Marketing Manager (Senior-Level): $92K – $167K
Level-Up Your Game: How To Step Into A New Marketing Role
Whether you're looking for an entry-level job in marketing or aiming to advance in your marketing career, it's important to know that you don't necessarily need a graduate degree or specialization to move up the marketing career ladder. Your unique experience and skills can go a long way, as long as you learn how to sell them!
Here are a few tips and tricks that will help you land your next marketing role.
1. Run A Resume Scan To Find Out Skill Gaps In Your Target Role
Wondering if you are the right fit for that target role?
We've got you covered.
Here's a simple, step-by-step guide to find out if you have the skills to land that job in marketing you've been aiming for:
- Copy the job description of the marketing role that sparked your interest
- Head over to ResyMatch.io (or use our shortcut below)
- Grab a copy of your most updated resume
- Upload your resume on the left side
- Paste the job description on the right side
- Hit “Start Resume Scan”
Boom! ResyMatch will compare and score your resume against the job's description and identify missing skill gaps, like such:
ResyMatch will also make sure your resume is ATS compatible (ATS is a software that recruiters often use to track candidates through the hiring process). And of course, ResyMatch will provide suggestions and outline best practices you can use to edit and improve your resume!
Use our shortcut below to get started:
Scanning...
2. Update Your Resume With Compelling Resume Bullets
After you've compared your resume against your target job description, you will likely find yourself in one of two scenarios:
1. You have some missing skills that you'll need to master before taking on a new role — if that's the case, you can take action and start building those skills through an online course and a portfolio strategy.
OR…
2. You have already mastered most of the skills — if that's the case, all you need to do is update your resume with compelling resume bullets, leveraging the keywords found on your resume and job description scan.
To get started, you'll want your resume bullets to have just the right amount of hard and soft skills, action words, measurable results, and common words.
This means a compelling resume bullet for someone applying for a marketing role might look something like this:
Increased lead generation by 35% with a targeted content marketing strategy, resulting in a 20% boost in sales conversions within six months.
This bullet focuses on specific marketing hard and soft skills, while also showcasing measurable results!
To help you write the perfect resume bullet, we've created ResyBullet.io, a free resume bullet analyzer that helps you write your resume in a way that grabs attention and illustrates value. Simply copy and paste your resume bullet below to begin your analysis:
ResyBullet will analyze and score your resume bullet and give you actionable insights for improvement.
Here's how our resume bullet scored on ResyBullet:
If you're a visual learner, check out our video that walks you through the step-by-step of writing a crazy-effective resume bullet:
3. Build A Visually Appealing, ATS-Friendly Resume
Now that you've updated the content on your resume, it's time to wrap it all up into an awesome layout that's also ATS-friendly.
We recommend using a resume template so you can save the time you'd normally spend designing your resume and instead allocate it to your job search.
You can use ResyBuild.io, a free AI resume builder, to easily build and customize your resume in no time. Just pick one of the templates below and get started:
Free Job-Winning Resume Templates, Build Yours In No Time.
Choose a resume template below to get started:
Choose from 8 proven templates and easily create, edit, and customize your resume. ResyBuild's AI assistant also helps you craft personalized, job-winning bullets in a single click. Simply add your experience, hit “Optimize”, and watch the magic happen.
4. Don't Apply Online — Do This Instead
The most common next step in the process is to start applying to marketing roles.
While applying online can absolutely be the next step in your job search, the truth is, it will only get you so far. In fact, only 2% of resumes submitted for the average open role end up reaching the interview stage.
Sure, optimizing your resume will boost your chances of being a part of that 2%.
But some estimates, like this one from the Wall Street Journal, show that 80% of hires come from referrals.
This means your best shot at landing the role you've been eying is through networking.
And no, we're not talking about attending conferences, events, and meetups. We're talking about a fresh approach that really builds relationships and gets your resume at the top of the resume pile at companies like Microsoft, Google, Uber, and more.
You can read all about it in our flagship guide for effective job searching:
Read More: How To Get A Job Anywhere Without Applying Online
Final Notes
Whether you're just starting out or looking to advance in your marketing career, getting clarity on the possibilities ahead of you can help you navigate your career with more ease.
Just don't forget: your career path isn't set in stone. Our jobs and career goals will often evolve with life transitions. Always remember that your career should change to fit your life and not the other way around.
