According to a 2018 report by LinkedIn, there is a shortage of 230,000 digital marketers across 20 biggest metropolises that took part in the survey. Additionally, industry experts estimate that by the year 2020, there will be 150,000 new jobs created in the digital marketing industry.
If you are about to clear high school and feeling lost on what career path to choose, we are going to tell you why a career as a digital marketer is the best choice you could make. Yes, this is one of those industries where changes happen fast due to the inherent nature of technology, upon which digital marketing is riding on. That means you will have to be on your toes, as slacking will see you outdone by your competition – competition is cut-throat in this industry.
If you to stay on top of the game. You will be able to take home quite a decent paycheck at the end of the month. But before we delve into the highest paying digital marketing jobs, let us do a little preview of the industry.
The Digital Marketing Recruiter – 20 Highest Paying Digital Marketing Jobs
The Increasing Role of Digital Marketers
As the years go by, the corporate world leans more and more towards technology; it is a growing necessity. Technology makes businesses efficient and competitive. It is unfathomable that at any one point in the future, the corporate world would go back to doing thing manual. The drive to be profitable is just too strong to let that happen.
On the other hand, technology is ever-evolving, and rapidly so. Businesses will need digitally savvy staff to ensure they keep making profits and grow. That is why the future for digital marketers looks very promising. If anything, their role is only going to get more necessary to the corporate world. If you position yourself now, you stand a chance at a rewarding career.
Highest paying Digital Marketing Jobs
That said, let us look at the top-paying jobs in the digital marketing sector. There are many kinds of jobs in this sector, some more rewarding and with a secure future than others. We will look at the best out of the bunch. They are as follows:
Digital Project Management/Planning
According to RobertHalf.com, the average salary of a Digital Project Manager (DPM) in the US ranges between $78,750 and $118,000.
The work of a DPM entails coming up with the company’s vision for digital marketing. They conceptualize the campaign as a multi-channel digital marketing campaign. This role requires advanced digital knowledge and skills to effectively draw such a master plan, which will then be implemented by the marketing team.
The DPM makes the marketing goals, draws up a comprehensive plan, defining the timeframe and milestones then allocates the budget. A DPM must have excellent planning and communication skills. They also need to be well organized and big on timekeeping.
Content Marketing Manager
RobertHalf.com estimates that the annual salary of Content Marketing Managers in America to fall between $81,250 – $115,000
In marketing, whether digital or traditional, content is king. It is the most powerful tool a business has to attract customers online. It gives the brand the much-needed visibility. The work of a Content Marketing Manager (CMM) is to create content for the business’s digital assets.
This job requires superior writing and editing skills to come up with engaging copies for the website, blog posts, social media, and in-app writings, etc. CMMs are also tasked with populating the editorial calendar, coming up with a guideline for catchy contents, and defining the style of the copy.
They also need to have a good grasp of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as they will be implanting the keywords into the content for higher ranking. They must also have great insight and, based on empirical data, come up with engaging content that achieves desired actions. Their work must be measurable using analytical tools to quantify how effective are their copies.
E-commerce Specialist
E-commerce specialists make on average $90,000 and $126,000.
By itself, e-commerce overcame many of the obstacles of running a brick and mortar businesses in traditional ways. And with it, location was no longer relevant, as shops receive their orders online and dispatch the products from the warehouse to the customer’s doorsteps.
An e-commerce specialist must have a good grasp of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). That is converting as many to visitors to a business’s digital assets to take the desired action as possible. The desired actions could be sharing their contact information in a form, subscribing to a mailing list, registering for events, making a purchase, etc.
E-commerce specialists do so by creating compelling descriptions of products on offer and placing a strategic button for visitors to fulfill the desired action. For any businesses looking to compete in this digital era, an e-commerce specialist is invaluable and necessary if you want to get ahead of the competition.
They also work in synergy with other teams, including the sales and marketing departments of the organization. Hence, being a team player and have good communication skills in a necessary attribute.
As an e-commerce strategist, you will be tasked with lead generations and meeting the company’s sales targets. You also must be a highly-responsive person and fast-paced in how you handle the company’s e-commerce affairs.
Digital Media Manager
They take home an average salary of between $63,000 and $90,000
Digital Media Managers are tasked with coming up with multi-channel marketing strategies. They need to exhibit thought leadership and innovation in media strategy followed by a measurable action plan and results. They will produce the content that will go to form the brand’s message to the target audience. The message will intend to create brand awareness, reinforce a positive image of the company, and drive customers to adopt the products or services on offer.
The digital media manager must work together with the e-commerce specialist to come up with the company’s marketing plan towards desired sales levels. The key deliverables for a digital media manager are establishing new commercial opportunities through strategic management and optimization.
Some of the essential digital tools for Digital Media Manager include Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising with quality content copies. They run multiple ad campaigns across various networks including Bing Ads, Search Networks, and Google Displays.
With lead generation and customer acquisition as a critical role of a Digital Media Manager, you need to utilize data analytics to benchmark digital marketing performance strategies, and also come up with improved marketing strategies for the future. The analytical part can be done using analytical platforms such as Google Analytics.
Brand Marketing
Brand Manager in the US makes between $66,000 and $98,000 annually. Those with over five years’ experience take home about $130,000.
Businesses are in a never-ending competition to capture and retain the loyalty of customers. Brand Marketers are the digital marketing professionals who help a business brand remain not just relevant but competitive in an ever-changing business environment.
Brand Marketer relies on a combination of storytelling and data analytics to craft a unique identity for the business hinged on its core values. That has the potential of influencing and persuading customers to keep consuming the company’s products, especially if the brand marketers have, over the years, been able to maintain trust and familiarity with the consumers.
Brand Marketers are required to channel their creativity in telling the organization’s story. It requires innovative and catchy imagination to be able to create and imprint the right picture of the organization in consumers’ minds. Of course, the image has to be glamorous, but not so much; it loses authenticity, believability, and trustworthy. The ultimate goal is to persuade customers to make purchases.
A critical attribute a Brand Marketer ought to have is have a clear understanding of content formats – both visual and written – the distribution channels and how to leverage on them to engage maximally with the customers. You also need to read through and interpret huge chunks of data to come up with informed insights to improve on the brand’s market position.
Product Marketing Manager
Glassdoor estimate annual salary – $81,000 – $145,000
A Product Marketing Manager communicates the attributes of a business’s product to the rest of the world. These professionals are particularly critical at the initial launch of a new product. Their work is to explain the technical details to the end consumers and fast track the learning curve. Product Marketers are particularly common in the tech industry, where companies produce software and applications that the end-user to get some technical training before using the product.
Though that is not to say they are restricted to just the tech industry. Any business that releases highly technical product needs Product Marketers; you might call them tech support. Those who work in B2C companies are exceptionally well paid.
Communication skills and being a team player is also a fundamental trait for Product Marketing Manager. They will be working with other staff from other departments and will be hosting exhibitions to showcase the organization’s products to the rest of the world. They also need to have some data analysis and A/B testing skills.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert
According to Payscale, the average salary for SEO experts is $49,128.
The primary work of an SEO expert is to ensure that a company’s online content is found by customers first and fast from search engine searches. That is at the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). They play a critical role in any 21-century business planning its digital marketing campaign, as they provide the technical support to make promotional content be search engine friendly.
Though there have been some concerns that SEO experts are gaming search engine algorithm. They are thus hindering customers from getting the authentic search results; organic search results. Search engines have set stringent rules in how it indexes websites with regards to the keywords in search of a fashion that SEO experts done unethically get thrown to the very bottom of SERPs. Search engines do that by constantly changing the algorithms for indexing web pages online.
These constant changes to search engine algorithms has made some businesses give up on SEO thinking it is dead. However, quite to the contrary, SEO is still a very powerful marketing tool. Except now, you need to play by the rules and practice white hat SEO. That means promoting your website ethically through things like guest posting for backlinks, content promotions, proper website design, and not being spammy.
Global Marketing Manager
Glassdoor estimate annual salary – $76,000 – $138,000
A multinational company must have a global marketing manager, who help the organization address macroeconomics concerns such as politics, religions, and socio-economic challenges unique to a different location. As you can imagine, a business’s macroeconomic environment in a country like, say, Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands are very different.
To protect your business brand from offending the culture of your target customer. You need a global marketing manager conversant with the local culture. The work of a Global Marketing Manager involves a great deal of traveling and stays in foreign countries. To acquaint themselves with the local culture and how the organization can smoothly do business.
Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
Glassdoor estimate annual salary – $94,000 – $342,000
The typical work for a CMO in any organization entails coming up with the whole overall marketing and advertising strategy. The goal, being increased sales. They achieve that by coming up with effective digital marketing strategies after conducting some marketing research and drafting up a correlating marketing budget for the organization. They also oversee the activities of the organization’s in-house marketing team and any of the sub-contractors. They also supervise the rollout of any marketing and advertising activities.
Channel Development Executive
Glassdoor estimate annual salary – $49,000 – $114,000
These are professionals tasked with establishing sustainable channels for businesses to sell their products and services to the end consumers. That could be in the form of establishing a value-added reseller relationship and direct sales online. One of the key qualities of a Channel Development Executive is people skills and effective communication. The digital media manager must work their success depends on building long-lasting relationships with a big number of businesses and channels.
Creative Director
Glassdoor estimate annual salary – $85,000 – $201,000
The Creative Director is the person tasked with ensuring the marketing and advertisement content has the spark. They oversee the creativity in the content used in ad campaigns. This job requires a team player who knows how to mingle with people easily and quickly gain their trust and respect. Given they work with various professionals within the company to bring about the creative juices.
They will have to paint the idea to the graphics designer, the web developer, the copywriters, the sales and marketing teams. To ensure advertisement content produced for the company have the necessary flare, which will grab the attention of the targeted audience. They must also ensure that the brand is cohesively represented across the various department within the organization.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Experts
According to Payscale, PPC experts take home, on average, $39,839.
One of the most active activities within the Digital Marketing space is PPC. Most businesses, despite the very best efforts to grow organically, need to pay for premium exposure on the most popular digital platforms. The work of a PPC expert has never in much demand as they are now.
They create engaging ad campaigns and try to push a business ad content to the top of paid search results. It is a very complicated job given; it is not just creating artwork with some verbiage for the online banners. PPC experts need a thorough understanding of Google Analytics and Google AdWords. Then create paid ads campaigns with measurable results.
Take into account that the banners are displayed on various platforms; social media, desktop websites, mobile websites, in-app displays, and video games (both mobile and desktop). The PPC expert needs to take into account the various display sizes of the devices consumers will be using among other things.
Social Media Manager (SMM)
According to Payscale, the average salary for SMM is $49,881 annually.
In today’s world, the majority of people are on social media. As it an easy platform to communicate with family and friends and share your day-to-day experiences. Social media has grown to become a very powerful platform, not just for business but politics, surveillance, consumer behavior studies, among other things.
Speaking of business, social media is an invaluable marketing platform. Armed with the right marketing campaign, all those people coming to social media daily can be converted into customers. That is where the SMM comes in handy.
SMM’s work is to establish which people flock what social media platform the most, and what advertisement content could be served to them to convert them to customers. Depending on the business’s product, you have to segment people online based on demographics and serve them targeted ads.
However, that is still just a scratch on the surface. You also need to know when is the right time to post content online, how to appropriately respond to customer questions and comments. You also need a good mastery of copywriting, color psychology, and visual marketing to curate multimedia content for posting on social media.
The SMM roles are further split into two; Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization.
Email Marketing
Payscale puts the average salary for email marketers at $53,209.
Email marketing is one of the early forms of digital marketing, and some may want to imagine that its effect has died down over the years. However, that is not correct, though admittedly, it has seen better days.
Nonetheless, if you have a big list of email subscribers and know how to work with that list, you can drive sales up for your company without much effort. Especially when compared to other forms of digital marketing.
Email marketing should not be confused as going to your computer in the morning and writing emails then sending it to a bunch of people in ‘CC or BCC.’ That is a sure path to landing your emails into the spam folder. It is more like the middle stage of the process.
The initial stages involve creating content that customers want to read or view. That could be in the form of whitepapers and e-books, which your customers can subscribe to and in exchange, share with you their contact information. Then you keep sending them content with the same level of engagement as the e-books or whitepapers to their email accounts.
Within the emails, you will include a call to action button, which will convert them from readers to paying subscribers and consumers of your company’s products. Businesses are looking for such email experts who can build up a long list of customer emails and convert them into paying customers.
Mobile Marketers
The average salary for mobile marketer, according to Payscale, is $74,874.
These days, mobile devices are the first go-to platform for users wishing not just to communicate but also to get information, entertainment, and even education. The use of mobile devices is so high that 70% of web traffic comes from these devices; desktop computers are not ‘a thing’ anymore.
On the surface, one might think the website is the same, whether it is being accessed via a desktop computer or mobile device. That could not be further from the truth. Any business worth its salt will have to version of the website, which intuitively changes in accordance to the device the visitor is using.
That said, digital marketing tailored for desktop computer viewing will not be effective. Given the screen size and user experience have dramatically changed. So much so that it calls for a standalone mobile marketing approach dedicated to churning out digital marketing content for visitors on more devices. Also, the tools available to a mobile marketer are different from those targeting desktop marketers. That includes SMS and responsive designs for digital assets with reference to user mobile’s display sizes.
Data Analytics
According to Mondo.com, Data Analyst makes between $88,000 and 134,000 per year. Their role is closely related to those of Information Architect, who take home between $113,000 and $152,000.
Cutting edge technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made it possible to capture a lot of consumer behavior data. Data that, if properly analyzed, will give great business insights. And that is precisely the work of Data Analysts, they dig into tons of data, process them, identify a pattern, and make informed projections.
All businesses across all industries need analysts who will give them economic insights on ‘Big Data.’ That data is useless unless a trained eye can dig into it, and come up with analytical business intelligence.
User Experience (UX) Designers/Developers
Mondo.com puts the average salary of UX designers at between $90,000 and $134,000. That of UX developers between $92,000 and $158,000.
UX designers and developers are experts who study the behavioral science of consumers while utilizing a product or service. Then use that knowledge to address any shortfalls in the product or service, hence satisfy any dissatisfactions the consumers might have had on previous sessions.
UX designers and developers can influence consumer behavior and increase the odds for the organization meeting its bottom lines. All the above mentioned digital marketing skills are important – SEO, data analytics, content marketing, etc. – but they will all be useless if the company does not understand the experience customers have with their product.
Videographer
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in 2011 puts the average annual salary of videographers in 2011 at $66,690. The top 10% make more than $126,250, while the bottom 10% earn $26,350.
As we discussed earlier, businesses are in a cut-throat competition to grab the attention of consumers. In general, people feel overwhelmed by ads and information bombarding them left, right, and center. Not to mention, the majority of people suffer from attention deficit.
Multimedia marketing campaigns filled with high graphics videos can easily grasp the attention of the target consumers. Compared to ad content based on text and dull pictures. People don’t like to read much these days, and if you want your ad to stand out. Make it an engaging video, as opposed to text and pictures. For that reason, we believe videographers have a promising future in digital marketing as their skills will be in demand for a long time coming.
Inbound Marketing Manager
According to Glassdoor, an Inbound Marketing Manager makes, on average, an annual salary of $42,370.
A Content Marketer in most organizations also serves as the Inbound Marketer, their tasks overlaps considerably. However, there are some organizations than need to have a standalone Inbound Marketer, whose work will be focusing on purely handling the funnel and conversions at every stage.
Inbound marketers are tasked with coming up with strategies that will attract new customers. Like we said their role overlaps those of content marketers. However, if you were to have both two professionals in-house. The role of the inbound marketer would be managerial, in that they come up with strategies for attracting customers using content copies. Then the content manager comes in and creates copies in line with those strategies; they execute the plan set by inbound marketers.
Search Engine Marketers are tasked with bringing new leads and click-through from a marketing campaign. Smaller companies often include SEM as one of the duties of the digital marketing manager. They sometimes outsource the work to digital marketing agencies.
Bigger companies prefer to have an in-house SEM specialist, and some even have a whole team of them.
Search Engine Marketing
According to Payscale, the average annual salary of Search Engine Marketing specialist is $47,186.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) should not be confused with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They are both critical digital marketing channels for a business worth its salt is this information era. SEM is often referred to as Google AdWords because Google takes the lion’s share of search engine searches.
Wrapping up…
Digital Marketing, though can’t be said to be at its infancy, has a long way to growth. Much of that is attributed to the inherent nature of technology upon which it is riding on. Tech companies and developers are always churning out new innovations and inventions that not only disrupt business but also provide new platforms for advertising as a means (of the owners of the said platforms) to generate income from their creation.
Article provided by, The Digital Marketing Recruiter – a recruiting firm focused exclusively on filling digital marketing positions throughout the USA
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