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Careers in B2B Marketing – a Primer

May 9, 2017 By Josh Hill

A Primer on Careers in B2B Marketing

Let’s talk about B2B as a whole. Once you enter the B2B world of marketing, you will be seen differently as a marketer. Companies that sell services to other businesses do act differently than a B2C firm like Proctor & Gamble, selling mass consumer products. Or even large tech firms like Google or Apple that are mostly B2C organizations. The roles and thinking at such organizations are surprisingly different than B2B firms of most sizes. For this post, I’m assuming you made a choice at are a B2B marketer.

In my experience, and in speaking with my colleagues over 17 years, most B2B marketers learn on the job. It’s rare for business school courses at any level to address real B2B issues in direct marketing, email marketing, writing brochures, organizational buying psychology, etc. I’m not saying such courses aren’t out there, but they aren’t common to entry level students. Surprisingly, much of what you need to know is out there for free!

B2B Demand Generation Roles

This is my personal summary of the many roles available in marketing. The tasks vary by company and I suspect some readers will view the roles somewhat differently depending on their experiences. Be sure to do research elsewhere and ask great questions when interviewing to really know what you will do or learn.

I’ve found many demand generation roles combine channel, content, and more into one role. I find those roles the best opportunity to learn about the company and to decide where to specialize for a couple of years. This is by no means a complete list of options. There are many differences between small and larger firms in terms of responsibilities and skills required.

[Updated May 14, 2017 with slideshare link that’s easier to view]

Level/Role Specialist/Associate Manager Director Vice President
Campaign or Demand Generation Marketer Entry level, all round marketer. Size of company will determine whether this is a general role or specialized on email or cross-channel programs. Typical day may mean setup for events, email coding, simple reports, deduping, checking things with sales. May work on basic SEO, SEM, and direct response. Individual contributor at most firms. (Associate, Manager, and Sr levels). Often a jack of all trades, but may specialize in non-event work.

Needs to know how to write copy across channels, email invitations, whitepaper writing, proposals.

May work on martech projects when marketing ops function is not present. Will run reports for managers and sales. Expected to know how to use CRM, Email tools, reports. Some vendor negotiation and selection.

At small firms this will be “player/coach”. Will lead a small team dedicated to finding leads for Sales. Often responsible for funnel management, reporting, and lead sourcing.

Will design systems. Will work with other departments to align strategy and tactics.

May be responsible for content and events. Expected to coach junior staff in techniques and brand.

Measured on funnel, lead gen, and pipeline.

Only large firms have a VP of Demand Gen.

Oversees field events, tradeshows, lead generation systems and tools. May oversee marketing operations.

Will be measured on funnel targets and revenue.

Email Marketer

Database Marketer (rare at B2B)

Analyzes email data; may need to code HTML/CSS or does. Loads emails and prepares sends. Manages the list; analyzes data for segmented messaging and sends; often prepares email sends in the ESP. Rare: ecommerce or B2C typically. NA
Event Marketer Often a jack of all trades to handle tasks from email invitations to list management and more.

 

Manage invoices

Contact venues for pricing lists.

Do whatever is needed to make the event a success. May or may not go to the event for onsite support

Individual contributor.

 

May manage tradeshows or just field roadshows, often both.

 

Must be skilled in logistical management and project management.

 

Must know how to create the environment to facilitate conversation

 

Skilled at creating an experience.

Will train team, conduct ROI analyses; work with leadership to ensure the right brand presence and that the onsite experience is congruent with firm and audience goals.

 

Likely to delegate logistical tasks to team.

 

May work closely with outside event management agencies to create experiences.

Very large firms will dedicate teams to large scale tradeshows and possibly field events to aid local salespeople make personal connections. May be a part of Communications team
Field Marketing Setup local events to aid sales in cities. Assist with custom proposals or brochures. Assist sales with local lead gen and reporting efforts. Smaller orgs may have this role with Campaigns and it will include email work by territory or large scale. Work will often include registration data, shipping, ordering, venue work. Manage territory and multi-territory support for sales. Small organizations will have this role do all of the field setup; may include travel to sites. Manage schedule of events, venue selection, vendor negotiation, data collection, and reporting on success of efforts. Usually Director of Demand Gen, but larger orgs may have an entire team to support local “field” sales efforts.

Measured on budget use, pipeline, sales happiness, and lead gen efforts.

Expected to train team on becoming more effective lead generators, aligning with sales, and efficiency.

Rare, but does exist. Usually combined with Demand Generation in the current market.
Content & Inbound Research, learn about buyer personas, use that English degree to write blog posts, etc.

 

May also fall under PR or Brand.

Manage editorial calendar, train junior staff, churn out larger papers in conjunction with Product, Product Marketing, Channels, and Sales needs. What’s missing and what’s attracting attention?

Measures inbound numbers.

Editorial calendar, align teams, ensure content messaging is aligned with company values, goals, and product; ensure audience finds content and uses it.

Measured on asset views and possibly pipeline influence if measured accurately.

May fall under PR, Branding, or Corporate Marketing.
Corporate Marketer Help analyze data and brand. May work on branding decks, designs, and PR. Analyze marketing strategy, branding, and overall efforts.

 

May work a lot with higher level data.

Often a VP at smaller firms, but depends. May work on brand strategy with product marketing and product. Establish brand personas. May develop buyer personas.

 

Startups often hire contractors to do this or have the CMO take on the role directly.

Public Relations/Press/Brand Tasked with writing press releases, some content. May handle basic press relations and contact work.

Learn about brand and how to use it.

Work directly with trade press and mass media. May work on inbound content. May help write or manage content production Works with industry press; analysts; prepares communication strategies around new releases. May manage content production. Develops relationships with key Press, publications; industry analysts; strategy for new product releases and competitive info. Sets content strategy and messaging
Search Engine Optimizer Analyze keyword traffic to site against goals, content, branding, audience needs. Analyze keyword traffic to site against goals, content, branding, audience needs.

Manage technical SEO issues; build connections to collect data.

Set priorities. Manage projects with web team and content to maintain rankings. Rare.

Very large firms or ecommerce firms.

Search Engine Marketing/Digital Ads Analyzes data from ad platforms; prepares ads for distribution; assists with various aspects of Channel. Analyzes data from ad platforms; manages ad systems and spend. Level of responsibility will vary by company size. Take content and deploy it. Oversees budgeting; analyzes data and response information. Manages spend in relation to lead and revenue targets.
Direct Response Advertising Assist in analysis of response data; list; deployment of programs; learn analysis techniques. Assist in production with vendors. Prepare new campaigns. Manage list and segmentation. Collect and analyze response data to manage spend/revenue ratio. May work with vendors; may run creative portion of campaigns. Manage and analyze list and response data. Work with vendors on list targeting, spend, and ratios. Manage production of pieces and vendors. Oversee creation of pieces and campaigns. Usually seen at print publications or direct response organizations.
Creative/Graphic Design Wide variety of roles from graphic designer to copywriter and more. Take messaging and brand guidelines into appropriate visuals for each distribution channel. May manage junior designers; more latitude for creativity. May work with vendors or agencies. Provide brand direction to team. Provide brand guidance to CMO and other teams.

Possibly set brand guidelines or re-create brand.

Work with outside agencies if needed on all audience facing materials

Rare.


Wait
, what about Product Management or Product Marketing?

These functions tend to exist only in technology firms or firms that have a strong platform system. Occasionally, the roles are merged. Most of the time, as a tech startup grows, the functions split off, sometimes with Product retaining the Product Marketing piece, sometimes PMMs moving to Marketing. Since I have limited experience here, I’d suggest reading more about these two areas. Interested in User Experience or Design?

What happened to “Integrated Marketing”?

Integrated Marketing means different things to different people. Generally it tries to coordinate efforts across communication channels. Definitions vary a bit depending on the context. I’ve seen advertising groups use the term “integrated marketing” more as a mirror of what clients wanted to do such that the publisher offered a multi-channel content pitch. I can’t comment much more since I haven’t personally done this.

Should I specialize? Can I be a generalist marketer?

In any career, there is always a question of being a specialist vs. generalist. I would argue you may find the most success doing both over time:

  • Early: start in a generalist role for one to two years, find out where you want to learn for the next 2-5 years.
  • Mid-Early: specialize in two to three areas at your firm (ideal) or at one or three firms. Try to mentor or take on a team if possible.
  • Mid: specialize and or use the combination of specialized work you did to rise up in one area, but aim to lead teams and projects more in your area.
  • Later: use your mix of specializations to take on a team and spend more time on people and strategy. You will become more of a generalist again, but in a new way.

Always understand where you want to go in the next 2 years. The “where you want to be in five years” is too far out to discuss intelligently. While you may want to be a VP or CMO one day, the exact path isn’t always obvious in B2B. If you are great at email marketing, perhaps it’s time to learn a new channel, or use those skills to take on SEO/SEM optimization, or to lead a team that does only email channel work.

As you rise up, you will also need to consider people management as a discipline. Technical skills will get you pretty far, however, the ability to manage people to attain goals will always make a difference to go beyond Director or Sr. Manager.

Study What Other Marketers Do

Always study and learn from those who went before you. Whether it’s a guru like Seth Godin, or your CMO. It’s likely no one took the same path. There are some CMOs who rise up through demand gen, others through product marketing. If you are early in your career, it may be ideal to work across two to four marketing disciplines, then specialize in one. For example, I’ve received advice to work in product marketing as I already have sales and demand generation experience. Other specializations to consider are SEM, SEO, and advertising. No one path is perfect for everyone.

Learning Resources for the Aspiring B2B Marketer

Learning B2B marketing and its various flavors can be challenging outside of actual work. A great marketer is always learning from others, so I recommend a few starting points. Most of us learned on the job and from helpful vendor or consulting sites.

  • Learn Demand Generation   – article from Integrate, who publishes a lot of helpful templates.
  • HubSpot – always helpful to the newcomer.
  • Marketo  – their Definitive Guides taught me a lot and continue to offer solid blueprints.
  • Act-On – another marketing automation vendor that has written about how to do things.
  • Sirius Decisions  – while most of the details are behind the paywall, they are highly influential on funnel dynamics.
  • TOPO – home of the Funnelholic (Craig Rosenberg) and focused on Sales portion of the funnel.
  • MECLabs  – full of interesting research if you can access it.

There is plenty of content out there from vendors or practitioners. Your ability to absorb it and take the useful parts will help distinguish you from your fellow marketers.

 

Filed Under: Marketing Careers

How to Break into Marketing Technology at Any Age

March 1, 2017 By Josh Hill

About once a week I receive a note from a subscriber asking about how to learn marketing automation, Marketo, or martech. Often, the question is about learning Marketo without access to an instance. However, Marketo isn’t necessary to learn marketing operations or technology or automation. What’s required is a mindset to learn new things.

Marketing Automation Rockstar – a marketer who works at the intersection of Sales, Marketing, and Technology; marketer who uses marketing automation well.

The real reason people ask about the learning martech is because they want a job or a better job. As I’ve suggested before, this is a good career decision for a marketer looking for accelerated advancement.

From experience, your path might look a bit like this:

Today, Without Knowing Marketo After Learning Marketo Basics
Making $80k or less On the way to breaking $100k
Cost to your manager Revenue center your boss needs
Just a marketer Demand generator and marketing automation expert
Your team is barely functioning to put out campaigns with Marketo Well oiled machine with multiple Marketo power users.
Marketing specialist or Manager – forever? Accelerated career and options at multiple companies.
Sales hates you and the leads you came in with. Salespeople take you out to dinner and it’s not even a trade show.

I strongly believe that everyone can operate Marketo well enough to do their marketing job. Technology is not something to be afraid of. Yes, you will make some mistakes. Yes, it takes some time to learn the best ways to do things with the tool.

All marketers can benefit from learning the concepts behind Marketing Automation. Brand marketers, direct marketers, designers, and coders can all learn something. Today, marketing technology is in a rapid explosion and marketers who refuse to join the party are going to be left behind. Yes, even if you are “just a creative type” you will lose out to colleagues who understand the interaction of marketing automation components and what they do. For example, I have been hiring staff to handle coding and love it when someone comes in with any experience of a MAP because they understand the issues I face when building templates and coding across systems.

How do you learn a system like Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot, or others?

The most important thing to know is to keep learning and playing. Any martech tool, whether it is analytics, a datamart, a DMP, or a microservice can be learned effectively within weeks or months. You do not need to be a techie, nerd, or computer geek to grasp these tools or know how they could be used at your company. Let’s go through some of the steps to learn and how you can do this at any age (or stage of your career).

What does a Marketing Rockstar do well?

Rockstars know how to think

Do you know how to think through a project or a task you do in Marketing? Good! You are on your way.

Rockstars understand basic logic

Marketo Boolean LogicLogic sounds complex. It sounds a bit like that math class we never quite aced. Or maybe we slept through that class.

The good news is you do not need to learn complex logic like Aristotle or Einstein. All you need to know are the key Boolean logic operators: And, Or, Not.

These operators are the foundation to successful marketing.
Logic is used to select leads and other data in the powerful databases martech relies on. Logic is used to make decisions about how to react to a lead’s behavior. Logic is used to design the process charts for nurturing. Whether you use artificial intelligence or not, there is logic you need to build out before the computer handles the job.

Rockstars “Play” to learn

Each person learns differently. Successful marketers largely “play to learn.” They test new ideas; they implement small changes rapidly; they do regular AB testing of content and distribution. I bet you learned your current job through a non-deliberate journey – trying out ideas on colleagues or your boss; receiving instruction from your manager or others. Learning a new software tool follows the same path – but only if you are willing to fail a little by testing.

I spend a lot of time on the Marketo forums. I do my best to show people the way or answer clearly how to do something in Marketo. The biggest mistake I see people making is not to try first. Someone will ask a questions like “How do I run an AB test for time zones?” which they could have figured out themselves had they only spent a few minutes with the docs or just looking around.

Here is a critical question to ask when learning any tool:

I want to do X, and I know this should be possible, so where is the button that says “XYZ”?

Even if you do not find the exact button, then you can go to the documentation or do a search to see if someone else tried to do that too. Once you are done, you will either have

  • The Answer
  • A path to solving it yourself
  • A clear question to ask everyone else

Remember, until you turn on a workflow or see a red “Are you sure?” dialog, nothing bad can happen. So just try things!

Rockstars understand tools are all similar

Do you understand other technologies used in Marketing or at the office? Think of the tools you use in your job and how they are similar to other technologies.

  • AdobeCS
  • FinalCutPro
  • MS Office
  • Windows
  • MacOS
  • Internet
  • SEM
  • SEO

Any of the marketing disciplines use tools that could be considered martech or just technology. Guess what? Martech like MAPs, etc… are just another application or tool to learn. They are a “third screen” as some thought leaders have said.

Rockstars make time to learn

Will you take the time to learn how to become a marketing rockstar technologist?

Learning new tools can take time. Where can you take that time? Is it–

  • Part of your job?
  • Taking a course online?
  • Asking a colleague?
  • Finding blogs and videos online
  • Participating in user forums and events.

Rockstars help others get up to speed, and share their knowledge

The best marketing technologists I know of share their knowledge freely on forums, blogs, user groups, and more. They help others up and into this amazing new world. You can share knowledge of your tools anytime. If you are a marketer and you aren’t blogging or sharing your experience in some fashion, then you may not be seen as a marketer one day.

If no one knows you’re an expert, are you an expert?

Learn martech today. You’re already using it.

What if I’m a __________ Marketer? I don’t need martech.

Martech is typically associated with demand generation and marketing operations, however, building a customer experience relies heavily on developers, html designers, html coders, copywriters, event marketers, branding, content, and more to make it successful.

Every day I see new postings for marketers working at the intersection of different areas. I work at the intersection of “Sales-Marketing-Technology,” which is great for Marketing Ops and Demand Gen. I also see postings that need Developer-Marketing-Design or Business Intelligence-Databases-Marketing; or Brand-Technology-Graphic Design. The point is – there’s a role for you in martech no matter where you begin.

The more you know about how the customer lifecycle (or journey) works and is impacted by what you do in your role, the more your company will value your contribution.

Filed Under: Marketing Careers

Careers in Marketing Automation and Technology

January 12, 2017 By Josh Hill

While I love sharing what I’ve learned about Marketo with you, a few blog posts aren’t enough to make you an expert, let alone help you build a new implementation. I can show you a path to becoming a marketing operations and Marketo expert. I hope you will join me on this journey. It’s one I made myself over the past 8 years of hard work.

Back in 2008, I moved from Sales to Marketing. From day one I was asked to deliver leads whether that meant inbound trial requests or scraping Fortune 1000 sites manually. (I’ll let you in on a big secret – I hate manual data work).

So guess what? I said there had to be a better way. And I slowly made my way toward it. I developed content-based events and webinars, only to find deduping leads was painful, taking 8 hours after each event (just ask my colleague!). There had to be a better way.

I aligned with Sales to route leads better and rank them…manually. I sent emails out and achieved my registration targets, yet lost valuable emails to unsubscribes and spam. There had to be a better way! Then we moved to a freemium model and 200,000 leads came through, sometimes over 300 to route each day. This situation was not sustainable, so I found Marketo and changed my work-life and my career.

Back then, there wasn’t much in the way of training or tested methods for handling a lead lifecycle or whitepaper collectors. Each of us had to learn on our own until the Marketo Nation came online. Over the next few jobs and my consulting work, I learned more and more efficient methods to designing and building in Marketo to make everyday life faster. And let’s face it – faster deployment in Marketo means faster to market, which means faster to the revenue vision your CMO wants.

What I found along this journey was I had become one of the experts at Marketo. I also found that teaching others and sharing my knowledge so new users could work better and faster was very rewarding. This is what I want for you: for you to become an expert at Marketo. Of course, this won’t happen overnight it requires hard work and a place to start.

Don’t rely on just me and my story. There are many marketing technologists who have taken interesting paths. For example, I am delighted to share my friend Jessica Cross’s marketing tech origin story:

“I was working as a market development rep (think SDR) for PowerReviews. I was bit-by-bit taking on projects from the marketing team to try and wiggle my way out of being in Sales and doing 80 dials a day.

Then one day, the VP of Marketing told the marketing team that he purchased Marketo and needed to get it installed asap. (My reaction was, Marketo? Don’t they only have 20 employees? Ouch!).

As I was the only marketer on the team with SFDC admin access, the VP gave me the gift of integrating Marketo and turning it on for the first time. I think he literally forwarded me a welcome email with a couple links and told me to go at it. I watched a bunch of videos, read over a “getting started” document 17 times and started clicking buttons and installing apps. I was extremely nervous initiating the sync between our Salesforce and Marketo as there are a number of warnings of once you complete this step there is no going back!

And they were right, there was no going back.  Since that point I’ve been using Marketo continuously for 6+ years.”

So How Do I Get Into Marketing Operations?

There are many paths to marketing operations. There are a few common threads as well as backgrounds that seem to work well.

  • Marketer who loves working with logic and technology. You started working with your CRM team a lot or working with the database to ensure better programs in SEM, SEO, or Email. And then someone asked you to take on marketing automation or setup Marketo. You loved it so much you never went back to shipping boxes to events.
  • “Failed” engineers who switched to business or marketing. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it’s true. I’m a bit of a failed engineer who dabbled in programming, basic coding, building computers, websites, etc…and realized I never loved it or was good enough to make it pay the bills. What I did find is my ability to understand many of the key concepts made it easier to help others with the first level technical issues and work with the engineers to find solutions. Translating between the technical and non-technical is a valuable skill too.
  • Salespeople who become Marketers. Yes, I do “work at the intersection of sales, marketing, and technology,” so I am biased. I find that some of the best marketers used to do sales in the past. It may be that the best demand generation marketers worked in Sales, as well as some of the top marketing automation experts. Salespeople do appreciate someone who can speak their language and process, make it better, and deliver.
  • Engineers who want to get involved in other parts of the business. Perhaps you were a front end developer, a growth product engineer, or whatever. And you just wanted a change of pace. Building custom journeys and experiences requires a lot of backend work to make it seem like magic to the audience. Being a part of a marketing ops team will expose you to creative area that requires that programming skill you have.

Update: Jun 10, 2018: read Scott Brinker’s article on how to be great at Martech.

What are some of the Roles in Marketing Operations?

Marketing operations has been around under various guises for at least 20 years. You may still come across roles like:

  • Database/CRM Marketer (Email marketer or Marketing Automation Manager equivalent)
  • Email Database Marketer

In fact, Salary.com still uses these older terms so you will have to make an effort to understand how your role compares to what is out there now. Although I would be wary of any company that still posts for Database Email Marketers; they may not be too forward looking.

These days, you are likely to see a few roles:

  • Marketing Automation Manager
  • Marketing Operations Manager
  • Marketing Automation Campaign Manager (less time administering the system)
  • Marketing Technology Manager
  • Marketing Systems Manager or Developer
  • Demand Generation Manager, etc: in some smaller firms, or firms new to martech, this will be a hybrid role.

With the exception of the more technical Systems/Developer role, the typical Marketing Operations staffer will expect to be responsible for some or all of the following tasks during a given week:

  • Marketing Automation platform (if an Admin)
  • Data quality, processing, deduping.
  • Vendor negotiation and selection.
  • Martech add-on tools
  • Building campaign workflows or journeys.
  • Helping align the systems to the strategy.
  • Working with sales and other teams on aligning work.
  • Running reports on tactics and often strategic funnel.
  • Ensuring the lead funnel is working and reports are correct.
  • Email marketing (some companies, more or less)
  • Email reputation and deliverability
  • Connections between systems (Website, third party tools, lead databases, reporting tools, CRM)

Learning marketing technology is more about the mindset that matters to doing the operational role. You have to know the logical and technical side just as much as how and why you market. We’re responsible for the infrastructure underlying the buyers’ journey. If you aren’t able to understand the overall marketing goals, you will provide poor advice to your peers on making the journey a reality for your audience.

Even as a Director of Marketing Operations, most firms will ask you to be responsible for the above, with a team, or without. Teams with larger martech stacks have opportunities to spend more time on strategy and interesting technical projects. Ultimately, the MOPS team delivers the funnel and buyers’ journey infrastructure.

Key Skills to Consider Building for marketing operations

There are many skills that go into a successful marketing automation leader. There are several core skills that you should expect to have and build over your career in martech. Each role in marketing ops tends to be unique for the company. Some roles are more marketing than automation, while others demand detailed SQL knowledge. Do you need them all? No, but these are the ones I typically look for in some combination.

  • Understanding of “technology” – how does a computer work?
  • Understanding of how the internet works. Really.
  • Basic HTML, CSS, or better.
  • Database concepts – you don’t need to be a pro at SQL, but dabbling helps
  • Reporting and metrics for marketing
  • Project management
  • Set logic, Boolean logic, logical steps
  • Process flow charts
  • System Administrator understanding
  • How email works
  • How landing pages work
  • Inbound vs. Outbound marketing and sales.
  • How the sales funnel works
  • Content marketing
  • URL parameters
  • MS Excel

Skills that can make you stand out, or open other roles in the future, include:

  • Ability to code emails and landing pages
  • Javascript, JQuery, SQL
  • People management
  • Large scale projects
  • Sales operations and CRM administration
  • Team facilitation
  • MS Excel master (more than just pivots)

More Resources for Learning About Marketing Operations

  • Marketing technologists and recruiters.
  • Terms and things you should know
  • How Marketo Structures MOPS 
  • MOPS Team Structures
  • What MOPS does for you 
  • The MOPS Team and your CMO
  • KPIs you should know 

As a reader, I am sure you are involved in marketing technology. What’s your story? Share below.

Filed Under: Marketing Careers

Boosting Your Salary with Marketing Technology Skills

January 2, 2017 By Josh Hill

Happy New Year

Happy New YearIn the New Year, what will you do to accelerate your career in Marketing?

Get a promotion? Change companies? Switch marketing disciplines? Become a consultant?

What is the common thread across Marketing these days? It’s technology. While Marketing has always been about telling a story at scale and establishing a general feeling for an organization amongst the audience, the tools available have changed a bit. Marketers who have embraced these tools have always accelerated their careers, maintaining relevance. Tools are leverage: knowing how to create leverage will always make you more valuable to clients or employers. And knowing how to leverage storytelling better than others will continue to be valuable.

In another post, I’ll discuss career paths for marketers, but today I want you to consider why marketing technology and operations is no longer the backwater I once believed it was seven years ago. In fact, a few months into my first Marketo install, I became concerned I would be stuck in some backwater called “marketing operations” before I even knew it was a thing. And once I saw that it was real and I could accelerate my career with it, I never looked back.

While jobs can range widely in terms of experience required and salary made, I’ve noticed that skilled marketing operations professionals tend to make more earlier than their marketing peers. Here is the data I was able to compile.

Salary Statistics – Oct 2015

I collected this data last year (methodology below) and am showing it here so you can see the changes from last year to this year.

Salary Comparison – Oct 1, 2015 Salary Range – US – Annual
Role Level Glassdoor Glassdoor Avg Salary.com Salary.com Avg PayScale.com Payscale Median Indeed Avg
Marketing Director 97k – 199k 105k-196k  $146,588 79k-160k  $120,000  $140,000
Marketing Manager 75k-150k 79k-149k  $101,807 63k-120k  $85,000  $84,000
Marketing Associate/Specialist 45k-65k 40k-79k  $54,295 52k-88k  $68,000  $81,000
Marketing Operations Director 126k-200k  $150,000  $140,000
Marketing Operations Manager 69k-158k  $91,350  $137,000
Marketing Operations Associate/Specialist 53k-84k  $54,224  $71,000
Marketing Operations Consultant

Consider that a “regular” Marketing Director in Glassdoor had a low range of $97,000, while a Marketing Operations Director had a low of $126,000 per year. Just having those “operational” skills meant a 30% starting bonus for experienced marketeers. Less experienced marketers could expect a range bump of 18% and a wider range of salary at lower experience levels. And while it’s not good to compare Indeed vs. Glassdoor’s average, we can see that Marketing Operations often matched or exceeded non Operations roles.

Spring 2016 – Martech Roles

At the Marketo Summit in May 2016, martech pros Jason Seeba and Inga Romanoff compiled data from a survey of Marketo users, which showed skilled martech adopters were making high salaries. I did not have the raw data to make this more comparable to other data sources, however, it’s interesting to note the ranges available to those with Marketo skills.

More importantly, it appears that it only takes 1-3 years to make over $100,000 per year. If you are stuck at under $100k, perhaps a solid year of marketing automation is all you need.

Summary May-16   Experience needed
Median Salary  $100,000.00 124,000 1-3 Years
Top Quartile  $150,000.00 3+ years
Bottom Quartile  $70,000.00

And if we look at title type, we can see that the most skilled Marketo users, have much higher chances of making over $150k per year. Those who choose to become Consultants (and I recommend this for many people), will find it easy to make over $100k. Being a consultant for barely a year permanently boosted my salary over $100k. It’s not a life for everyone, but it can be eye opening – many of the top marketers I look up to spent some time as a consultant.

Salary by Title – Greater than Range
Manager 45% over 100k
Director 85% over 100k
Consultant 80% over 100k
Consultant 40% over 150k
Marketo Champ 30% over 150k
Marketo Champ 60% over 100k

Be careful here because this analysis isn’t looking at years of experience. From what I know, however, many skilled Marketo and martech leaders are achieving Manager and Director roles two to five years earlier than their peers. Of course, your ability to manage people and talk your way into a role will help just as much. But consider the types of projects, influence, and reports a top martech leader will do versus other marketers early on. The top martech performers can tell a better story such as “I did xyz to accelerate leads through the funnel by 300% in 6 months” or “The project I did demonstrated marketing influenced deals were 50% greater on average than sales generated alone.” Who is getting the promotion?

Salary Ranges – December 2016

Recently, I updated the averages and ranges I collected from 2015. Within this period, the economy has improved and the demand for skilled martech talent has increased. We can see 5% to 20% bumps for marketing operations talent overall, and from 2015 to 2016 – at least on Glassdoor. Salary.com does not have more recent titles, like Marketing Operations, however, it does appear the salaries have increased slightly since 2015. PayScale’s process takes into consideration bonuses and work culture, which make it harder to run this analysis. From what I can tell, PayScale is showing a steady salary across Marketing from year to year. Indeed.com is the only site that shows a possible decrease for some regular marketing staff.

Salary Comparison – Dec 26, 2016   Salary Range – US – Annual          
Role Level Glassdoor Glassdoor Avg Salary.com Salary.com Avg PayScale Range Payscale Median Indeed Avg
Marketing Director 102k-200k  $151,000 111k-201k  $152,803 79k-160k  $120,000  $139,000
Marketing Manager 86k-152k  $86,000 81k-158k  $115,431 63k-120k  $85,000  $137,000
Marketing Associate/Specialist 52k-68k  $52,000 41k-80k  $54,913 52k-88k  $68,000  $70,000
Marketing Operations Director 109k-214k  $132,000  $140,000
Marketing Operations Manager 81k-139k  $81,000  $138,000
Marketing Operations Associate/Specialist 53k-84k  $54,224  $71,000
Marketing Operations Consultant 102k-119k  $111,000

Let’s do a Y/Y comparison for Glassdoor.

Role Level 2015 Range 2017 Range 2015 Avg 2017 Avg
Marketing Director 97k – 199k  102k-200k  $151,342
Marketing Manager 75k-150k  62k-119k  $87,336
Marketing Associate/Specialist 45k-65k  36k-79k  $51,980
Marketing Operations Director* 126k-200k  71k-214k  $150,000  $129,465
Marketing Operations Manager 69k-158k  81-139k  $91,350  $81,000
Marketing Operations Associate/Specialist 53k-84k  36k-106k  $54,224  $52,000
Marketing Operations Consultant 102k-119k  $110,975
Source: Glassdoor, US self reported salaries, Jan 1, 2017

The decline in averages and ranges versus other marketing roles is surprising, especially with Directors. This data shows marketing operations has lower salaries than other marketers. I’m not worried here because Glassdoor appears to be including a lot of unrelated roles with the word “operations” and roles that are not well matched with what we think of as “marketing operations/automation.” I was unable to filter these out or to see what other search changes had occurred since October 2015.

Glassdoor’s data is also not comparing years of experience. As we saw with Jason’s data, you could spend 3 years in marketing automation out of college and likely hit $100k easily, whereas it might take 8 years of “regular demand generation.”

Another way to look at this data — and be careful — is that more and more marketers are becoming skilled enough at marketing technology that it’s not always viewed as a separate job anymore. Given the number of roles out there for “marketing operations/automation” managers alone, I suspect that this is not the reality, yet.

Average Ranges from Indeed.com

When I took the original Indeed data above, it showed a very different story than the one today. The good news is that the 2 year comparison they do have demonstrates the following data, as of Jan 1, 2017. (The chart and percentiles only July 2012-May 2014).

  • Marketing Operations Director: $95,000 average, ranging from $65k-195k and 64% higher than all other job postings
  • Marketing Operations Manager: $82,000 average, ranging from $75k-225k, and 42% higher than all other job postings.
  • Marketing Operations Specialist: $74,000 average, ranging from $65k-195k, and 28% higher than all other job postings.

Now compare that to “regular marketing” with no “demand generation” attached.

  • Marketing Director: $74,000 average, ranging from 75k to 225k, 29% higher than all other job postings
  • Marketing Manager: $66,000 average, ranging from 75k to 225k, 14% higher than all other job postings
  • Marketing Specialist: $49,000 average, ranging from 45k to 135k, 15% lower than all other job postings

A quick search showed “demand generation” often paid much more than regular marketing and sometimes more than operations at higher levels. Ultimately, do your research to make the right decision for you.

A Word on Methodology and Sources

On January 1, 2017, I ran some new searches that had very different data than I had on December 26, so I would urge you to consider how each site’s data can change or how different search methods may provide different results.

Also, I didn’t take into consideration other disciplines such as Advertising, Brand, Creative, Product Marketing, Email Marketing, User Experience, Customer Marketing, or B2B vs. B2C. Much of the data looks at US National and is self reported. Jason and Inga’s data does look at some US regional differences, where non coastal areas may experience a 10% to 20% lower salary across all disciplines due to cost-of-living differences. You can look up sites like city-data.com or EIU City Data to compare cost-of-living across global cities.

The salary data shown represents the available data on the date of analysis from the sites listed. Each site has limited analytical tools, so I did what I could based on title keywords and locations available. I used a Range based on the distribution the site provided, if it provided it. I also used average instead of median since most sites provided that statistic.

  • Glassdoor: based on US National average and range for dates shown. [Example].
  • Salary.com: based on New York US data, with titles like Database Marketing.
  • PayScale: limited due to involved comparison process.
  • Indeed.com: based on NY search.
  • Marketo Summit Survey: I used the provided Median and ranges from the slide analysis. Raw data was unavailable. Keep in mind the sample set is likely heavy on Marketo users.

New Salary Information for 2017

In 2017, additional surveys came out, including one from Marketo.

  • Marketo Summit 2017 Updated from Inga and Jason

And if you’re curious about the trends, here’s a survey from 2011.

A word of marketing career advice

I know many of us look at our peers in Sales, Strategy, or Engineering and see higher salaries. I know Marketing sometimes has a bad rap as a place to go if you couldn’t cut it as an engineer or finance expert. Or let’s face it – it seems “easy” in college to take a business major. Then reality sets in that unless you were an engineer or finance major, starting salaries are LOW in marketing. Marketing in some sectors is more valued than in others. There’s always a path to success if you think hard enough and deliver value.

Take the chip off your shoulder and become an expert in one area of Marketing to start, and if you love tech and don’t like programming, learn Martech to become more than “just a marketer.” If you are just starting out, advance faster than your peers by taking on marketing technology: learn a tool like Marketo and in two years I am confident you could double your salary or better. There are top marketers just like there are top engineers. Get there faster by combining your love of marketing with the skills of an engineer. Another route to early success is marketing plus finance or marketing plus databases.

[Updated: August 24, 2017 with new data links]

 

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