Careers in Digital Marketing (and how much they pay)

Strong digital marketing skills can get you a broad range of career opportunities. From creative positions like content writing to data-heavy analytics roles, employers in every industry need a talented marketing team to shape their brand and grow the business.

Our Digital Marketing program is designed to give you the foundation and technical knowledge you need to kick-off this promising career track - all in only three months.

To get you inspired, we’re sharing the salary range you can expect as you progress in the field. We’ll also break down the three main areas of digital marketing, as well as the job description and paycheck you might get if you decide to specialize.

Digital Marketing Salaries

The average annual salary across the country for a digital marketing manager is $68,059. But if you can prove your ability to connect with customers and strategically drive sales, you’ll have pretty impressive growth potential, since chief marketing officers can bring in an average of $176,355.  

Clearly, digital marketing skills pay off long-term as you gain experience and learn to manage a team.

But when you’re just starting out, most marketers lean toward one of the following subspecialties: analytics, social outreach, or content.

Analytics

Gone are the days of pouring money into a magazine ad and crossing your fingers. Top employers are now looking for marketers who can show the results of their efforts with data.

Whether you’re running a six-figure campaign that spans search, social and email, or just testing a new strategy with LinkedIn ads, you’ll need to use conversion rates, impression numbers, and other key data points to justify your ad spend.

If you can visualize data, and know your way around Excel and Google Analytics, you’ll have plenty of job opportunities - like joining iHeartRadio as a marketing analyst. In this role, you’d track listening hours to measure the engagement of existing customers, and drive new subscriptions with emails and in-app push campaigns. The starting salary could be as high as $79,000. Impress the right people, and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to move up the marketing ladder in this global company.

Social Outreach

Social media is the most powerful tool for brands to connect with their customers and differentiate themselves from the competition. But a smart social strategy goes way beyond the occasional tweet and Facebook post.

Social media managers create on-brand content, stay on top of current industry trends, use insights about their followers and post engagement to fine-tune campaigns, and launch paid ads. If you prove your social media chops, you could be in the running for positions like social media manager for Sally Beauty, where you’d be working with social media influencers, managing a content calendar, and creating the kind of posts that stand out on an Instagram feed.  

Anyone who thrives on getting likes and shares will find this career track rewarding in itself, but you’ll get a nice paycheck to boot. Social media managers typically make $52,000 a year.

Content

Content marketing has become increasingly important. Brands have realized that they need to publish unique content to stand out from the crowd - and that means they’re investing in strong writers who know what their audience is looking for.

Content marketers write blogs, website copy, and whitepapers that boost a website’s SEO and communicate the brand voice. Depending on the department structure, content specialists could also write social media posts, ad copy, and even create videos.

If you’re a wordsmith with the right technical marketing skills, you could land a job like editorial content manager, where you could make up to $132,000 on average. You’d lead a team of freelance writers and designers, editing articles to fit the tone of the brand and assigning topics that will appeal to your customer base.

Digital Marketing is A Future-Proof Career

Regardless of their specialty, digital marketers are experts at helping businesses change with the times. And as it becomes more and more crucial for companies to earn online sales, conversions and leads, skilled marketers will be in ever higher demand.

If you want to hear what it's like on the front lines, here's a first-hand experience of a journalism major turned digital marketer.

Ready to learn the skills you need to build a brand? Our part-time Digital Marketing bootcamp is 100% online, and it’s made for people who are motivated to launch a marketing career. Take the course, learn to use the current industry tools, and build your marketing portfolio in only three months.