MarketingSherpa Blog

Do you love your marketing job? If you do, you might be in the minority, according to CareerBliss, an online career community dedicated to helping find workplace happiness.

CareerBliss determined the top 10 hated jobs by analyzing hundreds of thousands of employee-generated reviews from 2011. And, two marketing management positions landed on the list.

Director of Sales and Marketing hit at number two, with only IT Director beating it out. Ouch. And Marketing Manager slipped on the list at number 10 spot. Not a promising outlook for those not yet in management, and a worse outlook for those already there.

CareerBliss provided two reasons why the positions earned their spots on the top 10 hated jobs: “an absence of room for growth” and “a lack of direction from upper management.”

After reading this study, I thought about what I would do if I were in the unhappy marketers’ shoes. So I delved further into the topic by reading every article and study Google would give me on the topic. Nothing I found directly answered my question. However, putting all the readings together allowed me to form some ideas to help jog your thinking.

While I wouldn’t suggest quitting your current job just yet (at least not without some research of your own), I do hope this post can give you some hope of getting out of that job you hate. I’d also love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

In this blog post, we’ll see if there’s real truth behind those reasons given by CareerBliss and what you can do to overcome them. Read more…

Sure, the economy is a bit uncertain. But companies are still looking for high-performing marketing professionals. I know because they post these job openings almost daily on our marketing job listings page.

In fact, I recently came across a shocking bit of data in The Wall Street Journal. From my experience, jobs in advertising and marketing tend to be the most sensitive in an uncertain economy. In a recession, most CEOs seem to cut the marketing budget as step #1 (Step #12, corporate jet).

However, according to SimplyHired, marketing managers is “where the work is,” as it’s listed as one of the occupations listed as having many openings.

I’m not personally familiar with this metric, but marketing managers is listed as having 108 job openings for every 1,000 people employed. That is much more than the “few openings” for mental-health counselors and preschool teachers, with only two openings per 1,000 employed. It’s even more than registered nurses, which I always see recruitment ads for and is widely regarded as desperately in need of more talented people (82 per 1,000).

Intuit is one such company hiring marketing professionals right now. So, I sat down with Leslie Mason, a Senior Recruiter at the computer software company, to help give you an inside scoop about what companies are looking for when they fill these plentiful marketing job openings.

Read more…

How much money do you make?

For whatever reason, that’s a question most of us never ask our peers. It’s such an uncomfortable topic to discuss. Yet, you’re curious, aren’t you? And well, you should be. How can you benchmark your salary without knowing what other VPs of Ecommerce, Search Engine Marketing Analysts and Advertising Agency Copywriters are earning?

That’s why I was so intrigued when I received a “Dear Editor” email from Wendy Weber, President, Crandall Associates, with two marketing salary reports attached (the DMA directs inquiries about salaries to Crandall). I gave Wendy a call, and she was kind enough to share these guides – for free – with the MarketingSherpa audience. So, here they are:

• Direct Marketing National Salary Guide – Featuring dozens of job functions and the salaries they command, with regional variances taken into account.
• Online Marketing National Salary Guide – Featuring 21 job functions specific to online and ecommerce marketing.

“The guides were compiled using salary data from conversations with over 1,100 direct and online marketing professionals, including both hiring managers and job seekers,” Weber said. The executive search firm, which specializes in the direct and online marketing industry, chose not to conduct a mail survey, as they generally have a bias toward larger companies and are never random, as respondents select themselves.

So, aside from the fact that there is a Corporate Copywriter banking $135,000, what else can you learn from this data? Here are two points that stuck out (and we’d love to hear your takeaways as well):

• Digital marketing salaries continue to grow – The average annual salary for digital marketing positions has shown a steady increase, according to Weber. For example, the average salary for Web Analytics Manager has grown 2.8% since 2010 to $78,200.
• Optimization is a valuable skill – The top-paying Internet jobs require knowledge of optimization. For the VP of Online Marketing ($169,300-$198,200 with 7+ years experience), the job description calls for the ability to “manage and merchandise…site navigation and shopability, transaction processing, onsite promotion management…” And the Director of Ecommerce ($146,200-$168,700 with 7+ years of experience) specifically asks for “landing page optimization.”

In fairness, since we just announced our new Optimization Summit, I may have optimization on the brain – so I’d love to hear your takeaways as well.

Related Resources

Optimization Summit 2011 – June 1 -3

From Corporate America to Entrepreneur: Giving up steady pay for a steady say

Marketing Career: You must be your company’s corporate conscience

Marketing Career: Can you explain your job to a six-year-old?

“How to Become Indispensable to Your CEO” Special Report

MarketingSherpa Job Listings

MarketingExperiments Careers

Hey email marketing managers…are you working hard to create the best possible campaigns? If so, you may be missing a huge opportunity. Check out my recent chat with noted marketing strategist and best-selling author David Meerman Scott at the recent MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Summit…

I like campaigns myself. I’m a plan-ahead kind of guy. But David makes an excellent case for real-time marketing. In a 24/7 news world, we can’t be complacent and just set it and forget it.

He also makes a good point that massive, monolithic corporations are so…impersonal. As MECLABS Managing Director (CEO) Flint McGlaughlin says, “People don’t buy from websites, people buy from people.”

So look past your campaigns, get all of your real people out from beyond the corporate façade…and hopefully advance your career in the process.

To hear more from David Meerman Scott, join us in Las Vegas from January 24-26 for MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2011. Thanks to a generous sponsorship by ExactTarget, David will be the keynote speaker. And Flint will be speaking there as well.

Related Resources

Email Summit 2011 – Learn from Sherpa’s Latest Research, Case Studies and Training

B2B Marketing Summit Wrap-up: Quick takeaways distilled from 478 marketers on lead nurturing, social media marketing, and more

Transparent Marketing: How to earn the trust of a skeptical consumer