What is a Marketing Manager? Explore the Marketing Manager Career Path

The Day-to-Day as a Marketing Manager

Marketing Managers oversee a team of marketing professionals who find ways to grow the business they’re working for, execute those growth ideas through campaigns, and analyze and report on those campaigns. Marketing Manager’s teams are usually made up of Digital Marketers, Graphic Designers, Copywriters, and Content Writers, Digital Marketing and Social Media Strategists, and sometimes more. Marketing Managers typically work within a company or corporation but can also find employment at marketing firms, smaller business ideas, or freelance. They work in almost every industry but most popularly in retail, tech, finance, manufacturing, wholesale trade, and more.

Most Marketing Managers work a typical 40-hour workweek in an office, but remote and freelance roles are becoming more readily available. Marketing Manager’s responsibilities may vary at each employer. At smaller companies and agencies, a Marketing Manager will take on more tasks while at larger companies they’ll probably specialize in a specific product or method. You can find them doing tasks like coordinating their team, conducting market research, brainstorming business growth ideas, collaborating with their team to plan campaigns, reviewing analytics, adjusting current campaigns to meet key performance indicators (KPIs), creating graphics or videos for a campaign, collaborating with executives, other team leaders, or clients to set growth goals and deadlines.

What Skills Should Marketing Managers Have?

Marketing Managers need a healthy mix of both technical skills and soft skills. As managers, they’ll need to have a t-shaped skill set which means that they should have a high-level understanding of all of these skills and choose to specialize more deeply in one skill.

In the management category, Marketing Managers should have a handle on budgeting, project management, planning, communicating and collaborating with a team, liaising with senior staff and clients, compiling and presenting reports, and problem-solving. You should know how to use project management systems and be adaptable to each company or client’s preferences. In this ever-changing industry, you must be a fast-learner who is adaptable to new strategies, concepts, trends, and technologies.

As a marketer, Marketing Managers must understand market research, content marketing, search engine marketing (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), and web analytics. You’ll need to be well-versed in all of the software tools available to marketers including social media management tools, client relationship management software (CRM), email marketing software, content management systems (CMS), plugins, automation tools, and SEO tools. Some companies or marketers also use scripts to automate their data mining and you might want to learn more about creating and implementing them. Communication will come into play here as well in the form of outreach. Building relationships within the industry, with people who might backlink your site, influencers who will share your product if you choose this route, and even other marketing professionals will dramatically boost your reach and make your job easier. Networking certainly goes beyond the job search with this position.

Marketing Managers, lastly, will often play the role of strategist if their team does not have one. Marketing Managers should know how to track, gather, analyze, and report on data. They will use data to determine goals for a campaign, whether the campaign is staying on track, whether one version is better than another, if they need to change or adapt the campaign for effectiveness, and understanding their audience. Even if they aren’t collecting and analyzing the data themselves because they have a strategist in-house, they must be able to understand the data and interpret it for their clients and senior staff.

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Learn the Skills You Need to Become a Marketing Manager

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing utilizes the internet and web based digital platforms to promote products or services. This includes the use of digital advertisements, social media, brand identities, and more.

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SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic using tactics like keywords and backlinks to create organic, high-ranking search engine results.

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Google Analytics

Google Analytics measures your advertising return on investment while tracking your video, Flash, social networking, and applications. Google Analytics works by tracking website activity through a block of JavaScript code that the web developer, designer, or website owner, embeds within pages on a website.

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Google Ads

Google Ads is the new name for Google AdWords. It is an online advertising service that allows advertisers to pay for the display of brief advertisements, video content, listings, and calls to action within the Google Display Network (GDN) to web users. You'll see Google ads on the GDN which includes Google Search, YouTube, and over 2 million other sites.

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Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the practice of using social media platforms to connect with your target audience or end-user. Social media marketing aims to build brand awareness and loyalty, increase sales, convert leads, and drive website traffic. Social media management can be done through content creation, keyword and target audience research, and the use of social media management platforms like Buffer and Hootsuite.

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Email Marketing

Email marketing is the practice of sending a commercial message to a group of a target audience using email. These emails might be advertisements, business requests, offers, services, sales solicitations, newsletters, donation requests, petition signature requests, and other calls to action.

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Ecommerce

Ecommerce is simply buying or selling products through online services or over the internet. Ecommerce utilizes tech like secure online payments, online shops, online marketplaces, and more to provide users with a convenient online shopping experience.
WordPress

Wordpress is a content management system written in PHP that is usually paired with a MySQL database. It is free and open-source technology. Wordpress is used to build websites and offers a template system, plug in architecture, and content management.

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Marketing Manager Salaries

A Marketing Manager in the United States makes, on average, $77,965 annually, according to Indeed.com.

Salaries for Marketing Managers vary by region within the the United States. Listed below are some Marketing Manager salaries for specific areas with the United States compared with the average national salary:

U.S. Average $77K source n/a
Orange County, CA $92K source
+19%
Los Angeles, CA $91K source
+17.19%
New York City $89K source
+15.37%
Dallas, TX $87K source
+12.72%
Chicago, IL $86K source
+11.01%
Washington, D.C. $83K source
+7.06%
Alexandria, VA $79K source
+1.62%
U.S. Average $77K source n/a
Miami, FL $69K source
-10.36%
Houston, TX $69K source
-10.39%
Fairfax, VA $68K source
-12.41%

Typical Qualifications to Become a Marketing Manager

Many employers and recruiters will prefer you have a bachelor’s degree in communications, marketing, or a related major. But a bachelor’s degree is not required to land a job as a Marketing Manager. Employers are primarily looking at your experience and campaign outcomes more than your education. Many companies will, however, expect candidates to have at least one certification such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook Blueprint, Twitter Flight School, or HubSpot certifications.

Searching for Marketing Manager Jobs

Marketing Managers can find jobs in almost any industry. They can find full-time jobs both in-house and remotely as well as freelance opportunities. They should utilize marketing specific job boards listed here, but can find a plethora of jobs listed on mainstream job boards here. The more experience you have on your resume, the easier it will be to find a job on a general job board site.

Marketing Managers can look for jobs on these sites:

Marketing Managers can find freelance or remote positions on these sites:

Tips to Become a Marketing Manager

You must have some marketing and, ideally, leadership experience in order to get a Marketing Manager job. If you don’t have any experience, you should start in an entry-level or internship role and work your way up. You won’t become a manager overnight. If you have some experience, but you’re having a hard time finding a job, it might just take some creative deep dives to find the perfect place for you.

If you want to work with a specific company, do your research. Stalker level research. Seriously! Use a tool like SiteStacks, Siftery, or Builtwith to look up which exact tools they’re using and learn those tools! Get to know who works there through their “About” page or LinkedIn page. Connect with those people on LinkedIn by starting a genuine conversation about your digital marketing journey or how one of their content pieces helped you. To really catch their eye, use hunter.io to find the email of your potential supervisor once you’ve applied for a position there. Follow up on your application. This extra effort shows them you’ll be able to do the job with the proper tools and persistence.

While you’re working on your job search, create a growth strategy for yourself. Build your own online presence. Maybe start a blog and make it rank on search engines. Make a campaign with your own key performance indicators. Create your own personal brand. All of these efforts will get you more name recognition, more eyes on your job search, and show that you can do this job and do it well.

If you want to do well in this job search and interview process be sure you know your lingo and you’re keeping up with trends. You’ll need to know terms like key performance indicators (KPIs), A/B Testing, cost per impression (CPI), call to action (CTA), drip, and more. There are about a hundred marketing terms that should be familiar to you by the time you’re at management level in marketing. If you don’t know them, or it’s been a while, brush up!

Keeping up with trends is also imperative to your career and this job search. Digital marketing is constantly changing, technologies and platforms are evolving daily and you must keep up. Choosing a specific niche, industry, or skill to hone in on could be the change in your search that you need to find a job. You might focus on tech companies, medical companies, vineyards, or even more specific women’s activewear companies. You might try training your skills in user experience, video creating, content marketing, pay-per-click, or other data analysis. Narrowing your search will allow you to target a limited list of companies and roles that are just right for you.

Make a list of the companies you want to work for based on your new-found focus and do your research one by one. It’s better to send two specially tailored applications with accompanying social media connections per day than to send 10 general applications with no networking at all!

The Day-to-Day as a Marketing Manager

What Skills Should Marketing Managers Have?

Learn the Skills You Need to Become a Marketing Manager

Digital Marketing

SEO

Google Analytics

Google Ads

Social Media Marketing

Email Marketing

Ecommerce

WordPress

Marketing Manager Salaries

Typical Qualifications to Become a Marketing Manager

Searching for Marketing Manager Jobs

Tips to Become a Marketing Manager

What Job Titles Would a Marketing Manager Hold?

Related Careers

Salary Comparison to Marketing Manager

Marketing Analyst

Digital Marketer

Digital Strategist

Digital Analyst

Search Manager

Web Optimization Specialist

Paid Search Manager

Social Media Strategist