State of Flux:
Sub-Heading
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 brought a great degree of uncertainty to the industry. As the world adjusted to its new normal, so did marketers, in ways that continue to reverberate. For example, the necessary move to virtual or hybrid models for engagement and business operations in 2020 has evolved into exploration of the metaverse as a means to reach customers in new ways. Big tech companies are still deciding just how much they really want to invest in these technologies – investor interest in the field has weakened. But the hype around the potential of the metaverse, combined with the lowering prices for related tech like VR headsets, means investor interest might change if consumer curiosity grows.
Marketing professionals consider the changes in the industry over the last three years to be more profound than those of the previous 50. The stories of some of those changes reflect wider shifts that have transformed not only the marketing sector, but society more broadly.
Introduction:
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 brought a great degree of uncertainty to the industry. As the world adjusted to its new normal, so did marketers, in ways that continue to reverberate.
This year, this trajectory of transformation is likely to continue. Companies and citizens are evolving their expectations for interaction with brands and institutions. Automation and artificial intelligence applications are increasingly popular with consumers and businesses both – and increasingly advanced, unlocking new business opportunities and customer expectations. Understanding the marketing professionals making sense of these changes in real time, and putting them into practice in their jobs, is vital to tracking these moves and making sense of how they’re changing the world around us. This report provides a snapshot of who those professionals are, what their jobs look like, how their compensation and expectations are shifting, and where they see the biggest potential in their industry.
Online shopping became the safest (and sometimes only) option for many people in 2020, so it’s no surprise social media also continues to play a big role in the day-to-day for marketing professionals. Among our survey respondents, 7% identified social media marketing as their main role. These professionals have been on the front lines of industry shifts like the emergence of TikTok – which now reaches 53% of the US population – and changing ownership of X/Twitter. And with nearly a quarter of Americans reporting they bought something based on an influencer’s recommendation last year, it seems smart to assume influencer marketing will only grow in importance to the marketing industry over the next year.
23%
Proportion of marketers who consider digital marketing a key job role
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND METHODOLOGY
Covid’s Long Echo
"
How Marketing Professionals See Their Industry Amid Big Changes
54%
Proportion of respondents in the first five years of their marketing careers
79%
Proportion of marketers who increased their salary over the prior year
59%
Proportion of respondents who say their jobs offer good work/life balance
40%
Proportion of respondents who say it’s at least likely they’ll job hunt in the coming year
In partnership with:
The margin of error for the total respondent base (N=164) is +/- 8.0 percentage points. Survey respondents were recruited via email through both invitations sent to select AI Business and IoT Today audiences, and compensated verified responses from global marketing professionals. Informa Tech, the parent group of the Applied Intelligence Group, was responsible for all survey design, administration, data collection, and data analysis. These procedures were carried out in strict accordance with standard market research practices and existing privacy laws.
164 Full-time tech marketing professionals
Number surveyed:
November 2023
Timing of survey:
Online Survey
Method of analysis:
Organization headquarters location:
In November 2023, the Applied Intelligence Group – which includes AI Business, IoT World Today, and Enter Quantum – surveyed more than 150 full-time tech marketing professionals to gain insight on the working lives of marketers today.
Approach
Executive Summary and Methodology
Our respondents, located across the globe, cover the wide range of careers now found in the marketing sector. They work for a variety of companies, from those with less than 100 employees to others with more than 1,000. They have job titles like content marketing manager, social media coordinator, and marketing communications manager. And they represent industries including manufacturing, healthcare, IT, and software, among many others. The survey respondents were asked about a variety of career issues including compensation, job satisfaction, and employment benefits. They also shared insight into the roles and responsibilities of modern tech marketers, and their expectations for the future of their own roles and the industry more broadly.
KEY FINDINGS AND TAKEAWAYS
HOME
HOVER FOR DATA POINTS
Gen Z and Millennials dominate: More than half of the marketing professionals surveyed are in the first five years of their career. Marketers are everywhere: Survey respondents work in sectors as varied as media and advertising, tech, finance and banking, healthcare, and automotive. The future is bright: A marketing career has even more potential today than it did five years ago, according to 37% of marketers.
Who We Talked To
Five Fast Facts
Compensation meets the U.S. average: The majority of marketers make between $50-100K U.S. per year.
1
Salaries vary widely: Marketers are found at every point in the chain of command, and their compensation ranges accordingly, from less than $30K US to $250K+.
2
Digital marketers dominate: Nearly a quarter of marketing professionals say digital marketing is their primary job role.
3
Job satisfaction: Almost three-quarters of marketers are satisfied or very satisfied with their current roles.
4
…To a point: Satisfaction aside, 40% of respondents are likely or very likely to look for a different job this year.
5
Job security and happiness
Despite a tumultuous few years, marketing professionals, on the whole, feel good about their jobs. A majority of them reported their income holding steady or increasing compared to the year prior, and there are expectations for the same in the year to come. And nearly three-quarters of those surveyed reported feeling satisfied with their current role, while 89% felt that role was secure – no small feat during a time of general economic uncertainty and anxiety.
What it means
Industry optimism
Beyond their overall satisfaction with their specific roles and companies, marketers also feel good about the potential in their industry more broadly. Despite having an overall sense of job security, about 40% consider themselves likely to look for new opportunities with other companies in the sector over the next year – which indicates they expect to find those chances for career advancement. And while 38% of marketing professionals believe marketing careers have as much potential today as they did five years ago, nearly as many (37%) say there are now even more opportunities for professional and financial growth.
Signs of changes to come
Digital marketers made up about a quarter of our survey respondents, reflecting the major tech-led shifts in the industry including Web 3.0, social media, mobile technology, and big data. But while job roles like marketing automation (6%) and search engine marketing (1%) are still outliers, automation and artificial intelligence applications look set to play an increasing part across the industry. About two-thirds of marketing leaders report their companies are in on AI, but there’s still room to grow from there over this year – and beyond.
>50%
More than half of the marketing professionals surveyed are in the first five years of their career.
Key Findings and Takeaways
Marketers
Employment Status (%)
As expected for a sector represented across industries, marketing professionals vary considerably in their roles, experience levels, and job functions. The large majority of the professionals surveyed are employed full time, but the responsibility level of those full-time roles varies.
And while about three-quarters of the respondents focus on marketing and communications in their job role, 23% are corporate managers. Marketers have a role to play in every sector, but as digital marketing continues to make up a significant proportion of the industry it seems likely to be part of the job expectations up and down the chain of command.
Job Level (%)
Primary Job Function (%)
Marketers:
WHERE MARKETERS ARE
Experienced and In Charge, From Freelance to the C-Suite
Emerging industries like aerospace, AI and the metaverse dominate the headlines – they’re expanding and advancing quickly and honestly, they’re sexier than more staid sectors like finance and agriculture.
But behind the hype, many marketers today work in large, established industry sectors like automotive and healthcare. And of course, a significant number of marketing professionals work in the advertising and media sector specifically. The marketing industry has changed significantly over the past 20 years, thanks to the emergence – and eventual dominance – of social media and online advertising. Even still, many marketers still have job roles and titles their colleagues from older generations would easily recognize. However, the day-to-day realities of these jobs have changed significantly in recent years.
For example, take digital marketing – a job role that now makes up nearly one-quarter of those held by marketing professionals, and one that has changed significantly from its early days of simply replicating ‘real world’ marketing efforts online. Today, marketers have both the data and the technology to personalize their marketing efforts not just by demographic category or location, but often by individual. This ability – and expectation – presents new challenges, but it also opens up opportunities marketing professionals could only dream of previously. That’s why three-quarters of marketers now believe sales and repeat business are driven by personalized experiences. But in addition to the dominance of digital marketing roles, several of the job roles held by our respondents illustrate the changes seen in the industry in recent years. They make up a small percentage of the primary roles held by today’s professionals, but also hold important potential for the growth of the marketing industry. In 2024, search engine optimization (16%), email marketing (14%), and content marketing (14%) are expected to offer big ROI, according to a HubSpot survey. It will be interesting to see how the roles held by marketing professionals are impacted as those expectations play out.
Digital Marketing
Marketing Communications
Product Marketing
Top Three Roles (%)
Emerging Roles (%)
Marketing automation
Demand generation marketing
Search engine marketing
0
10
15
20
25
23
17
16
6
Technology 16%
Information Technology/ Software 20%
Advertising (Media) 23%
Top Three Industries for Marketers
Where Marketers Are:
New Job Roles and Emerging Sectors Tell the Tale of a Changing Industry
EXPERIENCE AND CAREER GROWTH
MARKETERS
As an industry, marketing isn’t young, but many of its professionals are. One recent study found that nearly 75% of marketers are younger than 45, and almost half are 35 or under, meaning both Millennials and Gen Z are well represented in the industry. And it isn’t just that early-career marketers are messing up the stats – the average age of both marketing managers and marketing executives is 39. By contrast, only 44% of the overall U.S. workforce is aged between 25 and 44.
Given those industry statistics, it’s not a shock that about half of those we surveyed are in the first five years of their marketing careers. Unsurprisingly then, the majority of these professionals are at the management or individual contributor/consultant level. In addition, most of the marketing professionals consulted either do not have direct reports, or manage fewer than five people. With these numbers in mind, it will be interesting to watch how the sector changes in the coming years. Only about 15% of marketers are older than 45, MarketingWeek found. Concerns about ageism in marketing aren’t new, especially considering the technological changes the industry has seen over the past few decades. Nearly half of marketers in a Canadian survey say that age discrimination is still tolerated in the industry, for example. There’s also potential for a bottleneck to develop as marketers look to move into more senior roles. Knowledge of the industry’s demographics today could help mitigate some of these challenges, now and in the future.
Only about 15% of marketers are older than 45.
Marketing Week: 2023 Career and Salary Survey Article, 7 Feb, 2023
Years in Career (%)
People Managed (%)
44%
Only 44% of the overall U.S. workforce is aged between 24 and 44.
Source: MarketingWeek
Experience and Career Growth:
COMPENSATION
The Data Reveals a Young Workforce
When comparing wage growth for 2022 compared to the previous year, it’s clear marketers fared better than average. Year-over-year wage growth averages 6.49% in the United States every year, and ranged between 5-10% throughout 2022. But 15% of marketers saw their wages go up by more than 15% compared to the prior year, and more than half reported increases between 1-10%. Those increases were somewhat offset by 2022’s high inflation rates – 8.3% – but still left many in the industry better positioned than peers in other sectors.
When considering salary and bonuses, reported base compensation for nearly half of the marketing professionals surveyed was between $50,000-99,999 US. That’s in line with the average American wage and salary, which was $78,465 US for full-time equivalent employees in 2022.
Compensation for 2022 vs. Compensation Expectations for 2023
Compensation:
TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT
Even In A Tough Economy, Lots of Positive Signs
Compensation Compared to Prior Year
Considering the pace of change in their industry, it’s not surprising that marketing professionals show enthusiasm for training opportunities. That response makes sense considering how often the industry sees new skills emerge as not just nice-to-have but essential.
Every sector experiences shifts, but those in marketing have been seismic in recent years – research from LinkedIn found the top-10 skills most in demand for marketing jobs have changed by 50% over the past seven years. That outpaces both the 25% change in same-occupation skills for workers overall over the same time period, and the prediction of a 40% change overall by 2025 by LinkedIn’s researchers. The marketing professionals surveyed identified a variety of training opportunities they consider valuable for their career development. Some of the identified opportunities focus on upskilling to keep up with the tech-fueled changes in the industry: training on new tech, risk and cybersecurity education, and statistics and analytics courses. But given broader concerns about the potential impact of artificial intelligence and machine learning on jobs – AI tech may put up to 60% of jobs in advanced economies at risk – training and development enthusiasm could be motivated in part by a desire to stay competitive on the job market.
Training on new technologies Certification courses Business skills training
The top-10 skills most in demand for marketing jobs have changed by 50% over the past seven years.
"Here’s How Today’s Marketers Are Keeping Pace and Future-Proofing Their Careers", Tequia Burt, Editor in Chief, LinkedIn, 2 Sept, 2023
Valued Training Opportunities
Other identified areas of interest for career development are more concentrated on business, leadership, and organizational skills. Training in identified interest areas like people management, project management, and communication skills could provide marketing professionals with the skills needed to move up in their careers and earn titles like senior manager, director, president, or executive. One piece of good news is that people already in those leadership roles also see the value in providing their reports with their desired opportunities to upskill. A solid majority of learning and development leaders see the growing strategic value of education and training in their organizations, and almost half of those professionals expect their budgets to increase to help meet the demand, LinkedIn found.
Project-management training People-management skills training
Training and Development
JOB AND CAREER SATISFACTION
Marketing Pros Are Eager to Stay Ahead of New Tech
The past few years were marked by noticeable changes in the way many people think about, and talk about, their work. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 radically changed the shape of the work day for many people, with very little notice, and the impacts were felt across industries.
Post pandemic, more than half of workers report re-evaluating their relationship to their jobs. Large proportions of workers report re-considering where they live, and a majority of those rethinking the role of work in their lives cited a desire for more time with family and friends as the reason. And while fair overall compensation is the leading reason people report for considering a change in where they work, factors like personal fulfillment and belonging don’t fall far behind. And along with the way people feel about work, the way they do their work has also changed. Even as offices began to reopen, many people chose to continue working from home all or part of the time. More workers feel empowered to take advantage of flex-work options provided by their employers, and while they’re still the minority, more workers are willing to consider a move to contract work over a traditional full-time role. Of our surveyed marketing professionals, a perhaps-surprising proportion are happy with their current roles. Nearly three quarters of respondents report feeling satisfied or very satisfied in their jobs. Less surprising is that 59% of those respondents identify work/life balance as a key element of their job satisfaction. By contrast, only 8% are dissatisfied with their roles and none reported feeling very dissatisfied.
Of our surveyed marketing professionals, a perhaps-surprising proportion are happy with their current roles. Nearly three quarters of respondents report feeling satisfied or very satisfied in their jobs. Less surprising is that 59% of those respondents identify work/life balance as a key element of their job satisfaction. By contrast, only 8% are dissatisfied with their roles and none reported feeling very dissatisfied.
But employers shouldn’t assume the general satisfaction marketers feel with their current positions will prevent them from moving to another role or company. The marketing industry isn’t immune to the Great Resignation that began with the pandemic, which saw record numbers of people quit their jobs – to become freelancers or contractors, to take a new role, to change careers, to go back to school. Perhaps reflecting those few years of shifting employment loyalties, more than half the marketers surveyed report being with their current employer for five years or less. And while all but 11% of marketing professionals feel secure or very secure in their jobs, 40% also report they’re likely or very likely to look for a new one in the coming year.
Job Satisfaction (%)
Elements of Job Satisfaction (%)
Years With Employer (%)
Likelihood of Seeking Other Employment (%)
Job Security
Job and Career Satisfaction
CONCLUSION
Of the many areas industry watchers will follow over the year, the ongoing development and adoption of artificial intelligence is likely to capture a significant chunk of their interest. The marketing and advertising industry is at the forefront for generative AI adoption, at a rate of 37%. But generative AI applications are developing so quickly that it can be challenging to incorporate them into established marketing industry practices and roles. For example, from November 2022 to May 2023, four progressively more advanced generative AI apps were released for use by the general public, each coming just a couple of months after the next.
Over the coming year, along with advances in these existing applications, developments in services like Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), which enhances search results with AI-generated summaries, or the increasing sophistication (and lower costs) of alternate reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) hardware and software – among many other examples – will continue to impact marketers in ways we can’t fully understand yet. Considering the significant growth in AI and automation applications over the past year, and the expected impact of their use cases in marketing and sales, it will be interesting to see how next year’s numbers for the role compare.
62% of marketing leaders say their companies have already invested in AI and related tech.
The State of Generative AI & How It Will Revolutionize Marketing
Potential of Marketing Career (%)
No industry is exempt from the upheaval experienced so far during this decade, but the marketing industry experienced more than its fair share of changes. Along with the economy-wide impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and its long tail, global conflict and upheaval, political changes, and economic challenges, marketers face a particular collection of challenges in 2024.
In many ways, the future of marketing is already here. Developments like improvements in voice-to-speech technology and the dominance of visuals over text – think of Amazon’s Alexa application and TikTok Shops, for example – already allow marketers to reach their audiences in new ways. At the same time, the implementation of search engine optimization practices, and the increasing availability of data and speed of its analysis, are among the developments increasing marketing professionals’ ability to personalize its messages and reach. But as much as the marketing industry has changed in recent years, the people building their careers in it remain excited about its potential – 38% of respondents said the potential of a marketing career is as promising today as it was five years ago, and 37% say it’s even more promising. Despite the challenge of keeping up with a rapidly evolving tech sector, it’s important to to stay abreast of developments considering their likely economic impact, to the tune of billions of dollars annually.
Conclusion
FIND OUT MORE
The increasing adoption by marketers of automation applications is another key area to watch for the industry over the next 12 months. Marketing automation roles made up just a small portion of those identified by our survey respondents in this year’s survey. However, revenue for the global marketing automation industry was expected to hit almost $5.9 billion U.S. in 2023, and 62% of marketing leaders say their companies have already invested in AI and related tech. While some marketers remain hesitant about automation and AI adoption – due to factors like accuracy concerns, inherent bias, or over-dependence – both the data and trends point strongly to these tech advances playing an ever-increasing role in the industry.
Find Out More
AI Business
IoT World Today
55k+
Monthly Unique Users
100k+
Monthly Page Views
15k+
Newsletter Subscribers
60k+
Followers on Social Channels
AI business provides news and analytical insights you can trust. We’re dedicated to offering an objective view of the AI space to enable better strategic decisions. Our editorial content focuses on the practical applications of AI technologies rather than hype, buzzwords and high-level technology updates.
Informing, Educating, And Connecting The Global AI Community
202k+
296k+
61k+
12k+
If you’re interested in associating your company with IoT or getting your brand front of enterprise decision makers and practitioners, we offer a range of partnership opportunities. Showcase your knowledge and expertise through our suite of digital marketing solutions, increase brand awareness with onsite advertising, or work with us to build a multi-faceted campaign that supports your marketing objectives.
Want to Partner With Us?
IoT World Today provides insight, news and analysis on the Internet of Things, featuring the latest stories, case studies and real-life use cases across the ever-evolving world of IoT technologies. From smart cities to flying cars, robotics and everything in between, our mission is to offer a unique insight into the complexities of IoT, its challenges and its opportunities, so that our readers stay ahead of change and feel empowered to make smarter decisions.
Connecting You to the Breakthroughs & Insights from the World of IoT
DISCOVER MORE OPPORTUNITIES
Assess the marketplace, advance your business and amplify your presence in the market using our deep knowledge of tech markets and our actionable insights. The experts at Omdia bring unparalleled, world-class research and consultancy to navigate the now and create the future.
3/3
IoT World Today keeps readers at the forefront of IoT development to help drive business improvements. Our team of seasoned journalists provides daily coverage of the vast amount of news impacting businesses, bolstered by research and commentary from a team of Omdia expert analysts.
2/3
AI Business covers the broad and growing range of business applications of artificial intelligence across industries and the globe. Our team of seasoned journalists provides daily coverage of the vast amount of news impacting businesses, bolstered by research and commentary from a team of Omdia expert analysts.
1/3
Discover Technology that connects the dots
If you’re interested in associating your company with AI or IoT and getting your brand in front of enterprise decision-makers and practitioners, we offer a range of partnership opportunities. Showcase your knowledge and expertise through our suite of digital marketing solutions, increase brand awareness with onsite advertising, or work with us to build a multi-faceted campaign that supports your marketing objectives.
Compensation
Experience and Career Growth
Where Marketers Are
State of Flux
Content
