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Stress and anxiety are inherent parts of the job selection process. Digital marketing jobs are no different. You want to find the right fit. You want your skill set to be fully utilized. You want to get paid well. There are a ton of factors in play, and you want to consider them all.

Still: spending too much time researching roles can be a little like getting lost in a pile of Amazon reviews. You want so badly to find the right salad bowl, or the best salad bowl, that you sit at your computer for hours. What happens? You walk outside and immediately see a guy with a way cooler salad bowl.

Our purpose in writing this article is two-fold. One: we want to rid you of any buyer’s remorse you might have after settling on a position. Two: we want to make sure you don’t drive yourself crazy researching your next online marketing job. What we’re providing you today is the right information to make a decision. It’s more important that you choose something than choose the right thing, but hey—if this is your first go ‘round in the digital marketing world, why not be a little deliberate? Odds are, you’re going to be here for a while.

Our modus operandi will be the following: provide insight into several digital marketing disciplines, then run through the different roles you’ll encounter in each discipline. We’ll discuss what each role typically pays (per Glassdoor) in the United States, as well as the responsibilities and qualifications each digital marketing job entails. We’ll also provide some sparkling insights from our own team of digital marketing professionals along the way.

You can use this guide as a career roadmap as you rise through the ranks. Let’s get into it!

And remember…

It’s only cool because it’s not yours.

But first…

A Word About Entry-Level Marketing Jobs

Another false narrative those looking for entry-level marketing jobs tell themselves: “I need a job to get experience, but I need experience to get a job.” Not true at all. Not only are there plenty of entry-level marketing jobs that don’t require experience, and will train on the job, but there are also tons of marketing internships. Marketing interns can be kind of like indentured servants; but they make consistent money, learn the tricks of the trade, and get on the inside track at their companies.

Right. Now let’s get into some digital marketing jobs.

Product Marketing Jobs

What is product marketing?

Product marketing fits into the overlap between marketing, product, and sales. Product marketers handle to-market positioning and messaging for new products and new product features. As such, they focus their efforts on both potential customers (prospects and leads) and existing customers. It’s imperative that customers know how to use products, and know about new features. It’s also imperative that sales teams know how to talk about the products they’re selling. Product marketers make sure both of these operations run smoothly, and are consistent with one another.

Hear it from the expert

“Product marketing is the ultimate cross-functional marketing position. We own the positioning, messaging, and go-to-market strategy for our product. We also work with Sales and Customer Success to drive in-market demand and adoption. There is never a lonely or dull moment!”

– Heather Widman, Director of Product Marketing at WordStream

Product Marketing Specialist

Average base pay: $69,500

Experience: 2-5+ years

Skills: Strong verbal and written communication; detail-oriented; analytical; able to multi-task

Responsibilities:

• Conduct competitor research, including seeking and analyzing competitor marketing and sales materials

• Utilize strong writing skills to create blog posts, white papers, webinars, case studies, and other product marketing collateral

• Seek customer insights and stories to develop, implement, and manage testimonial and referral programs

• Work with marketing, tech, and sales to help write and present product roadmaps

• Glean applicable insights from online and customer data

Product Marketing Manager

Average base pay: $113,200

Experience: 3-5+ years

Skills: Excellent verbal and written communication; excellent organizational and program management skills; able to consistently meet deadlines.

Responsibilities:

• Lead development of communication tools and collateral to promote new features, functionality, and services to both prospects and existing customers
• Develop and maintain ongoing knowledge and mastery of buyer/customer profiles
• Organize and host client meetings and forums to evangelize new products and gather feedback
• Provide the sales and marketing teams with the strategic messaging necessary to create proposal templates, presentations, data sheets, website content, pitches, and other collateral

Director of Product Marketing

Average base pay: $167,000

Experience: 7-10+ years

Skills: Exceptional verbal & written communication; proven ability to handle multiple projects/multiple stakeholders; proven ability to develop operational KPIs and utilize data; strong leader that flourishes under pressure

Responsibilities:

• Communicate performance metrics to key executive stakeholders throughout the organization
• Partner with engineering leadership to find a balance between to-market speed and value
• Act as an internal and external expert in product knowledge and implementation
• Deliver an ongoing stream of product innovations that improve KPIs related to the scale, scope, frequency, and reliability of revenue to drive major business decisions

Content Marketing Jobs

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is all about creating and distributing valuable, informative, and relevant content to a clearly defined audience, and encouraging members of that audience to interact with your brand meaningfully—whether that’s in the form of a site visit, a sale, or a content download. Marketing content most commonly manifests itself in blog posts (long-form content); but writing newsletters, emails, white papers, landing pages, product descriptions—these are all also forms of content marketing

Content Marketing Specialist

Average base pay: $50,400

Experience: 1-3+ years

Skills: Strong writing and grammatical skills; can adopt different styles/tones; keen eye for line edits; ability to meet deadlines; familiar with SEO best practices

Responsibilities:

• Conceptualize, pitch, research, and write search-friendly blog content that provides value to prospects and readers
• Write landing pages, product pages, white papers, newsletters, social media campaigns, and other content-related collateral
• Copyedit a variety of content for print and digital
• Have a general understanding of SEO tactics—including link building, site structure, image optimization, keyword-centric copywriting, and keyword research

Content Marketing Manager

Average base pay: $66,100

Experience: 3-7+ years

Skills: Excellent writing and grammatical skills; thorough understanding of SEO best practices; ability to analyze traffic and conversion data; ability to coordinate and manage an in-house/freelance team of writers; ability to generate blog topics

Responsibilities:

• Use keyword research to generate blog topics aimed at converting specific business goals
• Manage a team of in-house/freelance writers. Implement and oversee a content calendar/schedule
• Deliver content that supports inbound marketing efforts, demand generation, sales enablement, and other initiatives
• Collaborate with designers, product marketers, and sales to plan the production of videos, case studies, website copy, and other digital and print marketing collateral

Social Media Marketing Jobs

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is all about audience building. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram allow brands to not only expand their reach, but build social communities. Certain platforms are better for certain marketing tasks. For example, fashion brands looking to leverage social influencers might find the most success on Instagram; while a B2B SaaS company looking to get their blog posts more exposure might find the most success on Twitter. But the premise remains the same: social media allows marketers to reach and communicate with prospects more rapidly, and on a larger scale.

Social Media Coordinator/Specialist

Average base pay: $49,400

Experience: 1-3+ years

Skills: Solid writing and communication skills; understanding of social media best practices; familiarity with social media management tools; comfortable at events; comfortable with the major social platforms

Responsibilities:

• Building and maintaining an editorial calendar for all relevant social channels
• Engaging with audience members on a daily basis by communicating with followers and responding to comments and posts
• Maintaining a consistent brand voice and tone
• Monitoring and reporting on paid and organic social campaigns
• Working with the content team on strategic planning and blog promotion

Social Media Manager

Average base pay: $54,200

Experience: 3-5+ years

Skills: Knowledge of graphic design/facility with Adobe products; knowledge of SEO basics; excellent project management skills; expertise in paid and organic social promotion; expertise in contests, reporting, community management, influencers, and events

Responsibilities:

• Develop comprehensive social strategies to increase traffic to digital content
• Create a detailed roadmap of social campaigns/tactics and execute campaigns
• Collaborate with Content, Product, and Sales to determine business-prudent social messaging
• Lead the development of standards, policies, and rules of engagement for social media
• Keep up with and implement new industry trends and technologies

Social Media Influencer

Average base pay: $100-$800+ per post

Qualifications: 1k-100k+ followers

Skills: Ability to accrue a social media following

Responsibilities:

• Develop comprehensive social strategies to increase traffic to digital content
• Create a detailed roadmap of social campaigns/tactics and execute campaigns
• Collaborate with Content, Product, and Sales to determine business-prudent social messaging
• Accrue, manage, and maintain a healthy social following on a specific platform

Design Jobs

What is Design?

“Design” encapsulates several different marketing disciplines—graphic design, visual design, user interface design, user experience design, web design, etc. Graphic design, though, usually involves print collateral, like magazines and newsletters. When you hear the term “design” in digital marketing, the work is most likely being done by one of the following: a visual designer, a user experience (UX) designer, or a user interface (UI) designer. Employees with these titles concern themselves with the way users see and interact with their websites—from branding, to navigation.

Visual Designer

Average base pay: $74,100

Experience: 1-5+ years

Skills: Fluency with Adobe products; experience with responsive design methods and development; basic proficiency with web development tools and languages; a portfolio which showcases an ability for provocative brand storytelling

Responsibilities:

• Create intuitive experiences for brands across a range of consumer touchpoints
• Take projects from research and sketches to high fidelity visual designs and pixel-perfect deliverables
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand business objectives/issues; provide creative solutions
• Design digital materials including presentations, reports, landing pages, emails, banners, ad creative, etc.

UX/UI Designer

Average base pay: $97,500

Experience: 3-5+ years

Skills: Proficient in Adobe products; proficient with web development tools and languages; Solid grasp of user-centered design and usability testing methodologies

Responsibilities:

• Build, develop, and maintain wireframes and other UX/UI artifacts
• Work closely with users, product management, marketing, and engineering to make sure the best possible user experience is delivered
• Help define the user interaction model and user interface for new and existing products
• Test the usability of new and existing product designs and make pragmatic proposals for improvements

Creative Director

Average base pay: $133,800

Experience: 7-10+ years

Skills: Strong, flexible, strategic thinker with vision; a leader with great communication/presentation skills; comprehensive portfolio of work; demonstrated experience leading, building, and growing teams; ability to analyze complex issues and develop relevant, realistic plans

Responsibilities:

• Lead the design, execution, and interpretation of market research studies
• Develop innovative ideas for branding, campaigns, and marketing collateral
• Manage and lead a creative team with confidence and according to individual skill sets
• Build and maintain strong relationships with creative partners and vendors

SEO Jobs

Hear it from the expert

“SEO is the single most effective lever we’ve found for growing traffic and brand awareness—a combination of user-focused search engine optimization and intent-driven content marketing ensure that new people are discovering our business all the time, often exactly when they have the kinds of marketing challenges that we’re positioned to help them with! Best of all, organic traffic is highly sustainable over time, making it one of the most cost-effective marketing channels.”

– Elisa Gabbert, Sr. SEO & Content Marketing Manager

SEO Specialist

Average base pay: $50,500

Experience: 1-3+ years

Skills: Experience with SEO tools like SEMrush, Screaming Frog, Search Console; experience with Google Analytics; some working knowledge of HTML/CSS; strong analytical skills; strong writing skills

Responsibilities:

• Support development and content teams on optimization projects to improve user engagement
• Develop and maintain framework for keyword research
• Develop and maintain link building strategies
• Report on site and blog traffic

SEO Manager

Average base pay: $68,500

Experience: 5+ years

Skills: Demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally to influence others collaboratively; strong communication and organizational skills; strong knowledge of analytics platforms like Google Analytics; demonstrated experience with keyword/data mining tools and competitive analysis; proven track-record of increasing traffic, and improving brand and site visibility

Responsibilities:

• Work with content team to ensure on-page, off-page, and technical SEO best practices are being implemented
• Assist with monitoring and developing social media content
• Work with developers on site architecture and design
• Execute tests, collect and analyze data and results, and identify SEO trends and insights

Web Development Jobs

What is Web Development?

Trying to visualize the difference between a website designer and a website developer? Think of a house. A designer takes care of the interior decorating—the furniture, the drapes, the color scheme etc. A developer takes care of the infrastructure—the foundation, the electricity, the plumbing. Web developers are both architects and contractors. Web development jobs are most commonly divided into three areas of specialty: front end developers (who work on the part of the website with which users interact), back end developers (who work on the technology that powers the user-facing part of the website), and full stack developers (generalists proficient in both disciplines).

Front End Web Developer

Average base pay: $88,700

Experience: 3-5+ years

Skills: Fluency in HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript; ability to write clean, performant code; experience with mobile/responsive design; familiar with frameworks like Bootstrap, Foundation, Backbone, AngularJS, and EmberJS; familiar with libraries like jQuery and LESS

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with designers or user experience analysts to bring wireframes from development to delivery
• Identify specific issues in user experience and provide codified solutions
• Make informed recommendations on usage of appropriate libraries
• Work with product, content, and engineering teams to facilitate QA testing

Back End Web Developer

Average base pay: $88,500

Experience: 3-5+ years

Skills: Fluency in server-side languages like PHP, Ruby, Python, Java, and .Net; fluency in data tools like MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server; experience with PHP frameworks like Zend, Symfony, and CakePHP; experience with version control software like SVN, CVS, or Git; experience with Linux as a development and deployment system

Responsibilities:

• Create or contribute to web applications with clean, portable, well-documented code
• Architect technology according to the needs of internal business stakeholders
• Work closely with the product management team in prototyping and designing new features and solutions
• Design and develop scalable software and product development solutions

Marketing Analytics Jobs

What is Marketing Analytics?

Marketing analytics is the practice of measuring, managing, and analyzing marketing performance to maximize its effectiveness and optimize return on investment (ROI). Marketing analysts sift through massive amounts of data in order to glean insights that will allow for more efficient customer and prospect marketing. Marketing teams leverage these insights to launch and optimize products, write conversion-friendly content, and develop paid remarketing strategies.

Hear it From the Expert

“Marketing analytics is essential to making business-intelligent decisions. At WordStream, we use analytics to produce real-time feedback, find trends, and visualize data relationships. We leverage this information to determine what’s working, what can be improved, and to create meaningful content for our readers.”

– Patrick Henry Carrera, Marketing Analyst at WordStream

Marketing Analyst

Average base pay: $62,800

Experience: 2-4+ years

Skills: Strong quantitative and communications skills; strong attention to detail; experience with statistical and website analytics tools; experience with data visualization software

Responsibilities:

• Design, conduct and interpret results of in-market tests
• Generate data tracking strategies and implementation parameters
• Organize and structure performance-related data from a variety of sources (paid media, social platforms, web analytics solutions, etc.)
• Work cross-functionally to identify marketing optimization opportunities, including insightful recommendations to improve performance

ECommerce Jobs

ECommerce refers, very generally speaking, to any business transaction conducted online. Most commonly, though, eCommerce takes the form of online shopping, in which goods are bought or sold over the internet. ECommerce has exploded over the last several years for a number of reasons—reduced costs, ease of access, inventory management, so forth. By 2020, global eCommerce sales are estimated to reach $4.058 trillion. From a marketing standpoint, eCommerce specialists are responsible for determining the format and features of websites in order to maximize purchasing clarity and ease of navigation for customers.

ECommerce Manager

Average base pay: $75,300

Experience: 3-5+ years

Skills: Organized, analytical person with strong technical skills; strong strategic planning experience; strong market knowledge (competitors, pricing, products, trends)

Responsibilities:

• Manage existing team and implement staff growth when necessary
• IPlan for e-marketing expenditures and develop a financial plan that will maximize allotted resources
• Evaluate KPIs of eCommerce business channels. Monitor trends and performance, and identify areas of opportunity
• Identify, negotiate and manage project-related contractors and vendors as necessary

ECommerce Director

Average base pay: $112,300

Experience: 7+ years

Skills: Excellent written and verbal communication; highly detail-oriented and able to efficiently multi-task; proven track record of hiring and developing high-performing teams; demonstrated ability to collaborate, lead, and influence cross-functional teams

Responsibilities:

• Lead the development and execution of eCommerce strategy and implementation—including lead generation, digital customer engagement, and digital experience optimization
• Push the organization to constantly evaluate issues from the consumer’s point of view
• Identify and test new sales and marketing initiatives to increase online conversions
• Analyze and communicate relevant eCommerce data to executive leadership and cross-functional partners

Demand Generation/Customer Acquisition Jobs

What is Demand Generation?

Demand generation is the process of driving interest in your business’s products or services. Today, demand gen typically takes the form of inbound marketing—paid and organic marketing strategies (social media, blogs, ebooks, what have you) which drive sales-qualified leads.

Hear it from the expert

“Demand Generation, Growth Hacking, Customer Acquisition—no matter what you call it, we’re the leading edge of the business, turning creative assets and ad copy into sales opportunities. Our work can include anything from business forecasting to troubleshooting technical systems to analyzing data in order to develop new ways to reach future customers. We’re marketing scientists: testing, analyzing, innovating.”

– Aaron Doherty, Director of Lead Acquisition at WordStream

Digital Marketing Specialist

Average base pay: $67,200

Experience: 2-3+ years

Skills: Experience with Google Ads, Facebook Ad Manager, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console and/or Bing Ads; knowledge of SEO best practices; solid analytical skills; experience with marketing automation tools like Marketo and Salesforce

Responsibilities:

• Closely monitor spend to ensure accounts are pacing properly based on predetermined budgets and flighting
• Assist in the execution of digital programs including paid social media, email marketing, display, and search marketing
• Perform competitive analysis, research new opportunities, and use data to provide strategic recommendations that support client growth
• Monitor industry trends and apply best practices across accounts

Acquisition Marketing Manager

Average base pay: $80,700

Experience: 5+ years

Skills: Strong facility with Google Ads, Facebook Ad Manager, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console and/or Bing Ads; SEM expertise; Strong analytical skills with an ability to learn and understand creative development; Strong familiarity with performance-based concepts like CPA and ROI

Responsibilities:

• Plan and successfully manage channel budgets
• Develop weekly, monthly, and/or daily reporting on performance by channel
• Analyze campaign performance data to drive continuous improvement and hypothesis-led testing of new concepts
• Lead testing for ad creative, landing pages and other points of the purchasing funnel

Director of Acquisition Marketing/Demand Generation

Average base pay: $116,000

Experience: 8+ years

Skills: Extensive experience working with web analytics, A/B testing tools, campaign management platforms, 3rd party ad servers, tag management solutions, and DSPs; expertise in Google Ads, Facebook Ad Manager, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console and/or Bing Ads; excellent communication skills; ability to use data and informed reasoning to persuade others and influence outcomes

Responsibilities:

• Manage and mentor a team of acquisition marketing specialists
• Measure and report appropriate KPIs and regularly share results and insights with executives
• Lead forecasting and budget management for all acquisition marketing channels
• Continually evaluate, recommend, and test full spectrum of performance media channels, including emerging platforms

Picking the Right Role for You

Phew! As you can see, if you’re thinking about embarking on a digital marketing career, there are a ton of jobs from which to choose. The good news? Though it may not feel like it, there’s very little danger of being shoehorned. You’ll notice by some of the above descriptions that there is plenty of overlap across marketing disciplines; and that the skills you’ll need for one job may very translate to another, should you want to pivot.

Happy hunting!

Have any jobs you’d like to see added to the list? Have a question or comment about one of the jobs already listed? Tweet us @WordStream!

As the industry changes, so does the make-up of each company’s marketing team, and you might be uncertain which direction you want to go. To help you decide what type of role you’re best suited for, I’ve outlined nine common positions within marketing, what folks in those positions do, and what you can do if you want to start down that path. I’ve worked in a few different kinds of marketing myself, including in social media and content marketing, and turned to other marketers, including some of my former colleagues at Contently, to learn more about their roles.

Keep an open mind as you decide which area of expertise you’d like to pursue, as many overlap with several others and draw on similar skills and qualities.

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1. Social Media Marketing

When a brand makes an off-color joke on a social media platform, it’s common for people watching to attribute this misstep to “the intern running the Twitter account.” But no responsible company would hand over the keys to a brand’s Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram feeds to an inexperienced intern. In fact, the larger the brand, the larger its social media team likely is, with more senior-level marketers overseeing its social strategy.

I’ve worked in social media strategy for brands including Walmart, Amazon Prime Video, and Lionsgate Films, and I’ve learned from each experience that social media marketers are often expected to think of themselves as editorial professionals first, brand strategists second. Even if a tweet is on brand, it’s useless to everyone if it’s written in a boring (or worse, offensive!) way.

A social media marketer posts content informed by a brand’s style guide, but it’s important to note that they aren’t simply writing copy all day. They’re engaging with a brand’s audience in real time, preparing analysis of engagement data, planning future campaigns and approaches based on that analysis, and collaborating with other marketers to determine how a social strategy can support a brand’s other work. And they’ll often have ambitious KPIs (key performance indicators) to reach for.

If you’re interested in working as a social media marketer, the first thing you can do is develop a robust professional online presence for yourself. You can also try to work on a project basis for brands or small businesses and build a portfolio of social copy and multimedia elements. If that’s not an option, you can always develop a sample social media strategy for a brand you admire, sort of like a prospective TV writer putting together a spec script.

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2. Email Marketing

Because of social media algorithms, only a small portion of an account’s audience will see their social media content. So companies look for additional ways to reach the majority of their target audience. Email is still a precious commodity in the marketing industry because a newsletter’s subscriber base opts in to a brand’s messaging. It’s a naturally more captive and curious audience, and email marketers who know how to leverage the opportunity to connect with users in their inboxes can do very well for themselves.

To work in email marketing is to toe the line between data analysis and editorial strategy. You’re often curating blog posts and links to include in newsletters or promotions for subscribers; using an email service provider to build and launch campaigns; keeping an eye on open rates, click through rates, and subscriber numbers; and running A/B tests and other experiments to try to boost performance.

If you’re interested in email marketing, independent email publications like TheSkimm are great examples to study, but you can also subscribe to newsletters from publications, like this one from The New York Times Cooking, and brands, like this one from General Electric.

You can also get some experience by starting your own personal newsletter. Platforms like Substack and Mailchimp have taken off with writers, almost as if the email newsletter is on its way to becoming the new blog. You can start a regular correspondence with subscribers for free, learning the ropes on each platform as you go. This way, when you apply to an email marketing job, you’ll already have a portfolio of work.

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3. Brand Management

A brand manager oversees every aspect of communication, both internal and external, and brings a company or product line’s brand persona to life. A brand persona is a collection of messaging and customer experiences, and it carries a company’s narrative (the sort of thing you saw on the “About” page 10 years ago) across all platforms. “You can think of brand management as the complete manifestation of the company in the marketplace,” says Henry Bruce, former VP of Marketing at Contently. “It has one voice, tone, look, and feel.” A brand manager is responsible for maintaining all those aspects of a brand persona at once.

In larger companies, a brand manager will probably work on an individual brand or product line within the organization—like this brand manager at Staples who works specifically on the company’s TRU RED line—but the same ideas apply.

Working in brand management is partly a creative job, but it’s also part project management. Adrienne Todd, communication manager at Celonis, a process mining company, says brand management requires organizational skills and expertise in motivating and incentivizing your coworkers in different departments. “It’s a fact of marketing that no one marketer can (or should) do something entirely on their own,” she explains. “You have to coordinate with designers, copywriters, digital marketing, marketing operations, and more, and that coordination doesn’t happen on its own, nor does it come naturally to people.”

Breaking into brand management is near impossible without any marketing experience, but if you’re already a marketer looking to move up, volunteer for corporate strategy projects at your office. When you’re interviewing for a brand manager position, you’ll want to be able to point to multiple scenarios in which you put out a fire for a company, reworked a brand’s messaging to appease a specific audience, or developed a project with multiple team members.

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4. Content Marketing and Copywriting

Brands are beginning to create content the way publishers or media companies would, and the writers and designers they hire to create all this content are called content marketers. Simple enough, right?

Jordan Teicher, a content marketer and the editor-in-chief at Contently, says the ability to tell a story is paramount to the job. “Most [consumers] hate the hard sell,” he explains. “Narrative entertains and challenges consumers in a creative way.” In recent years, marketers who write blog posts, internal documents, e-books, Powerpoint decks, op-eds, speeches, and more have begun to centralize their efforts around the concept of storytelling.

If you’re a marketer and skilled writer, you may still need an education in branded storytelling before your content marketing career takes off. And that’s perfectly normal. “Marketers can sharpen their skills by reading books about the mechanics of storytelling. Telling a story may seem intuitive, but when your job is ultimately to sell something, it’s easy to forget” that the story must come first, Teicher says. “So spend time studying the elements of a powerful narrative. Then, when you’re watching TV or listening to your go-to podcast, step back and analyze what the story is trying to accomplish. After some practice, you’ll start to do the same with your own work.”

To get into content marketing, all you really have to do is write. A lot. You need to prove to hiring managers that you are passionate about the written word, which means you’ll need to flex your muscles writing social media copy, video scripts, blog entries, investigative articles, zines, brochures, flyers, or other materials. A marketing degree can look appropriate if you’re applying to a content marketing job, but believe it or not, you’ll be even more attractive as a candidate with a literature or creative writing degree. After all, you need to know a good story.

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5. Product Marketing

Product marketers often act as an important liaison between the marketing team and colleagues in product management, engineering, sales, account management, customer service, and more. They spend a lot of time learning about their target audience, understanding what they want and need, and “translating” information about customer experience to those tasked with creating and promoting a company’s offerings.

This set of responsibilities means product marketers ought to have a high comfort level for multitasking and collaborating with different kinds of people. They’re the professionals on our list who most desperately need to develop a rapport with other teams.

As Bruce puts it, “product marketing increases the effectiveness of a company’s sales team to convert interested audience members into customers. Responsibilities include creating and maintaining sales playbooks and tools, sales collateral, and presentations; [running] sales trainings; executing all product launches; [and] conducting competitive/market intelligence and win/loss analysis.”

If you’re interested in product marketing, study the corporate success stories of brands that have rallied behind a single eye-catching product: the Apples, Nikes, and Glossiers of the world. Read about how products are created and promoted. Talk to product marketers at your own company or find folks to reach out to through your network. Make sure you’re keeping your writing skills sharp. And if you can’t find preliminary experience in developing product marketing work for brands, create your own materials on spec.

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6. Marketing Analysis and Growth Marketing

It’s difficult to have a conversation with a modern marketer without touching on data. While a marketer in any area on our list will need some familiarity with number crunching in order to get ahead, analysts live or die by a company’s data. A marketing analyst or growth marketer specializes in distilling and studying a company’s data and presenting their findings internally to inform a company’s marketing strategy.

Let’s say, for example, that you work at Walmart and your team has been tasked with launching a new blog for customers. As an analyst, you might dig into anonymous data gathered by the brand’s web team, discover that most people reading about Walmart products are women between 30 and 50, and notice that most users tend to read during the day. You might conclude that Walmart’s new blog should be aimed, in part, at stay-at-home moms, in which case you’d present your findings to the team and get them excited about this new target demographic.

“The person who controls the numbers controls the narrative,” says John Fernandez, senior vice president of marketing at Glia and a data-driven marketing analyst. “As marketers we’re natural storytellers, so a marketer armed with data is pretty unassailable at the executive and board level.” If you’re going to make a compelling case for anything, you’re going to need to be comfortable with numbers.

Once you’re entrenched in the use of data and narrative, you can specialize even further by focusing on growth marketing. That’s simply an area of marketing analysis that rapidly experiments for growth—in terms of users, customers, and/or revenue—and makes recommendations to a company’s internal team based on the results of these agile investigations.

For example, if your boss tasks you, the growth marketer, with improving a company’s opportunity win rate (how many people actually decide to buy out of the total pool of prospective customers), you’ll take a look at a lot of different things to determine where potential customers are wandering off. Is the company’s purchase process logical? You might design an experiment to shift the order of fields to see if it encourages more prospective customers to complete their transaction. Are the brand’s promotional emails spurring purchases? You might work with an email marketer to test different messages, send times, and more, and analyze the results to see which approach is most effective.

If you’re hoping to land an entry-level job in growth marketing or marketing analysis, you might have a degree or coursework in statistics, business, marketing, or other quantitative and technical areas. And you should come to an interview prepared to show off both your quantitative and qualitative skills. You should have examples of brand messaging you tailored to a specific audience, but as your math teacher always told you, show your work. You’ll need to prove that you can take a certain kind of information like user data, synthesize it with your own ideas, and shape a promotional strategy around those findings. To demonstrate those skills, even if you haven’t used them in a past job, conduct a survey and visualize the data in an interesting way or design your own experiments and write about them on a personal blog.

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7. PR/Communications

A marketer focusing on public relations or corporate communications will, like many of the other roles on this list, work closely with social media marketers, content marketers, and event marketers. PR reps are often tasked with promoting the content a company’s marketers create as well as the brand and company as a whole, and they’re often expected to enter a role with a robust professional network in order to do their job effectively.

As a comms professional, you’ll likely draft a lot of press releases and you’ll need to foster relationships with industry journalists who might find your company’s updates newsworthy. Working in PR, you’ll be almost constantly communicating on the phone or at corporate events with potential stakeholders, journalists, guest speakers, and comms professionals. You’ll also need to be able to downplay certain aspects of your company’s history while getting people excited about others. If you’ve got the writing chops, you might even ghostwrite op-eds for your company’s executives and try to place them in notable publications.

To land a job in PR, develop a portfolio of work by doing some promotional work on a small scale (for a friend’s side hustle, for example, or a local political campaign), and be sure to show the breadth and depth of your abilities. Create promotional copy, leverage your network in interesting ways to garner publicity, and test out your speechwriting skills.

Find PR and Communications Jobs

8. Event Marketing

The focus of an event marketer depends a lot on a company’s overall goal. If you’re specializing in event marketing, you may find yourself ideating viral “experiential” marketing stunts. These are the sort of Instagram-friendly pop-ups you’ll see in cities around the country. When you think of public stunts, mascot characters, pop-up shops, scavenger hunts, and Red Bull’s Flugtag competition, well, that’s all event marketing.

However, if your company sells products to other companies, as opposed to consumers, you may find yourself designing booths for corporate trade-shows, scanning attendee badges and following up on possible leads, and working with handouts, one-sheets, corporate swag, and business cards.

This role requires excellent interpersonal skills. If you’re an event marketer, you may also spend many of your working hours on the road, whether you’re launching a company’s presence at a trade show or meeting with clients alongside your company’s customer service reps. That means you’ll need resilience, a knack for organization, and a thirst for collaborating with different kinds of professionals.

To land an entry-level job in event marketing, volunteer to help plan any kind of social event, even if it’s just a series of movie nights for a student organization on your college campus or for a networking group in your city or town. As long as you’ve got promotions, social media campaigns, and communications with a team, that counts as fodder for your portfolio! You’ll also want to stress your ability to stay calm under pressure, maintain conversation with strangers, and pitch in wherever you’re needed.

Find Event Marketing Jobs

9. SEO/SEM and E-commerce

Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are based on the idea that most potential consumers Google their questions before making a purchase. SEO is the practice of tailoring a company’s website and marketing content to search engine requirements, and SEM drills down on that idea even further, targeting potential customers who use search engines through paid advertising.

Search is a really lucrative and exciting area of work, as search engine algorithms change so swiftly that your day-to-day life as an SEO or SEM professional will likely change a lot. After all, marketers who specialize in SEO are perpetually trying to match a company’s online strategy to a series of algorithms that Google and other companies can adjust at any moment. It’s a bit like chasing a dragon, which means getting a nice search hit can feel addicting.

You can also choose to specialize in e-commerce as a marketer, which is a combination of search engine marketing, content marketing, and product marketing. E-commerce professionals oversee all monetary transactions that happen online between a company and its customer base, from web stores to paid memberships. Essentially, you’ll want to draw folks in with curated product listicles and explainers and provide links to purchase the products you’re describing in your copy. Your company will likely earn affiliate money when readers click on these links.

Although marketers who specialize in SEO are definitely in demand, a familiarity with search engine tactics is pretty much mandatory for any communications professional at this point. Luckily for marketers, the best education in SEO and SEM is available for free, as Google’s training programs have been made instantly accessible to anyone who wants them. Take your time; Google’s videos and tutorials are a little dry, but the program’s certificate of completion makes for a great resume booster.

If you find yourself fascinated by search, you’ll be able to build on your initial knowledge and potentially transition into an SEO or SEM speciality, especially if you commit to reading publications like Hubspot Academy and the SEMRush blog. Another great way to hone and demonstrate your growing skill set is to create a personal website for yourself and practice the key points of an SEO strategy there. You’ll be able to show a hiring manager how you changed your website to increase traffic.

Find SEO, SEM, and E-commerce Jobs

No matter which marketing focus you’re drawn to, you’ll find that those hiring for roles want candidates with strong interpersonal skills, excellent verbal and written communications skills, and a varying degree of experience working with data. The marketing industry is hungry for professionals who love learning new skills, using data to inform their work, and collaborating with colleagues in other departments.

As you figure out which route you’d like to take, you can ask your colleagues, friends, second-degree connections, and even folks you don’t know at all to go for coffee or meet for an informational interview and tell you about what they do. You might just discover there’s a marketing role you didn’t know much about that you’d be excited to pursue down the line!

Raise your hand if you’ve ever read an advertisement and have then felt compelled to buy what that advertisement was selling? 

You can put your hand down now. No need to freak out your coworkers. 

Marketers and advertisers have been harnessing the power of words to sell you things like car insurance, sugary cereal, lambskin condoms and Air Jordans for centuries. 

This is an art and a science called copywriting, which basically means to sell products and services through powerful marketing words. 

While traditionally, copywriting has been used in things like newspapers, magazine advertisements, billboards and direct sales letters… today copywriting has crept its way into every nook and cranny of the digital world. It’s on websites. It’s in emails. It’s on landing pages. It’s in podcasts. It’s everywhere. 

Now, while in this article I can’t teach you how to become a killer copywriter (I can only do that if you buy my copywriting guide)… I can give you a few words to think about when writing your next product description, headline, slogan or what have you.

While you might be skeptical, the words we use matter… a lot.

In an article I published last week, I brought up a number of online brands that spend a considerable amount of time and energy on writing their blog headlines. Why? Because in some cases they have seen a 500% improvement in share-ability. 

I have even noticed this myself when writing anything from articles to my Sticky Notes emails. For example, to get you to click this post, I used the word “powerful”… which is actually somewhere on our list today. 

Anyways, below, you will find 100 of the most powerful marketing words –– each of which has been placed into various categories. The words that have an “*” next to them are what the late David Ogilvy considered to be the most persuasive words in advertising. 

Never heard of this Ogilvy character? He is widely considered to be the greatest advertiser of all time. So, while I believe all these marketing words are powerful, pay extra attention to Ogilvy’s.

Let’s begin. 

Powerful marketing words that make a promise. 

Promising something to your prospective customer sells. One way to get your readers to turn into buyers is to make them a promise that’s worth buying. Below you will find a handful of powerful marketing words that can help you make this promise. 

1. Guarantee

2. Sale

3. Unconditional 

4. Promise

5. Risk-free

6. Pledge

Powerful marketing words that create a sense of urgency.

In marketing and advertising, time is your friend. Use it. If your customer only has 3-weeks to accept your offer, remind them that time is running out. 

7. Now *

8. Expires

9. Quick *

10. Instantaneously

11. Immediately 

12. Soon

13. Hurry *

14. Instantly 

15. Suddenly *

16. Going-fast

17. Minute

18. Second

19. Last

Powerful marketing words that help your customers feel at ease. 

If you’re jumping off the high-dive at the public pool, you like to know how deep it is. 12 feet makes you feel more at ease than say 3 feet. Your customer is trading her hard-earned money for your product or service, this can be as scary as jumping off the high-dive –– make sure she is at ease. Here are a few powerful marketing words that can help. 

20. Bargain *

21. Easy *

22. Best-seller

23. Satisfaction

24. Simple

25. Smooth

26. Painless

27. Light

28. no-fuss

29. Cinch

30. Straight-forward

31. Success

32. Ironclad

33. Safe

34. money-back

35. Protected

36. Privacy

37. Tested

Powerful marketing words that give your product a premium feel.

If you’re buying bottled water, you probably don’t give a rip whether or not it is premium –– unless you’re a big fan of Fiji. Now… cars, houses, denim jeans, designer kicks and sunglasses are different. If you’re selling a luxury versus a commodity, make your customer aware of the luxury they’re buying by utilizing these powerful marketing words. 

38. State-of-the-art

39. Invite-only

40. Fresh

41. Hand-crafted

42. Small-batches

43. Pristine

44. Spick-and-span

45. Brand-new

46. Premium

47. luxurious 

48. Wealthy

Powerful marketing words that create a feeling of exclusivity. 

Exclusivity is simple. If you and I were to walk into a gas station to buy a candy bar and the clerk were to say –– you can have any candy bar in this place but this particular one isn’t for sale –– you and I would look twice at the candy bar that wasn’t for sale. People want what they can’t have and they want what other people can’t have –– this is called exclusivity. The words we use can help high-quality products and services be more highly sought-after than others.

49. Secret

50. Limited

51. Rare

52. Few

53. Edition

54. Unique

55. Exotic 

56. Select

57. Authentic

58. Model

Powerful marketing words that inspire or motivate. 

The late Zig Ziglar was famous for saying, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing — that’s why we recommend it daily.” You, myself and our customers don’t wake up motivated or inspired –– the feeling comes and goes. Our job as marketers and advertisers is to help our customers get inspired and motivated to buy whatever we’re selling. This doesn’t magically happen. Igniting the feeling requires well-placed powerful marketing words that start a fire. 

59. Revolutionary *

60. Extraordinary

61. Amazing *

62. Remarkable *

63. Startling *

64. Sensational *

65. Magic *

66. Miracle *

67. You

68. Improvement *

69. Results

Powerful marketing words that tickle your customer’s curiosity. 

Today, selling is about getting your prospect to stop scrolling. When writing copy, this needs to be in the back of your mind at all times –– how can I get Bob to stop scrolling at 100 mph? The powerful marketing words you’ll find below can help you freeze your customer’s thumbs. 

70. Announcing *

71. Start

72. Stop

73. Running

74. Deal

75. Introducing *

76. Offer *

77. Compare *

78. Challenge *

79. Wanted *

80. Discover

81. Release

82. Soon

Powerful marketing words that are lesser-known and perhaps a bit eccentric (a.k.a my personal favorites).

I tend to get a little bit flashy when it comes to writing copy. This can be either a strength or a weakness depending on the circumstance. While I think all marketers and advertisers should write with the goal to sell simply and powerfully… sometimes you just have to spice things up. Here are a few of my personal favorites when it comes to powerful marketing terminology. 

83. Dazzling

84. Ravishing

85. Brilliant

86. Honeyed

87. Compelling

88. Ultra

89. Plethora

90. Unicorn

91. Zesty

92. Cosmic 

93. Supernova

94. Killjoy

95. Bulletproof

96. Staggering

97. Titanic

98. God-speed

99. Smashing

100. Triumph

Hot damn. That was fun. Thanks for reading and good luck copy-slinging. Also, if you wanna read more… subscribe to my email list here. 

By Cole Schafer. 

You gotta check this out — Sticky Notes is my email list reserved strictly for entrepreneurs and creatives looking to sell like a Florida Snow Cone Vendor on the hottest day of the year.