Marketing is one of the top majors available in colleges and universities today. Though you might think of advertising jobs that require you come up with ad campaigns and write press releases for products, marketing majors can also work in other areas of business. The 10 highest paying jobs in marketing often require some type of advanced degree and years of experience that you can get after you finish a bachelor’s program in marketing or business.
1. Chief Marketing Officer
One of the highest paying jobs in marketing is a job as a chief marketing manager or CMO. A chief marketing officer is an executive within a company that often heads up at least one team, but may also oversee multiple teams or departments. These professionals do market research to find out what customers want and how they feel about products, but they also look at the way customers feel about prices. In addition to running a team, many marketing officers will also head up the creative projects that advertise products to customers and promotional events that teach customers about new products.
2. Chief Marketing Research Officer
Though similar to a CMO, a chief marketing research officer has slightly different job duties and is often responsible for conducting market research. Market research helps a company find out more about the general public and how the public feels about the company as a whole or certain products that it sells. They use that research to do things like change prices, introduce new flavors or colors or adjust their ad campaigns. A chief marketing research officer may work more closely with the accounting or finance department to find ways to run ads and make new products while working within the operating budget.
3. Marketing Director
As a marketing director, you can use your degree to manage the marketing and advertising used by a company. Marketing directors are responsible for the operations of the entire team. They may meet with the CEO and other executives to create a budget for the campaign, then meet with a team to go over the ideas they have and find ways to create that campaign while coming in under budget. The median salary for a marketing director is just under $81,000 a year, but the top 10% of all marketing directors earn $140,000 or more every year, according to PayScale.
4. Global Marketing Manager
Global marketing managers often work with smaller teams and with individual departments instead of with executives and large departments. They are the ones who handle the major marketing done overseas as well as campaigns run in the United States and neighboring foreign countries. They take care of issues relating to the advertising laws in those countries, making sure that the campaigns fit with the ethics and culture of those countries and doing research to identify what people in those areas want. The salary for a global marketing manager can range from $81,000 to $161,000 a year, but the national average among all managers is around $114,400 a year, according to GlassDoor.
5. Demand Generation Director
Demand generation is a type of marketing that requires workers target specific groups or types of people, and a demand generation director is the person responsible for overseeing this type of marketing. Managers can use different methods and techniques such as using search engine optimization on websites, using pay per click ads on other sites and running ads on social media sites. They may also do outbound marketing, which focuses on finding people and companies who may want to buy products and specifically targeting those customers to increase sales.
6. Content Marketing Director
A commercial website is only as strong as the content on its pages, which is why so many site owners hire content marketing directors. You can work for yourself on a freelance or contract basis, or you can work for a company that owns and maintains multiple sites. Content marketing directors do research to keep up with search trends and to identify the key words and phrases that customers search for daily. They hire writers and editors to create content built around those searches. Content marketing directors may also hire other professionals to create videos, photos and even ads that will catch the attention of viewers.
7. Product Marketing Manager
A product manager is responsible for helping a company develop and build a product, including the product itself and the packaging of that product. A product marketing manager then takes that product and handles all the promotions surrounding it. This may include hosting an online contest that gives readers prizes for liking and sharing an image of the product, offering online coupons for those who want to buy the product and holding a launch party before the item arrives in stores. Product marketing managers may also design promotions for use in stores that sell that product.
8. Channel Marketing Manager
Channel marketing managers are the managers who handle the operations in a supply chain or channel. The channel refers to the path that a product follows from the manufacturing facility to the consumer. It may include shipping the product to stores, placing the product on shelves and grabbing the attention of prospective customers. Some channel marketing managers focus more on the wholesale side of production and look for ways to get the price of the product down for wholesale customers who will resell that item.
9. Creative Director
A creative director, also called an art director, is a director who oversees the creative sign of a marketing or advertising plan. They can work on television and radio commercials, magazine and newspaper ads and even online campaigns. In addition to overseeing a team of artists, they must also show ideas to clients and take their feedback into consideration. The median salary for a creative director is $89,760 a year or $43.15 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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10. Marketing Director
If you have strong leadership skills and can handle running a team by yourself, your marketing degree might help you find a position as a marketing director. A marketing director can either handle the marketing and advertising of several products or just one product. They take suggestions from clients and work with a team of artists to come up with campaigns and ads that incorporate those ideas. Marketing directors typically work with marketing managers and report to executives regularly.