High-Paying Marketing Jobs

The top high-paying jobs in marketing pay a tremendous amount of money, especially if you have international experience tying audience, culture and media strategies together or know your way around the newest channels, according to data from Salary.com.

Marketing jobs have been tough to come by over the last three years, but companies cautiously began hiring again in 2010, says Donna Farrugia, executive director of The Creative Group, a staffing firm based in Menlo Park, California. “In 2011, marketing teams are still lean, but companies can’t grow the business without adding talent,” she says. “It’s not raining money, though. Companies still don’t have big salary budgets.”

Mark Szypko, managing director of international compensation at Kenexa’s Salary.com division, which powers Monster’s Salary Wizard, says salaries are increasing for those in revenue-generating positions.

“Sales and marketing continue to be areas where hiring is picking up to fill slots that have been vacated by either a layoff or voluntary turnover,” he says. “Staffing levels are still below pre-recession levels but for these groups that gap is shrinking. In order to attract individuals into these critical roles, salaries are expected to rise as well.”

Despite current tight marketing salary budgets, paychecks (including bonuses and benefits) are very healthy for people in these seven marketing jobs:

1. International Marketing Executive: $282,100

Companies pay chief marketing officers top dollar to plan and direct international marketing strategies that capture audience attention in many cultures, markets and channels. To land this job at a Fortune 500 firm, you’ll need an MBA from a top-tier program, says Nancy Davis, practice director for sales and marketing at The Mergis Group, a recruiting and staffing agency based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.


2. Top Channel Development Executive: $267,200

Companies value marketing pros who can run channel development in ways that maximize revenues. Only a small pool of people have the right mix of traditional marketing experience, analytics knowledge and new channel know-how, yet the number of companies moving into ecommerce is huge, Farrugia says. That’s why salaries for top channel development experts have edged out salaries of domestic top marketing executives.


3. Top Marketing Executive: $244,400

The best of the best marketing executives quickly adapt their company’s strategies and philosophies across a wide variety of ever-changing channels. Want to end up in the chief marketing officer’s job someday? Focus on digital projects. Write the projects into your resume as business cases that highlight your role and the bottom-line results, Farrugia says.


4. Top Market Research Executive: $193,100

Web analytics and market research are driving corporate investments as companies try to pinpoint changing customer preferences and locate the right audience for their products. Salaries for market research executives are up 3 percent to 5 percent in 2011, Farrugia says.


5. Marketing Director: $152,800

In companies that don’t have much of a marketing department, the marketing director handles everything, says Bruce Rowles, a recruiter with Experis (formerly Manpower) in Milwaukee. While every position is different, you’ll often need industry experience, along with marketing managerial experience to land marketing director positions, which are still scarce, he says.


6. Ecommerce Marketing Director: $148,500

Demand is tremendous for ecommerce marketing professionals as companies vie for online dominance. “Companies are all looking for the perfect hybrid person who knows traditional marketing and what’s going to make people click and stick,” Farrugia says.


7. Database Marketing Manager: $97,100

Data analysis is a niche within marketing where there are more jobs than candidates, Davis says. “Generally speaking, there are no more than one or two candidates for data-analytics positions,” she says. And unlike the C-level marketing jobs that take years to reach, you can work your way up to this position and that nearly $100,000 salary in only seven years, Salary.com says.

10 Secret To Success Local Online Marketing

Consumers seeking a local business, professional or other service provider search and choose differently depending on the product or service they need. That seems like common sense, but it’s often misunderstood. And that creates special opportunities for local business owners to be found first by customers searching online.

The basic secret to success is this: Deliver the right types of information (consumers seek multiple pieces) for your specific category, industry or vertical. In other words, today’s challenge goes beyond simply showing up in an online search. To win the business you need to deliver the right kind of information once the prospect has found you. And that’s where the differences come into play.

For example: The two things consumers want most when searching for an attorney, doctor or other health care provider are:

1) Information about professional credentials or specialties; and

2) levels and areas of experience. But someone looking online for auto repair services or any of the thousands of products and services that fall under “home improvement,” will first and foremost be interested in specific product or service details and costs. Only then do consumers start to look for discounts, special offers or details about credentials.

These findings come from new nationwide research just conducted by WebVisible and the Chicago-based market research firm Synovate eNation. Four different groups of 1,000 Americans were asked what kinds of information best help them make their choice when searching online for doctors, lawyers, auto repair services and home improvement product or service providers.

“Getting found online is just the first step,” says Ron Burr, CEO of WebVisible. “Local advertisers have to make sure the information they provide will help close the deal. Do your customers want information or a discount? Do they want to read about your credentials, or see you in a video? There is no one answer – no magic bullet that will make someone pick up the phone.”

10 Ways to Perfect your Online Pitch

1. Service providers who offer general, educational information – not just about their own company or services – will stand apart. In every category, people want a certain level of “education.” For attorneys, 52% of people want answers to common legal questions. For doctors, 46 % want to know about treatments and procedures. For home improvement, 44% want resources to learn about warranties, tax credits or energy savings. For auto repair, 32% want information about maintenance services recommended at various stages.

2. Income is not a predictor of who will prefer special offers and discounts. In just one category – healthcare – the preference for discounts increased as salaries decreased (16% of those earning $75k+, compared with 37.5% of those earning under $25k). But in the other three categories those in the middle income ranges chose discounts at above-average rates.

3. For healthcare providers, attorneys – or presumably any business offering a service that requires extensive education and training –consumers need details on credentials and experience.

4. Half of the consumers surveyed say they want referrals and recommendations from people in their networks – an argument for having a Facebook page.

5. Roughly half of customers say they want information about available treatments and new procedures when looking for healthcare providers, and about legal procedures and answers to common legal questions when looking for lawyers.

6. When searching for consumer services like auto repair and home improvement, nearly 70% of people said they need information about specific products, services and costs. When seeking auto repair, 58% said they want a discount offer, while 54% said they want a recommendation from someone they know.

7. When seeking a home improvement service provider, 54% said they want details about the provider’s certifications and experience, 53% want a deal, and 52 % want a personal referral.

8. Women tend to seek greater information variety than men.

9. Online video appeals to all age groups. In fact, across all four categories, both the young (ages 18-24) and the older (ages 55-64) chose video – either a profile of the owner/professional or of an actual customer testimonial – at higher-than-average rates.

10. Discounts are important in the categories of auto repair (58 % of respondents named it as key) and home improvement (53 %).

Effective Networking Tips at Trade Shows

Trade shows are not only good for increasing sales and meeting prospective leads, but are also excellent for networking with other business professionals. Building networking relationships with other professionals can only help your company since these people will be able to refer clients to you as long as you are willing to reciprocate the favor. In order to meet these people, you will need to venture outside of your trade show displays in search of these networking opportunities. These 3 tips should make it easier for you to make connections at your next event.

Browse the Convention Aisles

Browse the aisles and keep an eye out for people who are at their trade show booths and appear to have some time to talk. Strike up a conversation with these people without turning the discussion into an advertisement for your business. Ask them who they are, what their title is at their company, and interesting facts about them (do they have kids, what they do on their free time). Do not talk to these people like you would a customer, but more like a friend.

Make Your Objective Known

One of my biggest pet peeves at conventions is when an attendee leads me to believe they are interested in doing business with them. Be frank with these exhibitors and let them know you would like to partner with them in order to help each other expand your businesses.

Invite Them for a Bite to Eat

Get to know other exhibitors or attendees that you have had the chance to speak with outside of the trade show by taking them out to lunch or to grab some coffee. You don't need to constantly be talking about work; turn the conversations to their likes and dislikes in order to get to know them better. Treat them as you would a friend in order to build a friendship with these other exhibitors.

Bring Plenty of Business Cards

You never know when you will need to hand out business cards, so it is important to carry a stack of them with you in order to whip them out at a moment's notice. Your new friends will need to know the best way to contact you and having your own business cards will make it more professional to relay this information to them.

Hopefully these tips will make it easier for you to bring in more clients through networking instead of directly getting sales at your trade show exhibits.

Email Marketing - The 8 Features Of A Successful Email Marketing Message

Email marketing is the act of sending a specific message to a specific group of people in a business's database for the purpose of being informational and/or promotional. Email marketing has been around for almost 20 years and is still the most powerful social networking tool available today. However, as technology has changed and people demand more quality and transparency at the same time, email messages have had to adapt to the new rules to still be effective yet remain in compliance with the law. That's why successful email marketing messages have eight common features in today's world.

1. From name - This is the displayed name of who the email is from. It's a requirement that the 'from name' is displayed because of spam reasons. In fact, the CAN-SPAM act is the central law where all of these email requirements come from.

2. From email address - This is the email address where the email message came from. Once again this is a requirement that every email must have.

3. Subject line - This is self explanatory about what it is, but it's good to know that the subject line is limited in length and having certain words like FREE or SPECIAL OFFER in the subject line can trigger spam flags making your email get rejected or filtered into the spam folder of your email provider.

4. Time of day - This is just another requirement and really is helpful with documentation. For instance, as a manager I used to do all of my documentation with email because it time and date stamped my messages.

5. Content - This is the 'meat and potatoes' of the email message. The content can be whatever you want it to be. Content can be images, text and links to whatever you want and it can be short or long. There's no magic formula to putting together a winning combination of content. The key is to always test and track your emails to see which messages get the most response and interaction from your database.

6. Unsubscribe/User preferences - Every email message today from a campaign has to have this link at the bottom that allows users to opt-out from receiving anymore future messages. Bottom line is it's against the law to NOT have this in your message and all major email marketing companies have this setup already.

7. Privacy policy - Not every campaign email message has this link, but they should. This is another link at the bottom of the message that directs to the privacy policy of the organization. Smart businesses have this in all of their emails.

8. Physical address - Once again, this is a requirement of messages today and most major email marketing companies put the address in your message by default. A real business will have a real address, so this helps with spam.