A great product needs an equally great marketing strategy behind it to maximize its potential and find success. Enter the marketing manager.
A skilled marketing manager can be worth their weight in gold. This professional is responsible for developing the overall marketing strategy for your organization, and then overseeing the execution of those carefully laid plans. Without their leadership in a competitive marketplace, even the best products can fail.
“It’s noisy out there. Marketing is what builds your narrative, builds your story and gets you noticed,” says Jonah-Kai Hancock, head of digital demand generation at the Seattle software company Hiya. “If you're not investing in marketing, you're not investing in being seen or heard.”
A Versatile, Fast-Paced Role
Being a marketing manager is highly complex. In addition to crafting a marketing strategy and developing different marketing plans, you also typically manage staff and budgets, oversee content and communications, and collaborate with decision-makers across the organization to implement different marketing campaigns and track how they perform.
projected growth
U.S. (2023-2033): 8%
Washington state (2020-2030): 37%
Median Annual Salary
U.S. (2023): $157,620
Washington state (2023): $162,590
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, O*NET
At an agency or a midsize or large company, you might specialize in one area or channel, like digital marketing, content marketing or social media. At a smaller company, you might be more of a generalist and handle them all.
“To be a good marketing manager, you need to have deep background in at least one or two marketing channels, so you understand how to build a campaign,” says Hancock, who serves as an instructor for the UW Certificate in Digital Marketing. “You also have to be really good at setting goals and targets and using data and analytics to back that up.”
But amidst all the strategy, planning and data, Hancock notes that the role also requires excellent people skills.
“It’s really important to be empathetic and understanding,” he says. “The COVID pandemic fundamentally changed the game for managers. My job as a manager is ultimately to make sure that my employees can do their best work.”
High Employer Demand (Especially in Washington)
The good news is, those with a strong background in marketing are in high demand, especially if you’re in the Pacific Northwest.
While the demand for marketing managers is solid nationally, with a projected growth rate of 8% over the next decade, demand in Washington state is estimated to be more than four times greater — at 37% — through 2030, according to the O*NET career website.
That’s because everybody needs marketers, particularly the kind of large tech employers that are prevalent in the Puget Sound area, such as Microsoft, Amazon and Expedia.
“As a tech company, you can’t sell your product just in the U.S. these days,” says Hancock, whose team at Hiya helps coordinate marketing campaigns in at least 10 different countries. “If you want to be a powerhouse, you have to go global, and marketing teams are at the center of building that.”
Learn the Latest technical Skills
In addition to fundamental marketing knowledge and excellent people skills, today’s marketing managers must be on top of the latest developments in technology. That includes cutting-edge automation techniques and artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
“The rise of AI and machine learning is kind of the elephant in the room,” says Hancock, who regularly updates his course curriculum to account for technical changes. “These tools aren’t supplanting marketing managers or teams, but they are augmenting how we work. They make it easy for us to do things like personalize marketing content for different types of individuals, and they surface insights that a marketing manager may not otherwise see.”
Become a Marketing Manager
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