Marketing jobs and careers

This is a career where you can work across any number of products and services, where your customer can vary hugely, and you can shape your role and your career in any number of ways. It’s massively rewarding, whether you’re helping a start-up grow, working for an SME, or a part of a blue-chip multinational. The roles can be creative, analytical, strategic, or tactical, or a combination of it all and some. What draws so many people to the industry is the variety in the day to day, the ongoing project work, the brand management and the multichannel campaigns.

Without an effective marketing strategy, most businesses wouldn’t exist. Working within marketing offers you the opportunity to understand your customers and your competitors, to work on your value proposition, and to direct your message to the right people at the right time.

There are great brands all around you, but without marketing you’d rarely hear of them. Multichannel campaigns ensure consistent messaging across a number of key channels that deliver a business’ products/services to current, previous and prospective customers effectively. Your role is likely to have a strong digital focus these days, and this could include any number of disciplines such as; Web Management, CMS, Email, CRM, Social, SEO, PPC, Affiliates, Display, Automation etc.

More broadly speaking, your role may be to develop branding, manage offline channels, produce marketing collateral, events management, public relations, direct mail, or retail strategy. You could be involved in any number of things. One of the most valuable skills a marketer will possess, is their ability to construct strong written content/communications whether that’s via online and offline channels.

As your career progresses, you may choose to specialise in a particular discipline, or you could want to move into management, taking on strategy, budget management, as well as team management. These are generally highly commercial positions, where you will be expected to show the return on investment (ROI) against any campaigns.

• Marketing Coordinator / Assistant
• Marketing Executive
• Marketing Manager
• Marketing Communications Manager
• PR Manager
• Internal Communications / Employee Engagement Manager
• Brand Manager
• Campaign Manager
• Digital Marketing Manager
• CRM Manager
• Direct Marketing Manager
• Social Media Manager
• Content Marketing Manager
• Strategic Marketing Manager

We’ve outlined the latest salary benchmarks for Marketing roles in the guides below:

Digital Marketing Salary Guide – South West

Digital Marketing Salary guide – London & South East

B2B In-House Marketing Salary Guide – South West

B2B In-House Marketing Salary Guide – London & South East

B2C In-house Marketing Salary Guide – London & South East

B2C In-house Marketing Salary Guide – London & South West

Marketers can have such varying backgrounds and skills that you could have any number of key skills that a business could benefit from. You could be creative, a whizz with the written word, know your way around Adobe Creative Cloud, or you could be highly analytical, able to understand numbers and metrics and look at ways to optimise marketing campaigns.

Communication skills are always key to these roles, you’ll usually need to be a strong writer, good with managing projects, hitting deadlines, and bringing creative ideas to the table will go a long way!

Most people will start out with a Marketing or Business degree, although qualifications around English, Journalism and Advertising are often seen. As you develop your career you may wish to gain your Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Professional Qualifications or an Institute of Direct & Digital Marketing (IDM) Qualification.

Salary

£18k – £24k

What They Do:

Supports marketing teams by coordinating campaigns, maintaining databases, producing reports, and helping with social media, email, and event logistics.

Skills Needed:

• Strong organisational skills
• Basic design tool skills (such as Canva)
• CRM/email tools skills (such as Mailchimp, HubSpot)
• Copywriting basics
• Willingness to learn & multitask
• Basic understanding of digital channels (social, email, web)
• Experience using spreadsheets or data entry tools (Excel, Google Sheets)

Salary

£24k – £30k

What They Do:

Executes day-to-day marketing activities, including content creation, social media, email campaigns, and reporting.

Skills Needed:

• Content writing
• Social media scheduling tools
• SEO fundamentals
• Analytics basics (Google Analytics)
• Email campaign setup
• Basic data interpretation using GA4 or similar tools
• Experience with CMS platforms (e.g., WordPress)

Salary

£30k – £35k

What They Do:

Takes ownership of small to medium-sized campaigns, supports planning and delivery, mentors junior execs, and helps measure performance and ROI across channels.

Skills Needed:

• • Campaign delivery
  • PPC basics
  • Analytics and reporting
  • Stakeholder communication
  • Mentoring junior staff
  • Knowledge of paid social platforms (Meta Ads, LinkedIn Campaign Manager)
  • Understanding of marketing funnels and performance KPIs
  • Knowledge of paid social platforms (Meta Ads, LinkedIn Campaign Manager)
  • Understanding of marketing funnels and performance KPIs

Salary

£35k – £50k

What They Do:

Plans and delivers marketing strategy across channels, manages junior staff or agencies, and reports on campaign performance and ROI.

Skills Needed:

• Multi-channel strategy
• Budget and stakeholder management
• Email, SEO, paid media fluency
• Strong reporting and analytics
• Team/project leadership
• Familiarity with marketing automation tools (e.g., HubSpot, Marketo)
• Proficiency in managing creative briefing processes

Salary

£50k – £60k

What They Do:

Oversees high-level marketing strategy, leads multiple workstreams or teams, and works closely with commercial, product, and leadership functions to align marketing with business goals.

Skills Needed:

• Cross-functional leadership
• Strategic planning and forecasting
• Data-driven decision-making
• Managing teams and external partners
• Presenting to senior stakeholders
• Experience scaling campaigns across B2B/B2C
• Advanced budget forecasting and ROI modelling

Salary

£38k – £55k

What They Do:

Develops and manages content strategies across web, blogs, guides, whitepapers, and video. Aligns content with SEO, brand, and conversion goals.

Skills Needed:

• Strong copywriting & editorial planning
• SEO and content optimisation
• CMS tools (WordPress, Webflow)
• Briefing writers/designers
• Content analytics
• Basic HTML or Markdown knowledge
• Use of AI-assisted writing/editing tools (e.g., Grammarly, ChatGPT)

Salary

£40k – £55k

What They Do:

Manages customer relationship platforms and builds email journeys, segmentation strategies, and lifecycle campaigns to retain and grow the customer base.

Skills Needed:

• CRM tools (Salesforce, HubSpot, Braze)
• Segmentation and A/B testing
• Automation flows & triggers
• Email marketing best practices
• Customer data handling & compliance (GDPR)
• Deliverability optimisation and email rendering best practices
• Customer lifecycle mapping and retention strategy

Salary

£32k – £45k

What They Do:

Creates and manages content for social media channels, builds community engagement, and monitors performance across platforms.

Skills Needed:

• Channel strategy (LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, etc.)
• Content planning & creation
• Community management
• Analytics (native & third-party tools)
• Paid social campaigns
• Influencer campaign planning
• Content repurposing and trend adaptation (e.g., Reels, Shorts)

Salary

£35k – £50k

What They Do:

Oversees planning, execution, and optimisation of marketing campaigns across channels to meet awareness or lead generation targets.

Skills Needed:

• Campaign planning and scheduling
• Cross-channel coordination
• ROI tracking and optimisation
• Team and agency briefing
• Performance reporting
• Hands-on experience with multi-channel attribution models
• A/B and multivariate testing strategies

Salary

£38k – £55k

What They Do:

Manages press, media relations, and reputation-building efforts including press releases, media outreach, and crisis communications.

Skills Needed:

• Media relationships
• Press release writing
• Crisis communication
• Event/media briefing coordination
• Reputation management
• Use of PR tools (e.g., Roxhill, CoverageBook)
• Monitoring brand sentiment and media coverage

Salary

£45k – £65k

What They Do:

Owns the brand’s visual identity and messaging, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints and helping shape customer perception.

Skills Needed:

• Brand strategy and guidelines
• Tone of voice development
• Visual storytelling and design direction
• Campaign consistency
• Customer research & positioning
• Building brand guidelines and toolkits
• Collaboration with product and UX teams

Salary

£60k – £75k

What They Do:

Leads the entire marketing function, shaping the overall strategy, managing teams, owning the budget, and driving marketing impact at a business-wide level.

Skills Needed:

• Department-wide leadership
• Long-term strategy development
• Full budget ownership
• Business development alignment
• Coaching and succession planning

Salary

£75k – £100k

What They Do:

Sets vision and direction for the entire marketing department, leads senior-level stakeholders, oversees brand and growth strategy, and ensures marketing delivers measurable value to the business.

Skills Needed:

• Brand and demand growth strategy
• Executive leadership and influence
• Commercial awareness and P&L input
• Crisis and change management
• Organisation-wide collaboration
• Digital transformation leadership
• AI or automation awareness

Salary

£85k – £120k+

What They Do:

Owns the overall marketing and brand vision at the board level. Responsible for aligning marketing with business objectives, revenue generation, market leadership, and culture.

Skills Needed:

• Visionary leadership
• Revenue & growth alignment
• M&A or investment communications
• Deep strategic insight across functions
• High-level stakeholder and board management
• Digital transformation leadership
• AI or automation awareness
• Understanding of investor relations or ESG communication in B2B/B2C