Look behind any kind of successful company—whether it’s a Fortune 500 multinational business or a stand at the local farmers market—and chances are they all have a marketing strategy to reach their customers. Marketing is how you can spread the word and make potential customers aware of your product, service, or idea. It can involve planning and overseeing a marketing campaign, measuring industry trends to determine what the demand might be for new and existing products, and figuring out pricing strategies that meet customer expectations. The individuals tasked with creating a marketing strategy for a company, brand, or product are called marketing managers.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are currently 278,690 marketing managers employed in the United States as of May 2021. That means that for every 1,000 jobs, about .01% of them are marketing executives, making the field highly competitive. Marketing managers earn an average salary of $153,440 a year, significantly more than the national average salary for all occupations, which is $58,260. Additionally, the BLS expects the field to grow by 10% over the next decade (which is about average), meaning there will be high-paying positions opening up over the next several years.
Marketing managers work across many different fields. The BLS reports that the highest concentration of employment is in information services, advertising and public relations, and software publishing. Some of the top-paying industries for marketing managers include oil and gas extraction (which has an average annual mean wage of $212,080) and scientific research and development (which has an average annual mean wage of $193,290).
So what does it take to become a successful marketing manager? In addition to top-notch communication skills, marketing managers often need a solid understanding of sales and promotion as well as strong data analysis skills. The marketing industry has transformed in the last two decades as customers and storytelling have moved online, so it can also be critical to understand the digital tools that monitor website visits, customer engagement, and other online behavioral data in real-time. Marketing managers are often responsible for measuring sales performance using Google Analytics and customer data, and coming up with a marketing plan if numbers are flagging. They also might track customer lead generation from email or ad promotions, measure customer conversions, create blog posts, monitor engagement numbers on social media posts, and more.
With a higher-than-average salary and a growing industry, making a career switch to marketing managing has its advantages. But where should you be looking for these jobs? Planoly ranked the top 25 states where marketing managers are paid the most based on median salary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This dataset also includes a comparison of the median marketing manager salary to the state median salary for all jobs and the number of marketing managers per 1,000 jobs in each state.
Read on to discover where the highest-paying marketing management positions are located.
