More than 50 percent of B2B content marketers report that their content marketing teams are small or even just one person. Oddly enough, over 43 percent of intern job posts expected a minimum of two or three years experience. More than a third of both junior and senior job listings sought out applicants with two to three years of experience. According to our analysis, the top hard skills mentioned in these job listings were social media, content creation, and SEO. When it comes to hard skills, junior jobs looked for more well-rounded applicants. Senior roles narrowed in for people with a certain focus in key areas related to management skills. So now that we’ve identified the most desired skills overall, how do expectations change across experience levels? It’s important to master these basic soft skills in conjunction with staying on top of technical skills as employers want to make sure they have the most well-rounded candidates to fill a multi-faceted role. When we get to senior-level roles, hiring managers are looking for someone who is well-versed and cross-functional with skills in management and analytical thinking. By focusing on hard skills, like SEO, Social Media, and Content Creation and exemplifying soft skills like interpersonal abilities and a focus on growth, you can make yourself an appealing applicant to employers in this industry.
As an official job title, content marketer is relatively new. A decade ago, you would’ve just been a marketer. But the field is rapidly changing. In the last 5 years, strong support for positions like content manager, content director, and content marketing specialist is growing. Not only are there more content marketing jobs available now than ever before…
…more and more prospective applicants and companies are looking for them as well.
When we saw these trends, two questions came to mind: What does the modern content marketer do? And what skills matter most to employers hiring for content marketing?
To answer these, we at Fractl completed a comprehensive analysis on more than 1,400 content marketing job listings from Indeed.com between January 6-12, 2019. Our exploration included quantitative analysis of hard numbers and a qualitative text analysis. The goal was to understand the nuances of the desired skills and traits most frequently associated with different content marketing jobs.
A breakdown of open content marketing roles
To start, we looked at the positional breakdown within our sample. As the graph shows above, junior and senior jobs were split pretty evenly, which suggests companies investing in content programs are trying to build balanced teams.
This hasn’t always been the case, though. More than 50 percent of B2B content marketers report that their content marketing teams are small or even just one person. So it makes sense employers are looking for people who are already junior or senior-level employees who have experience handling many moving parts. When it comes to seeking external help, many marketers are outsourcing content creation to contract workers and freelancers, which may explain the slightly higher demand for junior and mid-level applicants.
A look at content marketing salaries
Salaries are tricky to track because not all companies make compensation public on their job listings. That seems to be changing little by little. The Creative Group releases an annual salary report every year, and sites like Indeed and Glassdoor are pushing to give employers and applicants more transparency.
In our findings, we grouped salaries into two parts: low end and high end. Content marketing jobs can definitely pay more or less than the range, but based on our research, the graphs above offer an industry standard. Typical intern pay falls between $37,000 and $43,000, annually. Junior and midlevel pay sits between $50,000 and $67,000. Compensation for senior roles stretches between $60,000 and $90,000.
Experience needed
What does it take to make it to the high end of the pay scale?
Across any industry, one of the most common requirements for job applicants is years of experience. Unfortunately, that’s just as true for interns as it is for managers. Oddly enough, over 43 percent of intern job posts expected a minimum of two or three years experience. Interns are typically entry-level workers with little to no experience. The findings suggest a more competitive job landscape to start careers in content marketing. But once people are established in the field, experience isn’t as much of a hurdle.
For applicants looking to enter the content marketing field as an intern, don’t let the requirement scare you away. Specific marketing experience is only one part of the equation when narrowing down the best candidates. Additionally, many employers value work experience in other fields in such as journalism, advertising, and PR.
Surprisingly, there isn’t much difference in the experience expected for junior to senior-level jobs. More than a third of both junior and senior job listings sought out applicants with two to three years of experience. Coming in as just slightly less at 29.5% for junior-level roles, and 30.8% for senior-level roles was four to five years of experience.
Some data may be skewed here based on how companies classify their roles. Obviously, senior roles call for more than one year experience, even though about 22 percent of job posts said otherwise. Likewise, the 12 percent of intern listings asking for at least six years of experience doesn’t add up. Further research could be useful to suss out the numbers.
Hard skills needed for content jobs
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