Digital Marketing Talent With These Skills Will Cost You Six Figures

The most in-demand digital marketing skills will continue to land some of the highest salaries in the industry.

Digital Marketing Talent With These Skills Will Cost You Six Figures

Digital marketing has completely transformed over the past few years and continues to evolve as new technologies, platforms, and channels emerge.

Due to these constant updates and changes, employers are looking for digital marketing talent with the latest in-demand skillsets to enhance their marketing strategies and help net and retain more customers. However, the demand for these digital marketing skills is outpacing the supply of qualified talent. In response, companies are shelling out six figures to secure top talent with these hard-to-find skillsets.

So which digital marketing skills are currently landing the highest salaries in the industry? The chart, below, provides an overview, followed by specifics.

SEO/SEM

One of the highest-paid skillsets in digital marketing today is SEO/SEM, which comes as no surprise to marketing experts that have been paying attention. Because search engine algorithms are constantly changing, businesses must stay up to date by hiring SEO experts in order to rank high in the search engine results page (SERP).

Why is ranking high so important? Let me ask you this: When was the last time you clicked on the second page of search results? Most likely never. By refining the SEO of your content, website, and products, you can bump a competitor further down in SERPs, or better yet, to the second page.

Businesses prioritizing SEO today can see an immediate increase in website traffic and lead generation, along with the ability to easily annihilate competitors by replacing them in SERPs.

Additionally, given the extremely high volume of visitors search engines receive daily, SEM and PPC have now become top priorities for all businesses. Buying ad space on search engines or major social media sites is now vital for businesses that want to reach larger audiences, increase website traffic, and generate more leads.

Digital marketing professionals with SEO/SEM expertise are in high demand for the following roles: SEO/SEM analysts, SEO/SEM specialists, SEO/SEM managers, and directors of SEO/SEM. Individuals with extensive experience in SEO/SEM are offered salaries ranging from $101,000 to $158,000 for these roles.

Data/Web Analytics

Thanks to the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) sector and the rise of big data, as well as the growing importance of customer data, data and web analytics is now one of the most sought-after digital marketing skills.

This skill is desired by businesses in all sectors because it eliminates the use of intuition to decide what marketing strategies are working and which aren’t. Instead, companies now have access to hard data that clearly answers the question of what’s working and what’s not. However, this growing amount of data is useless if you don’t know how to analyze it—which is where data and web analytics talent comes in.

Insights derived from excellent data analysis allow for more targeted marketing campaigns, improved customer personas, reduced bounce rates, and higher customer retention rates. Hiring analytics talent capable of analyzing your data and identifying these insights fuels more leads and website traffic.

Businesses that want their digital marketing teams to be effective, successful, and generate more leads understand they must hire digital marketing professionals highly proficient in data and web analytics. This has led to an extremely competitive market for data and web analytics talent with roles offering some of the highest salaries in digital marketing.

Individuals with extensive data and web analytics experience can expect annual salaries ranging from $113,000 to $152,000 for data analyst, information architect, director of web analytics, and data scientist roles.

UX

UX, shorthand for the user experience, is a top priority for businesses. Although it has been around a while, businesses now understand that UX is about more than just design. Today UX centers around the behavioral science behind the decisions that customers make and how the UX can be improved to produce certain behaviors, like following through with a product purchase.

As important as SEO/SEM and data/web analytics are to a successful digital marketing strategy, none of that matters if you don’t understand the science behind the behaviors of your consumers when it comes to your website, products, or apps.

What is causing them to abandon certain web pages? Where do their mouses hover for the longest period of time? Why didn’t they complete their purchases? These are questions UX experts answer and problems they can solve through enhanced UX development and design, which leads to higher customer retention rates, an increase in sales, improved lead generation, and more.

As businesses scramble to improve the UX on their various online platforms, the salary for those with an understanding of consumer behaviors and UX skills is skyrocketing. Digital marketers with extensive UX skills are landing salaries ranging from $108,000 to $159,000 for various roles, including UX developers, interactive designers, UX designers, and directors of UX.

Looking Ahead

Moving forward, the most in-demand digital marketing skills, like UX, SEO/SEM, and data/web analytics, will continue to land some of the highest salaries in the industry.

However, as digital marketing continues to evolve, it’s likely that the necessary skills for each role will become more blended. Marketers developing various skillsets now will take on roles and titles in the near future that have yet to be created, and in doing so, will become the highest paid and most sought-after digital marketing professionals.