Marketing Salary Survey

Recruitment consultant Aquent and the American Marketing Association (AMA) have announced the launch of their Compensation Survey of Marketing Professionals 2006. The results draw upon data sampled from over 225,000 US-based respondents. MR salaries have bucked the trend by rising.

The survey was designed and conducted by consultants 6Degrees and has support from B2B magazine. In addition to salary trends, it examines 'the environment that impacts marketing professionals today: skills in demand, professional development, hiring practices, organizational structures, marketing processes, and ethics'.

Top line results, for permanent marketers, are available at www.marketingsalaries.com , along with a salary calculator. Jenny Norwood, Aquent Director of Brand Communications, says there has been 'a slight decline in aggregate salaries vs. 2005, across several levels'. One trend emerging is an increasing emphasis on strategic marketing within organizations, fuelling a need for more top-level marketers and a consequent rise in status for mid-level marketers moving into the skills gap.

Last year the study monitored 45 specific titles and positions, but there were more than 300 total unique marketing titles provided by the survey participants, leading to a new approach this year: 6Degrees used job responsibilities and seniority to synthesize this list into 11 groups based on marketing functions and three levels: entry, mid, and top.

For marketing research professionals, a rise is evident with entry level researchers static on $40,000 but mid-level showing a mean of $70,000, up from $66,000 last year, and top level appearing to leap from $80,500 to $110,000, albeit with a small base, only 36 respondents for 2006.

Editor's note: MrWeb's own salary stats based on 99 top level MR job ads with salaries posted so far this year suggest a very comparable mean of $113,000. [Other MrWeb means are $97,000 for client side Research Manager roles (base 42) and $68,500 for mid-level agency-side (base 34). The base for entry-level US ads is too small].

Aquent is headquartered in Boston and online at www.aquent.com . The American Marketing Association (AMA)'s resource is at www.marketingpower.com and 6Degrees can be found at www.6degrees.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.