Digital marketing is a great career field. For over 20 years, digital marketing has been a growing field where individuals can build successful and impressive careers.

The industry is constantly changing. But one thing that hasn’t changed is that companies will continue to need smart people to manage their digital marketing initiatives.

U.S. digital ad spend will continue to grow over the next five years, according to eMarketer research. By 2025, U.S. digital advertising spending is expected to reach approximately $315 billion. Although the rate of change is expected to slow down over the next few years, the digital marketing industry should continue to offer a wide range of career opportunities.

A recent survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a similar trend. Their report doesn’t specifically mention digital marketing, but that data is included in this general report.

According to 2021 data:

“Overall employment of advertising, promotion and marketing managers is projected to grow by 10% from 2021 to 2031, a faster pace than the average for all occupations. For advertising, promotion and marketing managers about 35,300 job vacancies are projected on average each year over a decade.”

The economy is currently in a precarious state. A recession seems looming, but no one knows what will happen.

Even if the next 12-18 months will be challenging from a macroeconomic perspective, opportunities within the digital marketing industry should continue to thrive.

Such opportunities can lead to small or large agencies, in-house teams, own shops as individual contractors, and the list goes on. Throughout your career in this field, you will find yourself in many different roles in many organizations.

Search engine marketing (SEM) professionals can move from junior to senior roles in their career path.

Let’s take a look at how many of these roles are structured and how SEM careers are shaped. Your path is unique, but these are current industry guidelines.

Entry Level/Junior SEM Role

Most people start their careers in entry-level positions in any field. The same is true for his digital marketing industry. Many people get their first job after college at a digital agency or on an in-house marketing team.

Individuals also move into digital marketing from other departments within their organization. For example, the shift from product development and management to digital marketing.

These roles often don’t require extensive digital marketing experience. Most employers don’t expect a lot of experience, but they want people who:

• Drive to excellence.
• aptitude to learn.
• Good communication skills.

The expected duration of each role will vary depending on where you work.

Some employers promote people faster than others. More aggressive progression is preferable if you want to move between roles quickly.

However, if you move too fast, you won’t have time to develop and master your skills for your next role. On average, an individual spends 12-18 months in an entry-level role before being promoted.

tasks and responsibilities

Tasks completed by beginner/junior-level team members are often focused on supporting senior members of the team. These obligations include:

• Create reports.
• Conducting QA checks.
• Building SEM campaigns.
• Monitor your account performance.
• Participate in training and obtain certification.
• Take meeting notes.
• other basic tasks.

Title and role

There are countless potential titles in the SEM field for each step along the digital marketing career journey.

Typically, you’ll find channel symbols in titles like this:

• Digital
• seek
• socializing
• SEO
• screen
• Paid search
• paid social
• programmatic

The second component of job title is role/seniority. For entry-level roles, you can expect:

• fellow, colleague
• specialist
• coordinator
• strategist
• assistant

The Role of an Experienced SEM

On average, 18-24 months of experience in SEM and digital marketing will prepare you to transition to more experienced roles.

As in many other industries, just because you’ve gained experience and been promoted doesn’t mean you’re not responsible for certain entry-level tasks.

More experienced roles within the company begin to contribute to internal and external relationships. A more experienced individual often assists in training and supervising her members of the junior team. This does not mean that experienced individuals manage entry-level positions. Responsibilities are usually reserved for the next level of career advancement.

Again, the length of time for these experienced roles will vary from company to company. On average, you can expect to be in a similar position for about 12-24 months.

I know most people are obsessed with moving to the next level in their career, but make sure you master every role you take on before moving on to the next. You may be tempted to move on, but make sure you build a strong foundation for your career during these critical, fundamental times.

tasks and responsibilities

As you move into a more experienced SEM role, you take on more responsibility and ownership within your team, whether at an agency or in-house.

Experienced roles are often considered Execution and QA experts within an account. These are the people who get to the heart of the matter and are ready to be seen as activation leaders. These obligations include:

• account management
• Large campaign build
• Meeting agenda management
• Run some or all client/internal meetings
• project management
• Task delegation

Title and role

As with entry-level roles, there are channel symbols as part of the title. Again, these symbolic representations can include:

• Digital
• seek
• socializing
• SEO
• screen
• Paid search
• paid social
• programmatic

The second component of these titles is title/seniority. You can expect titles such as:

Role of Senior SEM

Senior SEM and Digital Marketing roles start owning client engagements as a whole or in-house programs. Individuals in these roles guide the following:

• overall strategy.
• internal and external communication.
• Building relationships with clients.
• budget planning.
• Cross-channel management.
• complex attributes.
• team management.

People in these roles are considered senior members of the Media Activation Team.

Individuals in these roles with 3-4 years of experience often transition to team management as well. It often balances:

• account management.
• client communication.
• strategy development.
• Management of a small team.

I think this is where position duration starts to vary more between companies. The senior SEM role has a duration of 18-36 months. This sounds like a long time, but this is also when brand new skills are learned and mastered.

tasks and responsibilities

Moving to senior positions in SEM is a difficult balancing act. You often have to complete tasks for her two previous roles. This happens because you need to fill a junior position or cover someone who is not in the office.

However, there are also administrative responsibilities. These responsibilities include:

• cross-channel strategy.
• media planning.
• Budget forecast.
• Own internal/external communication.
• team management.
• How to promote media campaigns.

Title and role

As with any job title, job titles and roles can vary from company to company. You can expect titles such as:

• senior manager
• lead
• directed by
• senior director

Leadership SEM role

A leadership role in SEM and digital marketing means:

• I manage a team of digital marketers.
• Understand macro-level trends within your industry.
• Guide high-level cross-channel campaign strategy.
• Own internal/external stakeholder relationships, staffing, and resource planning.

tasks and responsibilities

Leadership roles are higher level and begin to focus on strategy and development. The individual in these roles must be able to understand what the team needs to deliver excellent her SEM results.

Communication is one of the most important elements of leadership roles. Must be able to communicate individually with the entire team, clients, C-level executives, and her members of the team. This includes the following responsibilities:

• High level account strategy.
• Setting goals and KPIs.
• Cross-channel media planning.
• Budget planning and scenario forecasting.
• team management.
• Development of team members.
• Staff planning and hiring decisions.
• Mentoring junior team members.

Title and role

SEM leadership titles vary greatly from company to company.

Below are some titles to expect for these roles.

• directed by
• senior director
• Executive
• vice president

Navigating SEM Careers

We have not been able to cover all potential roles and titles in the SEM industry. Hopefully this gives you a framework wherever you are on your career path.

In my next article, I will help you plan to become a great SEM team member, learn as much as possible throughout your career, develop new skills along the way, and have a great career in SEM.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About the author

Joseph Kerschbaum is Senior Vice President of Search & Growth Labs at 3Q Digital. In his 20 years of experience in digital marketing, Joseph has worked with companies of all sizes, from SMBs to enterprise scale. Joseph has been a regular speaker at digital marketing conferences for over a decade. Joseph is co-author of his Wiley/Sybex book “Pay-Per-Click SEM: One Hour a Day” published in 2010. For the past four years, Joseph has hosted the podcast 3Q Digital Download, where he discussed. Digital marketing strategies with industry leaders.