Getting a digital marketing job is the first step toward starting a career in digital marketing. The good news is that you can pursue plenty of entry-level marketing jobs, even without experience.
In this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about entry-level digital marketing jobs, including:
- Where to find digital marketing jobs
- The skills and qualifications needed
- The average salary of popular jobs for junior digital marketers
- The expected career path for each job type
- A comparison of the best entry-level digital marketing jobs
So, if you’re wondering whether digital marketing is a good career choice for you and want to find out how to land your first digital marketing job, get a cup of coffee and let’s enter the exciting world of digital marketing.
The best entry-level digital marketing job is that of a Digital Marketing Specialist. Digital marketing specialists get a higher starting salary than other marketing job types, and the top salary once they reach senior-level positions is higher than in other jobs.
The above graph shows how the top digital marketing jobs compare based on the average annual salary for entry-level professionals, mid-career professionals (5 to 9 years of experience), and senior-level marketers (more than 10 years of experience).
Top 7 Entry-Level Digital Marketing Jobs
- Digital Marketing Specialist
- SEO Specialist
- Content Marketing Specialist
- Social Media Manager
- PPC Specialist (SEM)
- Graphics Designer
- Affiliate Marketing Manager
1. Digital Marketing Specialist
A digital marketing specialist is a junior marketing professional with diverse skills responsible for promoting a website using various digital marketing channels.
Digital marketing specialists are usually classified into two categories:
- With no experience - holders of a university degree related to marketing, digital media, digital marketing, and/or a digital marketing certificate but no working experience.
- With some experience - professionals with 1-4 years of experience and the necessary qualifications.
Related Job Titles
Companies looking for entry-level digital marketing specialists use these job titles:
- Remote digital marketing specialist
- Marketing Specialist
- Junior digital marketing specialist
- Digital marketing associate
- Entry-level digital marketing professional
- Entry-level marketing associate
Average Salary
The average salary of entry-level digital marketing specialists is around $40K annually. This can be broken down as follows:
- Entry Level (less than 1-year experience) – $40K
- 1 to 4 years of experience - $49K
- 5 to 9 years of experience - $71K
The average salary for digital marketing managers who reach the top of the ladder is around $86K annually, the highest-paying salary for a digital marketing job.
Skills Needed
To work as a digital marketing specialist, you need the following skills:
- Knowledge of what is Digital marketing and how it works
- Ability to work with PPC platforms like Google Ads, Bing Ads, and Facebook Ads
- Basic HTML skills
- Know how to use popular CMS like WordPress, Magento, and Shopify
- Ability to create and analyze Google Analytics reports
- Basic SEO skills (optimizing titles, meta descriptions, working with on-page SEO)
- Basic email marketing skills (sending and optimizing email campaigns)
- Basic content marketing skills (research, write, edit, and create content)
- Basic knowledge of SEO and digital marketing tools
In general, what differentiates a digital marketing specialist from other entry-level marketing professionals is that he/she needs to have basic skills in several digital marketing disciplines and not focus on just one area.
Job Description
First-time digital marketing employees typically work as associates of experienced digital marketers and their assigned specific tasks to execute.
For companies that outsource some or all of their digital marketing activities, a digital marketing specialist is a liaison between the company and the digital marketing agency.
Look at the sample job posting below to give you an idea of what employers require when hiring entry-level digital marketing professionals.
Typical Career Path
The typical career path of a digital marketing specialist is the following:
- Digital marketing specialist (Entry-Level) - No experience
- Digital marketing specialist - 1 to 5 years of experience
- Digital marketing manager / Digital marketing director - more than 5 years of experience. Salary can rise to $98K per year based on experience.
- Chief Marketing Officer - The average salary is $170K per year.
For freelancers, there is no official career path but a title change. Experienced digital marketing professionals are called Digital Marketing Experts or Digital Marketing Consultants.
The difference comes from years of experience, the ability to prove their expertise through success stories, and a higher hourly rate for their services.
The hourly rate of a digital marketing consultant can be as low as $30 per hour and as high as $200-$300 per hour.
2. SEO Specialist
An SEO specialist is responsible for improving a website's rankings in search engines.
Related Job Titles
In the various job portals, companies or clients looking to hire entry-level SEO specialists use the following job titles:
- Junior SEO Specialist
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Specialist
- SEO marketer
Average Salary
The average salary of junior SEO specialists (according to payscale) is around $51K annually, rising to $61K for mid-career Senior SEO specialists and $64K for SEO managers.
For SEO freelancers, the average hourly rate for SEOs with less than two years of experience is $79 per hour, rising to $140 per hour for experienced SEOs (more than 10 years).
Skills Needed
To get a job and work as an SEO specialist, you must know all SEO techniques and best practices.
Unlike other entry-level digital marketing jobs, SEO professionals don’t have the luxury of learning the skills while on the job but need to know how to work with SEO in advance.
From experience, when we hire junior SEO experts, we expect them to know how to perform various SEO tasks from start to finish without needing any special guidance.
If you want to pursue an SEO career, you need to build the following skills:
- Technical SEO skills
- On-Page SEO skills
- SEO Copywriting skills
- Off-Page SEO skills
- Analytical and reporting skills
- Basic HTML skills
- Good knowledge of major website CMS
- Basic digital marketing skills
In addition, becoming SEO certified is an asset for your CV and can make a difference when applying to work as a Junior SEO with no experience.
Job Description
The exact tasks you may be asked to execute as an SEO professional depend on the nature of the business and the way the digital marketing department of a company is structured. But, some everyday tasks apply to many SEO job postings.
Here is a real example of a job posting looking for an entry-level SEO specialist.
It pretty much summarizes the tasks you’ll need to perform, including:
- Monitoring and analyzing the performance of the website in the search results
- SEO optimizing landing pages and making other SEO-related changes
- Performing A/B SEO tests
- Performing keyword research and market research
- Optimizing the on-page SEO of a website
- Using modern SEO practices to improve the visibility of a website in search engines
- Make sure that the website is found on Google for relevant searches
- Performing SEO Audits
- Working with various SEO tools
Typical Career Path
The typical career path of an SEO specialist is the following:
- Junior SEO Specialist - Just getting started with SEO, has no experience. Holder of a Bachelor’s degree and SEO certification (optional).
- Mid-Level SEO Specialist - 1 to 5 years of experience with a good understanding of SEO and experience with various SEO projects.
- SEO Expert - Highly experienced SEO professionals with several success stories to share and be proud of.
- SEO Manager/SEO Director - the person leading the SEO department of a company. Besides excellent SEO skills, he/she needs good HR and management skills.
- SEO Consultant - High-confident individuals with years of experience providing SEO advice to companies and other SEO experts.
3. Content Marketing Specialist
Another popular entry-level digital marketing job is that of a content marketing specialist. A content specialist is responsible for researching, writing, and editing content for the needs of a digital marketing campaign.
The reason is that for a junior content marketing specialist, all that is needed is good writing skills. Even if you know nothing about digital marketing or content marketing, you can still get a job if you know how to research and write good content.
It should be emphasized that the responsibilities of a content marketer do not end with content writing. To make a career in content marketing and go after the highest-paying jobs in the field, you also need other skills (see below for the details).
Related Job Titles
Employers use different titles when looking to hire entry-level content marketing specialists. The most popular are:
- Content Specialist
- Junior Content Specialist
- Digital Content Specialist
- Web Content Specialist
- Content Writer
- eCommerce Writer
- Content Marketing Specialist
- Content Marketing Associate
Average Salary
The average salary of a junior content specialist is around $35K per year. It’s a low salary compared to entry-level digital marketers and SEOs, but it can go up to $139K per year when you climb the content marketing ladder.
An alternative to getting a job as a junior content marketing specialist is to work as a freelance content writer. Good freelancers may get $1000 for an article, and depending on how fast you can produce content and how good the content is, you can make more money than getting a formal job.
As a freelancer, you can work from home, and as you get more clients, you can even start your own online business.
Skills Needed
The first essential skill all content marketing professionals should have is a love for writing. You’ll not be able to make a career in content marketing if you hate to write.
As you advance your career, you may not have to write the content yourself, but if you’re not the type of person who likes to read and write, content marketing is not for you.
With that being said, the skills and qualifications needed for entry-level content marketers are:
- College degree - To get a job in a big agency or company, you’ll need a Bachelor’s degree in marketing, journalism, communications, or other subjects related to marketing or literature.
- Content marketing certification - is optional but highly recommended for candidates without working experience.
- A certificate does not guarantee that you’re an expert on content marketing, but from experience, employers prefer to hire certified professionals because it shows that the candidate knows the basics and is willing to learn. The most efficient way to get certified is to follow a content marketing course.
- Research and writing skills - You may be asked to create content on topics that you’re not an expert and thus, it’s important to know how to do proper research and write high-quality content. Good knowledge of the English language is also a requirement.
- SEO copywriting skills - Besides writing content, you’ll also need to know how to make it search engine friendly. This is known as SEO copywriting, and it’s a subset of SEO.
- Content marketing tools - All content marketing-related job postings require candidates to know how to use content marketing tools. The most popular are the Google keyword tool, Google Search Console, SEMRush, Ahrefs, and Moz,
- Web analysis and reporting tools - Knowing how to use Google Analytics and Google data studio, although not required, it’s an additional qualification.
Job Description
An entry-level content marketing professional is expected to perform several tasks related to writing content.
The example below shows a typical job posting application looking for a junior content marketing specialist.
As you can see, besides creating compelling content and story-telling, it is required to have a good understanding of various metrics and tools (like Google Analytics) and presentation skills for collaborating with senior team members.
Typical Career Path
The typical career path of a content professional is the following:
- Content Specialist (entry-level)- responsible for creating content. Makes around $35K per year.
- Content Marketer - creating content and running content marketing campaigns. Experienced content marketers make around $50K per year.
- Content Strategist - responsible for creating a content marketing strategy. It can lead a team of one or more content specialists. It can make up to $95K per year.
- Content Marketing Manager - Makes around $98K per year. It’s the person responsible for all the content marketing activities of the company.
- Content Marketing Director- Big companies have the role of content marketing director. The salary, in some cases, goes up to $139K per year.
4. Social Media Manager
A social media manager is a person responsible for managing the social media presence of a company. The social media manager works closely with the digital marketing and content marketing managers to ensure that whatever is published on social media is aligned with the marketing goals of the company.
When you get an entry-level social media job without experience, you’ll be expected to publish posts on various social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok.
As you climb up the ladder, your responsibilities will be to design social media campaigns and analyze their impact, and not necessarily create content.
Related Job Titles
Companies searching to hire junior social media managers to use these job titles when posting a job:
- Social Media Manager (Entry-Level)
- Junior Social Media Managers
- Social Media Manager Associate
- Social Media Manager Assistant
Average Salary
The average salary of junior social media managers is around $40K per year.
In particular:
- Entry-Level Social Media Manager (less than 1-year experience) - $39K per year
- Early Career Social Media Manager (1-4 years of experience) - $49K per year
- Social Media Managers (5-9 years of experience) - $60K per year
Skills Needed
To work as a social media professional, you need the following skills and qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, or a related field
- Experience with Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other popular networks
- Understanding how advertising works on all social media platforms, especially Facebook
- Experience with social media management tools like Buffer and OnlyPult
- Basic image editing skills and experience with image editing tools like Appy Pie Design, Canva, Photoshop, or related
- Basic Video marketing skills
- Google Analytics skills
- Good content marketing skills
- Basic digital marketing skills
Job Description
The job of a social media manager varies depending on the needs of a company or agency. In most cases though, companies looking to hire an entry-level social media manager want someone to update their social media pages with engaging content, respond to comments, and monitor the performance of social media campaigns using various KPIs.
The job posting below is a good example of a typical entry-level job in social media.
Typical Career Path
Unlike other entry-level digital marketing roles, the career path of a social media manager is not clearly defined.
Basically, there are two positions for social media professionals. Junior social media managers whose job is to update social media pages with content and experienced social media managers that are responsible for running social media campaigns.
5. PPC Specialist (SEM)
A PPC specialist, commonly referred to as SEM Specialist or Paid Ads Manager, is the person responsible for running paid search campaigns on Google, Bing, and other networks.
During our research, we did find a few large companies looking for experienced PPC managers, but for entry-level positions, most job postings were from marketing agencies.
Related Job Titles
Other Job names related to PPC specialists are the following:
- Paid Ads Manager
- Paid Marketing Manager
- Paid Seach Tech
- Entry-Level Paid Search (SEM) Coordinator
- SEM Specialist Trainee
- Digital Advertising Specialist
- Junior Associate, Paid Search
- Junior Online Advertising Specialist
Average Salary
The average salary of an entry-level Search Engine Marketing Specialist is around $41K per year. It increases to $47K per year for mid-career professionals (5-9 years of experience) and then maximizes to $56K per year (regardless of years of experience).
Skills Needed
The essential skills for PPC specialists are:
- Very good knowledge of the different PPC platforms, especially Google Ads, Bing Ads, and Facebook Ads.
- Keyword research skills with the Google keyword tool and other professional tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc
- Google Analytics and Google Data manager skills
- Google Data Studio Skills.
Job Description
The job responsibilities of a PPC specialist are to manage and optimize PPC campaigns. The daily tasks include:
- Conducting keyword research
- Monitoring the performance of paid campaigns
- Creating new ads / optimizing existing ads
- Analyzing campaign performance and creating reports
- Performing competitor analysis
The following job posting summarizes what is needed to get an entry-level job as a PPC professional.
Typical Career Path
The career path for paid advertising professionals is simple compared to other digital marketing professionals.
When you get the job with no experience, you’ll perform tasks assigned to you by senior PPC specialists until you show that you can handle campaigns independently. At this point, you’ll become a PPC manager or PPC expert and continue doing the same work for the rest of your career.
6. Graphics Designer
Online campaigns have a continuous need for graphics whether this is web design, ads, infographics, charts, or illustrations, and they have a working relationship with a graphic designer.
Big companies and agencies prefer to have their in-house graphic design team, but small businesses usually outsource this task.
Related Job Titles
When searching for a graphic design job, make sure that you check these job titles as well:
- Graphics Design Assistant
- Entry-Level Graphic & Web Designer
- Entry Level Graphic Designer
- Entry-Level Visual Designer
- Design Intern
- Associate Graphic Designer
Average Salary
The average annual salary for an entry-level graphic designer is $38K.
- Designers with 1 to 4 years of experience get $43K per year.
- Designers with 5 to 9 years of experience get $49K per year.
Skills Needed
The most commonly requested skills are:
- Bachelor’s degree in fine arts, graphic design, marketing, or a related field
- Ability to work independently or as part of a team
- Good writing skills
- Knowledge of popular design tools like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
- Ability to work with popular CMS like WordPress
- Good knowledge of CSS and HTML5
Job Description
Graphic designers are expected to create visual designs for the needs of various digital marketing campaigns.
Unlike other digital marketing jobs, to work as a web designer you need talent. Anyone can learn how to use Photoshop but to create outstanding designs to fulfill the purpose of an ad or a presentation, you need to have talent.
So, before considering making a career as a visual designer, ask yourself if you can compete with the hundreds of talented designers and if you have something different to offer as an online artist.
When you’re ready for the challenge, here is a typical job posting that summarizes what employers are looking for when hiring entry-level graphic designers.
Typical Career Path
The career path of a graphic designer is simple. You start as an associate and follow the instructions of senior graphic designers, and as you gain experience, you get to handle projects on your own. Graphic designers with good HR skills can lead the graphics design team.
In a company structure, the graphics team is usually directly under the supervision of the digital marketing manager.
7. Affiliate Marketing Manager
Affiliate marketing managers are responsible for managing the online affiliate marketing program of a company. Not all companies have an affiliate program, so the demand is not so big compared to other digital marketing jobs, but the salary is good, especially for growing affiliate programs.
Related Job Titles
If you’re interested in pursuing a career as an affiliate marketing manager, look for job postings that have these titles:
- Affiliate Marketing Strategist
- Associate Affiliate Manager
- Affiliate Manager (Entry-Level)
Average Salary
- An affiliate marketing associate can expect to make $46K per year.
- An early career affiliate marketing professional makes around $54K per year.
- Experienced affiliate marketing managers make $62K per year (5 to 9 years of experience) and $71K per year (more than 10 years of experience).
Have in mind that in some cases affiliate marketers work with a basic salary + commission. So, the better results you can deliver for the company, the higher your salary will be.
Skills Needed
- Bachelor’s degree in marketing, communications, sales, or related fields
- Good knowledge of digital marketing
- Good knowledge of eCommerce marketing
- Good writing skills
- Excellent communication skills
Job Description
The responsibilities of an affiliate marketer are to promote the affiliate program of the company. By promoting, we mean finding new affiliate partners and working with them to increase sales.
Big affiliate programs offer personal support to their affiliate partners, which is part of the job responsibilities of affiliate managers.
Here is a typical job application looking for an affiliate marketing manager.
Typical Career Path
As an associate, you will be trained to find new business partners, and as you become more experienced, you can be in charge of a team of associates or eventually become the affiliate marketing manager of the company.
How Do I Get a Job in Digital Marketing with No Experience?
To secure your first digital marketing job, follow these four steps:
- Build your digital marketing skills
- Choose your career path
- Do some freelancing work (even for free)
- Prepare for the interview
Getting your first entry-level online marketing job can seem like a big challenge, especially when you don’t have any work experience.
But that’s ok, none of the digital marketing professionals had a prior experience when they first started.
The good news is that there are a number of things you can do, to equip yourself with the necessary skills and qualifications so that when you apply for a job, to have more chances of getting hired.
Once you are in the field, with hard work and additional training, you can go from junior to expert or even manager, earn more money and deal with the more interesting aspects of digital marketing.
1. Build your digital marketing skills
The first step is to build your digital marketing skills. Even if you have a degree in marketing or other related fields, this is not enough to land your first job.
We've been hiring entry-level digital marketers for years now, and I can tell you that the last thing we look at is the University degree. The reason is simple. University degrees are good for teaching the theory of digital marketing, but when it comes to real-life scenarios, you need more than that.
We don’t expect associates to have the same knowledge and skills as experts, and that’s ok since they have no working experience, but we expect candidates to prove that they are passionate about digital marketing.
To be more precise, you cannot apply for a digital marketing job and have no website of your own. There is no excuse.
You shouldn't expect to get a job and learn how to create a website, write content, work on SEO, etc. These are skills that you can easily build while at the university or even high school using the hundreds of learning resources and online courses you can find on the Internet.
So, if you want to differentiate yourself from other entry-level candidates, show your future employer that you have what it takes to work as an online marketing professional.
2. Choose your career path
Digital marketing is not a single discipline, but it consists of several online marketing channels. Each channel has its own career path and job roles.
A typical digital marketing team has the following members and job roles (from right to left):
- Digital marketing director > Digital marketing manager > Digital marketing specialist
- SEO director > SEO manager > SEO expert > SEO specialist
- Social media manager > Social media specialist
- PPC director > PPC manager > PPC specialist
- Content director > Content marketing manager > Content Specialist
- Affiliate marketing manager > Affiliate marketing specialist
As you have seen above, not all jobs are equal. Some entry-level jobs pay more and have bigger career opportunities, so it’s better to choose your career path from the beginning.
To make your decision, consider the following:
- What do you like doing?
- Do you prefer working alone or as part of a team?
- Do you like writing and creating content, or prefer looking at statistics and creating reports?
- Do you like managing people or prefer to stay on the technical ladder?
- What is your main objective, to climb the corporate ladder or become an entrepreneur and start your own digital marketing agency?
3. Do some freelancing work (even for free)
I know it’s not easy to get hired as a digital marketing freelancer if you have no experience, but that does not stop you from offering your services for free. Why should you do this?
It will make a huge difference when applying for a job to have something to talk about that shows that you’re confident in your skills.
I’ve mentioned above that you definitely need to have your own website and blog, but if you want to take it a step further, you can build a small portfolio too.
How?
I’m sure someone you know (friends, relatives) has a website or business. Offer to do some work for them without getting paid for it. In most cases, nobody will refuse a site redesign if its’ for free or a technical SEO review.
There are many tasks you can perform even if you're not experienced that can help you differentiate your job application from the rest.
Put yourself in the employer mindset. Who would you hire, someone that has no experience but made no effort to learn and experiment or someone that is actively looking for ways to improve and become better?
4. Prepare for the interview
Let me give you some tips on preparing for your digital marketing job interview. My advice is based on the questions we ask when we hire new associates, but I’m sure other employers follow similar tactics.
- Be on time, whether its a physical interview or online
- Get to know as much as you can about the company - what services they offer, who the manager was when the company was founded, etc
- When asked a specific question about a digital marketing technique, don’t tell them the theory (they already know this) but the practical steps you would follow to complete the specific task.
- When you don’t know an answer, be honest. It’s better to say ‘I don’t know' rather than give a wrong answer.
- Be yourself. There is no reason to panic. If you don't do well in this interview, learn from your mistakes, and apply for the next one.
Where to Find Entry-Level Digital Marketing Jobs?
There are many websites you can use to find entry-level digital marketing jobs and work for a company remotely (work-from-home jobs), work as a freelancer, or work in an office with the typical 9 to 5.
If you want to work for a company (either remote or physical presence), the best places to find an entry-level marketing job are:
If you want to work as a remote freelancer and get clients directly, the best sites are:
When you apply for a job on any of the above websites, make sure that:
You apply fast - Digital marketing jobs are in high demand right now, and once you post a job, you get tens of applications within a few hours. Employers may not review all applications if they find what they want, so the faster you can reply, the better.
You can monitor those websites daily and prepare your draft answers in advance based on the requirements of existing job postings. This way, when it’s time to apply, you’ll adjust your replies and submit your application.
You answer all the questions - Read the job requirements carefully and answer all raised questions. Employers look at these details. The first impression counts, and if you fail to follow their instructions, it is unlikely that your application will make it through the screening process.
Be honest - When asked to describe your experience, don’t lie. Don’t forget that besides the written application, you’ll also need to pass the interview and if you’re caught lying about your skills or experience, you’ll have no chance of getting hired.
Digital Marketing Jobs: The Bottom Line
Working in the digital marketing industry is a great career choice. There are hundreds of entry-level digital marketing jobs to choose from, and the demand is constantly rising.
The best entry-level job for marketing professionals is that of a Digital marketing specialist. Digital marketing professionals get higher salaries and have more career advancement opportunities compared to other marketing jobs.
