Question for Digital/Content Marketing Professionals Regarding Career Growth

[deek]

What are the best things intermediate level employees can do to increase their earning potential? Gain certificates? Prove value through KPIs/sales? Take on new responsibilities? I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you are a manager/business owner/president of any kind, I'd like to hear your input.

I'm a content specialist for a great, forward thinking company and am not too far away from hitting the 40K/year mark for the first time at 27 years old. I feel that I can speed this up a little bit, and am just doing some information gathering.

Thanks!!

[gooki]

Job hop every two years or so.

At 20% raise each time you can increase your income 60% in just 4 years. Eventually you’ll hit a ceiling, but experience and willingness to change typically beats certificates.

[MaaS]

What are the best things intermediate level employees can do to increase their earning potential? Gain certificates? Prove value through KPIs/sales? Take on new responsibilities? I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you are a manager/business owner/president of any kind, I'd like to hear your input.

I'm a content specialist for a great, forward thinking company and am not too far away from hitting the 40K/year mark for the first time at 27 years old. I feel that I can speed this up a little bit, and am just doing some information gathering.

Thanks!!

Be wary of certificates. If it's a platform certification (e.g. Marketo, HubSpot, Google Ads) it has some value as it demonstrates knowledge of key tools that many departments lack. These are usually free and delivered by the company, not a third party. If it's a more general (and often paid) certification (e.g. Strategic Marketing), it's likely a ripoff.  Hiring managers won't say "OMG that guy/gal strategic!" and offer you more money. But, they will say "that person understands HubSpot and can help us utilize our investment."

My advice: If you're a top performer, go into consulting.  Almost every business has a customer acquisition cost problem. If you can fix it, you'll be paid well and won't have dead weight stealing the monetary value you create. Source: I do this.   

My other advice: If you take my advice, do NOT hire a "digital marketing business coach." They make snake oil look like a good investment.

[deek]

Job hop every two years or so.

At 20% raise each time you can increase your income 60% in just 4 years. Eventually you’ll hit a ceiling, but experience and willingness to change typically beats certificates.

I hear this a lot, but I work for a fantastic company and I have no plans to leave any time soon. They can make it possible for me to work remotely down the road if I were ever to move. And I'm in a good position as I have basically launched the social media content strategy off the ground and am getting us more and more brand awareness. We are an e-commerce company.

I don't want to lose the flexibility I have with them just to score a bigger paycheck, so I'm seeing what I can do to increase my pay faster with the same company.

[Fuzz]

There are lots of other great companies that will let you work remotely. Job hopping is a real answer, even if it's not one you like.

Can you connect your contribution to revenues? Can you connect your current contribution to future revenues?

If you're driving X in business to the firm, then it's easy to argue that you should be paid a percentage of X.