Marketers share details about their salary, job satisfaction, and where they get the info to stay ahead of the game as well as the best places to go for new marketing ideas.
Salary
Salaries have mostly remained level with last year (Figure 3). However, there was a small bump in the number of people making between $100,000 and $150,000 (from 29% to 36%). Product managers should also be happy to learn that the large boost in the people making over $200,000 has carried over from last year, which indicates that 2010 may have been an outlier.
Satisfaction
Marketers remain satisfied with their current positions overall, but it appears some are becoming a little more frustrated in other areas (Figure 4). For starters, only 9% of respondents were “very satisfied” with their salary compared to 20% last year. Satisfaction numbers also dropped regarding career growth opportunities (from 20% to 14%), brand resources (13% to 7%), and the company regulatory environment (11% to 8%). The good news is that even while product managers’ jobs are becoming more difficult, they are getting more support. Nearly 80% were more than “somewhat satisfied” with their brand teams.
Resources
The majority of respondents still prefer to get info about how to manage their career from print industry magazines (with the digital version of the magazine coming in second). Social media was the biggest gainer from last year (which was at 5%), with just over half of respondents claiming it as one of their most important resources. Beyond that top three, marketers rank the rest accordingly: e-Newsletters, online magazines, mobile apps, RSS feeds, and blogs.
Those same trends, however, don’t apply to information sources that marketers use to manage their brands (Figure 5). In fact, the importance levels in all of these areas have remained relatively steady. But, even though product managers love social networks for career advice, they still don’t trust them for brand info. Their preferred resources are once again: Competitive intelligence, industry news, regulatory news, FDA alerts, and industry events & meetings, respectively.
