Digital marketing is a term that relates to all promotional activities that happen online. From social media management and content marketing to paid advertising and artificial intelligence (AI), digital marketing covers a wide net of specialist skills.
With the right approach, digital marketing is an art. Regardless of your role, digital marketing is about addressing your audience’s pain points and delivering solutions across the right channels, at the right time. If you’re creative, analytical – or both – digital marketing can be a rewarding and lucrative career path.
According to Expert Market Research, the digital marketing market is projected to reach a global value of $1099.33 billion by 2032. This level of growth – particularly with the help of generative AI – offers great opportunities for ambitious professionals looking to carve out a successful digital marketing career.
If you’re considering a digital marketing career , you might be wondering which path to take. Whether you want to kickstart your digital journey or are considering a career switch, here are the top digital marketing career paths to watch this year.
- What are the best digital marketing career paths in 2025?
- Is digital marketing a good career?
- What are the highest paying jobs in digital marketing?
- What to consider when choosing a digital marketing career
What are the best digital marketing career paths in 2025?
If you’re looking for a career in digital marketing, the good news is that there are plenty of rewarding roles and paths to consider.
1. Social media manager
Social Media Manager jobs are expected to grow by 10% between now and 2028. This level of growth equates to around 33,700 new jobs within the next decade.
So, what does a social media manager do? A social media manager is responsible for creating a targeted content strategy for a brand’s various social media channels. This role also commands analytical skills as you have to measure and monitor campaign performance across channels while identifying potential growth opportunities.
So if you like interacting with people on social media and you’re both creative and analytical, this may be the role for you.
Key duties:
- Create relevant and meaningful content for specific audiences for a variety of social media channels including Instagram, X, Facebook, Threads, and TikTok.
- Regularly monitor social media analytics to measure performance, identify patterns or trends, and evolve your strategy to meet your audiences’ needs.
- Develop social media strategies with other digital marketing stakeholders to promote specific campaigns, services or products.
- Schedule social posts and manage a content creation calendar to ensure a consistent presence across social media channels.
- Regularly engage and interact with your audience to increase engagement, cultivate a community, and build trust.
Enrol in our Social Media Marketing course
2. Email marketing specialist
Email marketing is one of the longest-standing forms of digital marketing and it’s still one of the most effective. Why? It’s because email marketing can be easily personalized and deliver value-driven content directly to your prospects’ or customers’ inbox.
An email marketing specialist is responsible for everything ‘email’, including campaign development, email content creation, sourcing visuals, tracking performance data, and creating automated workflows for nurturing customers (and earning sales!).
If you’re a good communicator (and quick writer!), fascinated by automated technology, believe in the value of data-driven marketing, and are persuasive, this may be the digital marketing career path for you.
Key duties:
- Create and develop a brand or business’s email marketing strategy.
- Put together campaign concepts and implement them.
- Manage email marketing lists and segment subscribers into relevant audience groups based on demographics, interests, buying behavoirs or engagement levels.
- Track analytics to monitor performance and identify ways to improve content or strategy.
- Use A/B testing to optimize your content creation efforts for the best possible results.
- Manage platform integrations, automations, and workflows to improve efficiency and earn the best return on investment (ROI) from your email marketing efforts.
Enrol in our Email Marketing short course
3. SEO specialist
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a vital branch of digital marketing as it involves activities and strategies that will make a brand more visible for relevant search terms on Google and other search engines.
The world of SEO is ever-evolving – especially with the rise of AI Search – so as an SEO specialist, you have to keep your finger well and truly on the pulse.
While SEO strategies are constantly changing, the value of search engine optimization in helping to rank content and boost brand visibility remains. As such, it’s an in-demand digital marketing career path.
If you’re someone who loves to keep on top of the latest digital marketing trends, have a keen eye for detail, like data, and are adaptable, being a SEO specialist could be the right move.
Key duties:
- Conduct on-site and off-site analysis to gain intelligence on your competitors.
- Use data platforms like Google Analytics (GA4) to collect valuable insights and build performance reports.
- Help create, curate, and develop informative, authoritative, and engaging SEO-optimized content.
- Create on-site and off-site SEO strategies for brands and businesses.
- Contribute to the company blog, and play a pivotal role in the development and delivery of the company’s key marketing campaigns.
- Conduct in-depth keyword research in line with the latest keyword strategies.
- Keep up to date with the most recent trends and developments in search marketing.
- Understand and respond to consistent Google algorithm changes.
- Build relationships with relevant industry influencers and maintain a company’s link portfolio.
- Integrate your SEO strategy with paid marketing and paid search campaigns to create maximum impact.
Enrol in our Professional Search Marketing course
4. Content marketing manager
Content marketing is more valuable than ever. To cut through the noise online, brands are investing in specialists who can push creative boundaries, develop content that offers value, and brings a brand to life.
As a content marketing manager, you’ll play a vital role in shaping a brand’s online presence. You’ll be responsible for developing targeted ideas and creating a variety of content types (blog posts, whitepapers, infographics, thought-leadership articles, etc.) while overseeing the entire content strategy.
So if you’re incredibly creative, brimming with ideas, have solid writing skills, can use prompts on AI tools like ChatGPT, and the will to learn the intricacies of data-driven marketing and SEO writing, you can become a successful content marketing manager.
Key duties:
- Develop content strategies aligned with the brand’s short- and long-term marketing targets.
- Create and publish engaging content for specific audiences on a consistent basis.
- Take responsibility for updating a brand’s content style and tone of voice (TOV) guidelines.
- Edit, proofread, and improve content (internal and freelancers) and help to develop their content skills.
- Collaborate with other content producers within the business to ensure brand consistency across channels and touchpoints.
- Help optimize and update content according to SEO best practices.
- Use digital tools to analyze website traffic, improve content production processes, and increase user engagement.
- Create and update an editorial calendar to ensure your team consistently produces and publishes high-quality content.
- Lead content campaigns and collaborate with other departments to ensure the successful delivery of various assets and initiatives.
- Ensure content is compliant in areas such as copyright law and data protection.
- Research industry news and trends and share insights with your team on a regular basis to stay ahead of the curve.
Enrol in our Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing
5. Digital marketing manager
The role of a digital marketing manager is extensive as it covers all of a brand’s promotional activities online.
As a digital marketing manager, you’ll be responsible for overseeing performance for every single digital marketing activity and ensuring all channels work together to drive consistent ROI across the board.
The role of a digital marketing manager is varied and rewarding – but it’s a big responsibility. You’ll need to have a firm grasp of all digital marketing skills and competencies (including the ones featured in this guide) to be a successful digital marketing manager.
Key duties:
- Create strategies and plans that involve driving growth, engagement, and visibility across every digital marketing channel.
- Develop omnichannel marketing campaigns that drive revenue, improve brand awareness, and deliver a consistently healthy ROI.
- Liaise with senior decision-makers as well as sales and marketing professionals to demonstrate the value of efforts and delegate work to the right people at the right time.
- Analyze performance metrics across channels to discover fresh opportunities for growth and drive the business forward.
- Keep up to date with industry trends and share them with the rest of your team to ensure you stay responsive, relevant, and successful in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Enrol in our Master in Digital Marketing
6. Paid ads specialist
Paid advertising is a vital part of any solid digital marketing campaign as with the right approach, it offers an excellent ROI. If you master the art of pay-per-click (PPC) and paid social advertising, you can enjoy a rewarding career.
A paid ads specialist is responsible for using a mix of creative and analytics strategies to target specific audiences and drive awareness, engagement or sales. There are lots of platforms to master as a paid ads specialist, including Meta, Google Ads, TikTok, and Amazon Ads along with learning how to master programmatic advertising.
If you’re a keen learner, you have excellent planning skills, you can manage budgets effectively, and you have creative flair, being a paid ads specialist could be for you.
Key duties:
- Develop paid ad strategies across platforms that align with key business goals and campaigns.
- Create eye-catching ad visuals and copy that commands attention, inspires action, and converts.
- Set up and manage search, display, shopping, video, and remarketing campaigns.
- Optimize ad targeting efforts, bidding strategies, and audience segmentation.
- Carry out A/B testing to optimize ads for the results in terms of engagement conversions, and return on ad spend (ROAS).
- Track and analyze ad performance across platforms including Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, conversion tracking pixels, and social media metrics.
- Formulate retargeting and remarketing campaigns to re-engage specific audience segments and inspire them to invest in your brand or business.
7. AI marketing specialist
The adoption of Artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise. In fact, 92% of businesses across sectors plan to invest in generative AI tools over the next three years, according to research by McKinsey.
In addition to generative AI tools, businesses are also using AI marketing tools and platforms to streamline processes and automate certain marketing tasks including audience segmentation and email marketing workflows. AI agents are also starting to make their capabilities known.
As a digital marketer, it’s important to embrace AI and use it to complement your efforts. If you’re interested in AI, it could make a solid career path for digital marketing. As AI adoption continues to spread, companies are keen to hire AI marketing specialists to improve productivity and increase innovation across channels.
As this role is constantly evolving, it can be hard to say exactly what’s involved as it could change tomorrow. . But, the core duties of an AI marketing specialist include leveraging AI tools to improve all digital marketing processes while providing in-house support and training.
You’ll also be responsible for using (and even training) generative AI engines like ChatGPT to produce high-quality briefs and guides for marketers within an organization.
These are the core duties of an AI marketing specialist, but as it promises to be such an important role in the near future – the scope of it is enormous.
AI resources to read:
- 10 Eye Opening AI Marketing Stats
- Best Examples of AI in Marketing
- AI in Digital Marketing – The Ultimate Guide
Enrol in our AI for Business and Marketing short course
Is digital marketing a good career?
If you choose a digital marketing career path that aligns with your interests and passions, you’re likely to find it very rewarding.
Choose a branch of digital marketing that fits your personal attributes and that you’ll be motivated to keep learning about in the long term. Digital marketing is a career that allows you to change paths and pivot as long as you’re committed to continual learning such as industry aligned certifications to keep skills fresh and demonstrate knowledge to employers.
So if you work hard and master a variety of digital marketing skills, you can go beyond a digital marketing manager to become a Chief Marketing Officer, a C-suite role that oversees the entire marketing department from an executive level.
A CMO has the potential to make more than £100,000 a year – so it’s safe to say that a career in digital marketing is worth pursuing if you’re committed.
Check out our podcast chat with Peter Murphy Lewis, a successful fractional CMO, to learn how he got to where he is.
What are the highest paying jobs in digital marketing?
In addition to CMOs, digital marketing managers and senior marketing specialists typically earn the most within the sector, but it’s also worth knowing the digital skills that can increase your salary.
According to data from GrowthBuddy, digital marketing salaries range from around £25,000 for entry level jobs to an excess of £80,000 for senior marketing jobs.
Compensation for specific digital marketing roles vary depending on organization, location, and experience. But senior marketing jobs and highly-specialist roles typically pay the most in the world of digital marketing.
What to consider when choosing a digital marketing career
If you’re considering a career in digital marketing and you’re not sure which path to choose, here’s a checklist to help you make the right decision.
- What aspects of digital marketing excite me the most?
- Which attributes, talents or interests align with digital marketing roles that interest me?
- Am I willing to learn the skills necessary to become successful in the roles I’m considering?
- Is there the potential for me to grow and progress in my potential digital marketing career options?
- Which kind of environment will I thrive in most (remote, agency, in-house, etc.)
- What are my long-term career goals within digital marketing?
- What are my ultimate salary expectations?
Now that you know which digital marketing careers are available to you, take the time to look back over this guide in detail and choose a path that excites you.
Supercharge your digital marketing career
There’s no better or faster way to break into the digital industry than with a digital marketing certification. DMI’s certified and industry aligned Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing will teach you the fundamentals of digital marketing, show you how to leverage AI in your marketing activities and simple ways to cultivate soft skills. You’ll also explore key channels such as email marketing, social media, SEO, content marketing, and display and video advertising to execute successful marketing campaigns in any industry.
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Dan Hughes
Dan is a content writer specializing in digital marketing, emerging tech, music and looking after a toddler. You can find out more about him and his work by visiting his Catchy Space.
