The Best Entry Level Online Marketing Jobs
How I landed an online marketing job
When I was in college, I knew I didn’t want to work a 9 to 5. I’d rather work an online job than a normal office job because working online gave me more control over my time. I wanted to specifically find an online marketing job because those were the jobs that were easiest for me to learn.
Although finding and landing an online marketing job is difficult, it’s lifechanging. The ability to have your work completely remote allows you to take control of your time and work on other passions. This is how I’m writing this blog post right now.
In this post, I’m going to go over which entry level online marketing jobs are the best, what you’ll do in the job and where you can go to find these jobs.
1. Social media manager ($35k-$80k)
As a social media manager, you will be responsible for growing the audience for companies on popular social media platforms. A social media manager job is a broad definition, but the actual job you’ll apply for will require you to be an expert at marketing on one or two platforms.
For example, running a Twitter account requires a different skillset than running a TikTok account. Many people want to be social media managers, so standing out in the application pool will be more difficult.
The best way to market yourself for this role is to show results. If you have a track record of growing organic audiences on a social media platform, that will serve you better than a resume. Once you actually do the real work to market yourself, do applications, etc., a social media manager job can be one of the most fun online marketing jobs.
2. Content writer ($29k-$64k)
A content writer is exactly what the job sounds like: you write for companies. This is how I got started in online marketing.
As a content writer, you’ll spend your days writing content like blogs, whitepapers, case studies and more for your company. These types of content help bring more customers to your company.
The good thing about content writing is that the barrier to entry is relatively low. All you need is a strong writing background and you can start pitching companies to write for them. Once you have a portfolio of samples, that’s enough to use to land a job.
Once you have the job, you’ll spend your days writing and editing content for the company you work for.
3. Copywriter ($38k-$76k)
Copywriting is one of the best online marketing jobs. Instead of content writing where you are mainly just writing content to inform, copywriting requires you to write to sell. As a copywriter, your performance will be based on how well you can convert readers into customers.
With copywriting, you will have to write engaging writing on landing pages, emails, banners, descriptions and more. As an entry level copywriter, you will spend most of your time learning what to tweak to get readers to do what you want.
As you progress through your career, you can demand much higher rates depending on how good of a copywriter you are. There are many copywriters who can demand over 6 figures because they bring so much value to a company.
4. Marketing coordinator ($43k-$71k)
A marketing coordinator is a marketer that wears a lot of hats for a team. Depending on the company you work at, your role may differ greatly. In general, a marketing coordinator will need to manage marketing team events, be able to perform research on customer behavior and be proficient in tools like Microsoft Office and Excel.
Since the marketing coordinator will deal with all types of people within a marketing team, they have to be a good written and verbal communicator. For a remote marketing coordinator, you will also need to be proficient in online communication tools like Slack, Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
5. Graphic design ($46k-$75k)
Graphic designers work with marketing teams to use images and design to improve branding and marketing campaigns. They bring visual concepts to life with the use of software programs.
As a graphic designer, your day to day work will entail meeting with clients, using photo editing software and making updates to previous design projects. To get a graphic design job, you’ll need to have a certain skill set that’s valuable to your employer.
This will include knowing how to use Adobe Creative Suite, knowing different types of website design and more. Not all graphic design work is the same, you’ll have to tailor your application to the specific needs of your potential employer.
Graphic design is also a job where you can do freelance work. This is a good way to get experience and get paid while building your portfolio.
6. SEO specialist ($25k-$64k)
An SEO specialist is a marketer who is focused on improving how a website performs on search engines like Google. SEO stands for search engine optimization and that’s what an SEO specialist will spend their time doing.
An SEO specialist will need skills like keyword research, competitor research, make content recommendations, link building and more.
The SEO specialist is a very important member of the marketing team because their work brings free and organic traffic to a website. SEO is probably the hardest technical job on this list, but it’s the most rewarding.
If you have a solid understanding of SEO, you can use that for your own business.
For example, this blog I’m writing right now requires me to have a basic understanding of SEO. In order to get organic traffic from Google to my site, I need to target low competition keywords that I can rank for.
Once traffic comes to my site, I can make money by displaying ads, using affiliate links and more.
7. Digital marketing analyst ($41k-$92k)
A digital marketing analyst is someone who monitors and manages how marketing campaigns are performing. The digital marketing analyst plays a huge role in figuring out where a company can improve in their marketing efforts.
A typical digital marketing analyst will have access to the marketing data of a company. They can see exactly what the company is doing and what results current efforts are generating.
As a digital marketing analyst, you will need to track important metrics, analyze customer behavior and help create a strategy for the company to improve their marketing campaigns. The more experienced a digital marketing analyst, the higher the salary they can demand.
8. PPC specialist ($35k-$79k)
A Pay Per Click (PPC) specialist is a marketer that specialized in paid marketing for a company. Companies spend a lot of money on pay per click advertisements on platforms like Google and Amazon.
A PPC specialist is someone who is an expert at generating a high return on investment (ROI) for their company. Common skills that a PPC specialist will need include:
- Understanding of keyword research
- Landing page design
- Ability to use analytics to improve campaigns and more
An experienced PPC specialist can earn well over 6 figures because they bring so much value to a company.
9. Email marketing specialist ($33k-$70k)
An email marketing specialist is a marketer that focuses primarily on email campaigns for a business. Email marketing is basically managing the email efforts for a company. Many companies often have a list of customer emails and they send out emails to promote products, announce events and more.
As an email marketing specialist, you’ll need to possess skills like using email software, managing multiple email campaigns, compiling email lists and more. These skills are mainly acquired by actually doing it. If you want some experience, I’d recommend contacting a company and asking to do it for free to get familiar with how it works.
It takes time to get good at email marketing, but you don’t need to be the best email marketer to land a job. As long as you have some experience and are willing to learn, you can find a company to hire you that will help expand your skills.
10. Marketing associate ($35k-$68k)
A marketing associate is an entry level position on the marketing team of a company. As a marketing associate, you will do administrative work like doing research for marketing campaigns, editing content, prepare marketing reports and more.
Most companies will require a bachelor’s degree in communication, English, writing or a similar discipline. This is not a hard requirement if you possess skills and experience. You will need to show companies you’ve worked with along with the type of work you produced if you don’t have a college degree.
As a remote marketing associate, you will have to be really good with communicating with your colleagues and managers. You should have a basic understanding of how to use online communication tools like Slack, Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
Where can you find these jobs?
Now that we’ve covered what these great online marketing jobs are, we have to figure out how to find them and maximize our chances of landing a role. Here are some of the ways you can find great online marketing jobs.
Free job boards: You should first look at free job boards to see the maximum amount of job listings for your particular online marketing job. The best free job boards include:
- Indeed.com
- LinkedIn jobs
- Angel.co
- ZipRecruiter
- Glassdoor
These sites have thousands of jobs posted every day. Going through these for a few minutes each day will expose you to many online marketing jobs that you may be a fit for.
A smart way to use these sites is to create alerts for keywords on there. For example, if I’m a content writer, I’ll search for content writing jobs on there and the sites will ask if you’d like an alert sent to your email when a new job is posted.
Doing this for 2-3 job sites will allow you to have dozens of online marketing jobs sent directly to your email each week. If you upload your resume on there and CV, you can quickly apply to jobs.
The only downside to these sites is that there’s a lot of competition, especially for remote jobs.
Paid job boards: There are paid job boards that list jobs that only members of a site can see. This can be extremely beneficial because it reduces the competition in the application pool.
If you have to compete with 20 applicants instead of 2,000, your chances of landing a role go up dramatically.
These job boards are paid because they bring a lot of value for applicants. For paid job boards, I only recommend FlexJobs. It’s the only paid job board that’s legitimate and it has a A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau.
FlexJobs: FlexJobs is the best site for finding remote work, freelance work and stay at home work. The FlexJobs membership is $14.95 per month and you can cancel it as soon as you find a job.
The $14.95 gets you access to the FlexJobs job board that has thousands of remote jobs posted each month. Additionally, they have career coaching and resume reviews to help you stand out as an applicant.
Final thoughts
When you’re trying to land these online marketing jobs, know that it’s a marathon. Even if you apply for hundreds of remote jobs now, you may not land a role immediately.
What you need to do is learn a few skills that are important for your job and start applying. You will quickly figure out if you’re a competitive applicant or not.
Take the feedback and improve your application and skillset. It took me about 6 months until I started to some success as a remote content writer. I did work for free to build my portfolio and reached out to clients and landed some gigs.
If you keep improving your application over time, you’re bound to land a job. The hard part is not quitting when you get many rejections. If you want to learn more about how I work remotely, I post my income reports on this blog each month. Feel free to check out my latest one here, you can see what I’m doing and take anything beneficial and apply into your efforts.