Content Marketing Shouldn’t Be a Dead-End Career

But it will be unless content leaders hammer out a content-specific career ladder

To move up in an organization, talented content practitioners must move on. That’s a problem. This career ladder will help you give team members a way up – before they look for a way out.

By Robert Rose

Content marketing is growing exponentially. But the advancement ladder for content practitioners is missing most of its rungs.

While many organizations consider content marketing an important, functional strategy (pardon us while we at CMI pat ourselves on the back), most have no idea how to build a career ladder for this function (and we stop patting ourselves on the back).

In most businesses I visit, I find confusion about where these content practitioners should live in the organization structure. Worse, I see a dead end for many.

To move up, talented content practitioners must move on – meaning they move out of the team and maybe away from the brand.

That’s a problem for content teams – and the industry as a whole. The practice of content marketing can’t be a strategic part of the business if practitioners can’t reach the highest positions in the business.

Why formalize a
content career path?

A World Economic Forum January 2020 report, Jobs of Tomorrow, projects that job opportunities in the category “sales, marketing, and content” will be the second-highest behind only health care.

And, within that category, the report calls the strategy of content marketing a core priority for additional learning for students looking to explore these job opportunities.

The number of companies constructing in-house marketing agencies is also on the rise. In 2018, the Association of National Advertisers released research that revealed 78% of their members reported having “some form of an in-house agency,” as compared to 58% in 2013.

Among the services these internal teams provided, content marketing saw the largest increase: 75% handled content marketing in 2018 compared to 34% in 2013.

In 2020, the ANA’s report on the post-COVID marketing world found “50% of survey respondents identified their in-house agency as the ‘most important’ resource for producing new creative assets.”

All these numbers add up to this: Content marketing practitioners and content strategists face a positive environment for job opportunities. Companies desperately need talent for the in-house creative and content marketing functions they’re building and increasingly relying on.

So, what’s the problem?

Dead-end content kids

The problem lies in the relatively low career ceiling in the practice of marketing and communications.

Regardless of whether they’re an individual contributor or a team lead, most content marketers and content strategists have only three choices once they reach the senior manager level.

They can:

Move into a more traditional marketing role, leaving behind content marketing and content strategy
Leave the company for a lateral position at another company
Leave to build a solo practice

I want to change this.

Why we need a
content career ladder

When I was CMO of a fast-growing startup, a mentor told me that hiring someone is the only truly expensive thing a company does. And then he added, “Make sure you do it carefully.”

If hiring is expensive, so is losing a good employee. It’s been said replacing an employee who quits costs on average 21% of their annual pay.

But the answer isn’t to tie the content practitioner to the traditional marketing career ladder. If businesses aim to transform every marketer into a brand-selling machine, they’re missing the point of the experience economy – and jeopardizing their ability to retain the talented communicators of tomorrow.

Hiring is expensive. So is losing a good employee.

@Robert_Rose

Your HR department almost certainly has a career ladder for traditional marketing roles. In other words, they have a description of what it means to be an entry-level marketing specialist, a marketing manager, senior manager, director, and so on.

But few organizations have a laddering path for content practitioners. I know because I’ve been asked many times to help organizations create them.

I’m not suggesting the roles, titles, or even the kind of team you should build. (If you’re interested in my recommendations for those, read The 7 Core Roles of a 2020 Content Marketing Team.)

I’m encouraging content team leaders to work with their human resource departments to establish a formal career ladder for the roles on the content team you have now (and the one you want to build). This gives everyone on your team something to advance toward and an understanding of the skills and expectations to move into an advanced role.

Establish a formal career ladder for the roles on the content team you have now –and the one you want to build.

@Robert_Rose

Sample content marketing career ladder

A career ladder is a practical road map for advancement to higher levels of responsibility, salary, and authority.

I created this basic content career progression example to help content leaders customize a career ladder for their teams. It shows one track for leadership roles (positions that manage people and strategy) and one for skill-specific positions (writers, videographers, visual designers, and so on) at the individual contributor level.

The team leader path shows the progression from manager to director to senior director to vice president of content (or chief content officer) to CMO. The individual contributor path for skill positions shows the advancement of three levels.

Wherever your team members fall on this path, you’ve created somewhere for them to go next (and the requirements to get there).

A few things to note about this model:

While individual contributor titles might be named differently (design maven or design lead instead of design manager), levels 1, 2, and 3 typically align with a manager, director, or senior director title for compensation.
Individual contributors can move up to the leadership track (I’ve found this usually involves a small step back in title, as noted in the diagram.)
Roles may converge as a team member progresses on the ladder. For example, as a content strategist moves into the director and senior director positions, the role might merge with that of a content marketer as the responsibilities expand to include leadership of both.

Sample career level and responsibility descriptions

As I mentioned, this article isn’t about which team roles you need or what your team structure should look like.

But to help you develop your own set of rungs, I created this sample showing the leadership path for a content marketer or content strategist from entry-level to vice president of content.

The tier descriptions indicate the characteristics for each level:

Entry-level coordinator. Just learning. New to the team. Working in support of a single function. A performer. Strong skills in their role, can begin to manage and build relationships.
Director. A seasoned manager who can manage and drive change, as well as effectively lead a team.
Senior director. Skilled team leader, with significant management experience. Well-rounded business management and strategic skills.
Vice president of content. Dynamic and effective leader, capable of managing multiple, large teams and growing talent.

The chart also lists the increasing responsibilities for each role:

Entry-level coordinator. Writes and/or manages editorial calendars. Create basic content, and/or coordinate work among channels or groups.
Manager. Creates and manages content calendar. Writes, edits, proofreads, and helps evaluate content performance. Manages small team, freelancers, and vendors.
Director. Manages and measures team and channel for effective delivery and balance of content marketing efforts. Manages team responsible for content standards, including SEO, structured content, and management of content assets.
Senior director. Guides all aspects of content marketing and content strategy, including teams managing owned, earned, and shared media. Manages team and responsible for resourcing across operating models of content.
Vice president of content. Creates and oversees all aspects and delivery of global content initiatives across multiple platforms and formats to drive engagement with consumers and audience. Directs and oversees content business, governance, technology, and standards-based operation of content. Manages overall teams that create standards and best practices (both human and technological) for content creation, distribution, maintenance, content retrieval, and content repurposing. Owns teams across all owned media experiences.

Starting the content
career discussion

I put together this framework to provide a career road map for content practitioners.

Your content marketing and content strategy model will determine the number, type, and seniority of the people to fill out your team (and how your team scales over time).

You’ll note that the framework shows the vice president of content moving into a more traditional chief marketing officer or broad marketing leadership role. The point is that the responsibility for content should be part of that leadership role.

Think of the framework as the beginning of the content career ladder discussion, not the end. It’s great that content marketing has advanced so far that companies need a career path for valued content practitioners.

Now it’s time to develop one. CCO

Robert Rose is the founder and chief strategy officer of The Content Advisory, the education and consulting group for the Content Marketing Institute. He’s provided content marketing and strategy advice for global brands such as Capital One, NASA, Dell, McCormick Spices, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Follow Robert on Twitter @Robert_Rose.

Does your organization have a career ladder for content roles?

Yes
No
I'm not sure