Marketing Coordinator: A Guide on How to Become One, Essential Skills, and Salary

Every marketing team knows that a stellar advertising and marketing campaign requires different facets to resonate with an audience successfully.

The success of a marketing campaign isn’t just pegged on creating highly effective content, prioritizing specific marketing channels, or building sleek web designs — but implementing all three components together.

Alongside the marketing campaign components, designate a team to work on every aspect of your campaign. Or better, get reliable individuals who can do the job, from design and copywriting to conducting market research and reporting. However, you also need someone to coordinate your marketing campaign efforts.

This article will discuss what marketing coordinators do, their advertising and marketing campaign responsibilities, and how much they earn for their efforts.

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What is a Marketing Coordinator?

A marketing coordinator supports a marketing campaign team by developing, coordinating, and executing successful marketing campaigns.

Specifically, a marketing coordinator manages ad campaigns, creates promotional materials, organizes events, and even supervises projects. They work closely with sales teams to ensure a campaign aligns with your goals and KPIs (key progress indicators).

A bachelor's degree in business communications, marketing, or a closely-related field is a must-have for marketing coordinators, but it's more than that. They should also write well, communicate excellently, and be well-organized and meticulous.

What Does a Marketing Coordinator Do?

A marketing coordinator shoulders other responsibilities beyond supporting marketing campaign teams. Also, they sometimes help teams track and organize sales data, perform various operational tasks, and even conduct through market research.

Some of the marketing coordinator's responsibilities include (but aren't limited to):

Relay the progress of marketing campaigns to other marketing leaders.
Help teams complete basic tasks, collect customer data, and process invoices.
Research market trends and customer behavior to improve marketing goals.
Work closely with product and sales teams to help bolster marketing efforts.
Build marketing campaigns for live events, launches, and other activities.

Armed with the proper skill set and competence, you can become an in-demand marketing coordinator earning a comfortable living in different areas, including social media, public relations, sales, marketing, and advertising.

If you’re looking for a specific marketing coordinator job, there are several popular options in the market you can consider, including:

Digital marketing coordinator: Their job duties include commissioning freelance copywriters, tracking campaign progress, driving brand awareness, integrating digital marketing materials in campaigns, creating online content, and more.
Social media marketing coordinator: Their duties include monitoring social media networks for emerging trends. They also interact with social media users and respond to their various comments, inquiries, and messages.
Product account coordinator: They work closely with the sales and customer support team. They also oversee product planning and marketing, developing new business opportunities, implementing effective visitor conversion strategies and managing customer relationships.
Content marketing coordinator: Their job involves creating content for websites, social media, platforms, and blogs. Research shows that you reduce marketing costs by up to 62% by investing in content marketing services. And best of all, you generate three times as many leads as traditional marketing.
Influencer marketing coordinator: They work closely with social media influencers, and for a good reason — to oversee recruitment, contract, and manage social media influencers’ work on various marketing campaigns.

What Essential Skills Do You Need as a Marketing Coordinator?

Marketing coordinators should possess creativity and the ability to examine different situations in the workplace while still being able to see the bigger picture. As such, they require a blend of both technical and workplace skills.

Here are examples of these essential skills:

Technical Skills Employers Look For

Manage various marketing and advertising projects.
Experience with copywriting and different styles of writing.
Know how to use marketing and advertising tools.
Manage SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing).
Understand web tools such as JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc.
Set essential marketing goals.
Identify target audiences.
Evaluate emerging market trends.
Conduct advertising and marketing campaigns.
Create promotional materials for social media and other digital media formats.
Conduct in-depth market research.
Analysis of sales and customer data.

Workplace Skills Employers Look For

Resilience, analytic approach, and data-oriented
Willingness to learn and improve your skills
Self-management
Teamwork (be a team player)
Problem-solving skills and strategic thinking
Exceptional presentation skills, as well as verbal and written communication skills
Positive attitude (be positive in the face of conflict)

With these skills, a marketing coordinator can execute short and long-term marketing and email marketing campaigns, which are essential in improving sales, increasing brand awareness, and achieving other closely-related company goals.

How Much Does a Marketing Coordinator Earn?

According to Payscale, the average base salary of a marketing coordinator in the US is approximately $47,821 per year. However, a mid-career marketing coordinator with five to nine years of experience earns an average salary of $51,622 a year.

Via Payscale

Marketing coordinators with more than ten years of experience can expect to earn an average total compensation of $54,356. A marketing coordinator’s salary varies depending on the size of an organization and the products or services they sell.

(Note: the total figures include tips, bonuses, and overtime pay.)

Steps to Becoming a Marketing Coordinator

Here’s a five-step guide on how to become a marketing coordinator:

#1. Earn a marketing degree

Want to become a full-on marketing coordinator? Get a bachelor's degree in marketing or advertising. Or better, earn a master’s degree in marketing (though it's not a requirement for this position.)

As a marketing degree holder, chances are you’ll learn and master marketing basics, including developing marketing strategies, analyzing consumer behavior, conducting thorough market research, and more.

You'll also acquaint yourself with specialized coursework on social media marketing, building advertising campaigns, and brand management topics.

#2. Gain experience in the marketing field

If you want to get hired into an entry-level marketing position (read: marketing specialist), ensure you gain early marketing experience. And the best way to do so? Get started as an intern while working to earn your marketing degree.

Gaining early experience in the marketing field helps you scale to a more advanced leadership role (based on your performance and time spent as a marketing specialist). However, advancing to the next marketing position may take at least three years. It mainly depends on the size of the company and the rules of its marketing departments.

Some marketing leadership roles in question include advertising manager, social media manager, or marketing manager. Once you successfully take up a leadership role, you’re eligible for a more managerial position. Think marketing coordinator.

#3. Master technical skills in marketing

Getting hired as a marketing coordinator is easy, but only if you enroll in marketing courses or obtain relevant certifications in specific marketing skills.

For example, when you take up a search engine optimization course, it improves your SEO knowledge and skills. An SEO course will help your content resonate with your audience, help you track campaign metrics, set SEO KPIs, and even create optimized content.

#4. Improve your marketing resume

You’ve earned a marketing degree, you boast exceptional marketing experience, and you’ve also mastered relevant marketing skills. It's now time to improve your marketing coordinator resume.

To get started:

Google-search marketing coordinator jobs in your area to find what most companies are looking for.
Next, check out the job requirements featured. Do they match your qualifications? If so, include them in your resume.
Lastly, pepper your resume with action verbs to adequately describe the tasks you performed in your previous marketing positions. Ensure to emphasize any measurable goals and objectives you may have under your belt.

List all the marketing skills and experience you may have to boost your resume and increase your odds of winning a job. Why? Because most employer job listings mention “marketing experience” as a prerequisite in their marketing coordinator job description — yet most candidates hardly list them in their resumes.

#5. Find marketing coordinator job openings

You can find marketing coordinator job openings with the right qualifications and an updated resume. But before you apply for positions you’re interested in, ask yourself:

Will this marketing position contribute to the lifestyle I desire?
Will this position help me work on exciting marketing tasks and projects?
What do I admire most about the company hiring for a marketing coordinator role?

Ask yourself insightful questions to help you make the best career decision. Additionally, once a recruiter or hiring manager reaches out for an interview, improve your interview skills to gain an edge over your competition.

Get Your Career Started in Marketing

If a marketing coordinator career suits you, earn a bachelor's degree in marketing or advertising and start as a marketing intern. Then enhance your resume and evaluate what you need to become an eligible marketing candidate.

As a successful marketing coordinator, you should devote your career and time to marketing — unless you want to pursue a leadership role. If that's the case, you'll need much more experience in marketing.

If you stay with the same marketing company, the chances of scaling the ladder within your marketing department increase significantly, as many companies prefer to hire in-house. Additionally, take advantage of marketing job openings in other companies to significantly grow your marketing coordinator career path.

About the author

Velislava Georgieva is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Inbound Blogging, specializing in Content Marketing and Outreach Strategies. In addition to her passion for digital marketing, she enjoys yoga, fitness, and hiking.