Career Growth

Content Marketing Manager Salary in 2023

Cierra Loflin
March 15, 2023

We analyzed over 500 content marketers' salaries, job titles, and demographic information to create The Content Marketing Salary Report (Updated for 2023). Of those 500 respondents, 200 people had the title "Content Marketing Manager" or "Content Marketing Specialist." By looking at the salary data by job title, we were able to find the average salary for a content marketing manager according to gender, years of experience, and industry.

Accurate salary data helps improve the content marketing industry as a whole. If you're an employee, you can benchmark your salary and avoid getting underpaid. If you're an employer, you can ensure you're paying equally across demographics. Finally, you can make data-backed decisions about your career as a content marketer, such as whether to work for B2B or B2C businesses.

The average content marketing manager earns $89,107

This is the average base salary for anyone with the job title of "Content Marketing Manager" or "Content Specialist." This accounts for both full-time and freelance folks with this title, meaning someone could be a full-time content marketing manager and earn additional income from freelancing.

The average content marketer earns $95,379 ↗

For more context, the average income of a content marketer has risen by 1.77% in the last year, a small but still meaningful increase. This is a positive sign in the midst of uncertainty, as the job market has been tough during the past 12 months.

This data includes all income from all sources, regardless of experience, employment status, gender or ethnicity, meaning that a person could make 90% of their income from a full-time job while supplementing some of their income with some freelance work. Conversely, someone could make 50% of their income from full-time work and 50% from freelance work. All of these variables are included in the average number.

Content marketing national average salary

How much money do content marketing managers make?

So, how much do content marketing managers/content specialists earn?

To give a clearer picture of average salary ranges, here’s a breakdown of the count of respondents by salary range. It's important to note that these are global averages with some of the respondents coming from lower cost-of-living countries.

Average total compensation for content marketing manager salaries

The majority of content managers in our survey earn between $60,000 and $79,000 per year, and the next biggest salary band is people earning between $80,000 and $99,000 each year.

Even though content marketing managers had the lowest average total compensation compared to the other job titles we looked at, it's still a well-paid position.

For your comparison, here are the most common salary bands for the other job titles in this study:

Do years of experience translate to higher income? (Spoiler: yes)

Average income can only tell us so much—knowing how salary increases with experience is helpful to know what to expect if you stay in the industry. In general, folks with eight or more years of experience are in the $100k Club. This data includes income from any source and does not delineate between full-time and freelance.

  • 0 to 3 years - $77,704
  • 4 to 7 years - $84,253
  • 8 to 12 years - $113,009
  • 13+ years - $94,469
Average content marketing manager salary by experience

B2C content marketing managers earn $3,231 more per year than B2B content marketing managers

Interestingly, B2C/DTC content marketing managers earned a slightly higher average salary than their B2B peers. In the larger salary report, B2B content marketers earned slightly more on average ($97,118) than B2C content marketers ($88,421).

  • B2B - $88,695
  • B2C/DTC - $91,926
  • Other - $83,857

It’s worth noting that we had nearly 4x more B2B content marketers fill out the 2023 salary survey compared to B2C/D2C folks. It’s a smaller sample size and one that we’re not quite as confident about. Still, we can deduce you may be paid a slightly higher salary as a content marketing manager for a B2C brand, which is not the case for other roles in content.

Average content marketing manager salary by industry

Male content marketing managers make $6,239 more per year than female content marketing managers

Content marketing is a well-paying field overall but, sadly, income is not consistent for everyone. We asked respondents which gender they currently identify as. We left the field open for folks to respond however they like (i.e. not a dropdown).

While the larger salary report shows income disparity by gender has improved over the years, we still clearly have work to do when it comes to income equality.

Average content marketing manager salary by gender

For your comparison, here are the average differences in salary by gender for the other job titles in this study:

  • Female content strategists make $25,258 more per year than male content strategists.
  • Male heads of content make $37,121 more per year than female heads of content.
  • Female content directors make $27,858 more per year than male content directors.

It's time to act

Knowledge is power. When you know the average content marketing manager's salary, you're better equipped to negotiate your salary at your next job or ask for a raise at your current one.

If this report was helpful to you, consider sharing it with your network. It's the best way to support Superpath.

Come join our free Slack group if you want to talk with other content folks about this report and other career development topics. There are already nearly 15,000 of us learning and supporting one another and we'd love to have you.

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