Our industrial system works on a very simple yet crucial fundamental of demand and supply. In every sector, several companies are producing or offering the same goods and services. How do you ensure that people select your products over your competitors’? How do you increase sales and profits? How can you ensure customer retention in an ever-changing landscape?

This is where marketing and marketing managers come into the picture. Be it a start-up or a million-dollar company, every business has a thoughtfully-designed marketing strategy to woo customers and increase its profits. Most companies have specialized marketing teams that work round the clock. They build strategies, run ad campaigns, and develop plans to increase the online and offline footprints of a company.

It is no wonder why the marketing manager’s salary in India is among the highest. Mind you, and this also includes employee benefits and performance incentives to drive the best results out of marketing managers. Further, the field is also expected to witness a 6% growth by 2029, which is significantly higher than the average of all professions. 

Let us now understand more about marketing managers — their job responsibilities, remuneration, educational qualifications, and career path. 

Roles and Responsibilities of a Marketing Manager

Based on your experience and seniority in the organization, a marketing manager’s work profile may vary. However, here are the roles and responsibilities of marketing managers that are common to all levels:

1. Creating Product Awareness

Marketing managers are required to actively seek out avenues and partnerships/collaborations or promotional ventures to enhance awareness around a company’s product offerings. This can be done through advertisements, campaigns, paid promotions, etc. The idea is to communicate a product’s features, benefits, and other USPs to prospective clients to help increase conversions for a company. 

2. Improving Profits

One of the main reasons for a high marketing manager’s salary in India is that optimum performance is linked to increased salaries. This essentially means that a part of your monthly remuneration is linked to your marketing and sales target. In short, marketing is a target-based job.

Therefore, the higher the numbers registered by a marketing and sales team, the greater will be the incentives in return. Based on the industry you are working in, an increase in profit could implicate an increase in sales, acquiring more customers, getting more footfalls or admissions, and so on.

3. Branding

Branding is another important role of a marketing manager. As the name suggests, under this role, they must plan marketing campaigns that lead to brand recognition. For instance, we have several examples of tag lines that are synonymous with a particular brand: “Because you’re worth it” – L’Oreal; “Just do it” – Nike, and “I’m lovin’ it” – McDonald’s, to mention a few. 

Branding is not just restricted to taglines and includes anything that helps clients associate with a company.  

4. Innovation

In this digital age, numerous avenues can be used for marketing your product or service. It is for marketing managers to think out of the box and keep up with changing times. Today, as more and more businesses are investing in developing applications and utilising the growing usage of mobile phones to their benefit, almost every marketing strategy has a mobile component to it. 

As a marketing manager, you need to be vigilant of the latest trends in marketing and leverage them to drive growth and development for a company. Innovation-driven thinking capacities can help establish a competitive advantage. Marketing managers must also be able to successfully execute marketing plans and measure the success of campaigns to optimise their performance. 

Marketing Manager Salary in India

As a marketing professional, there are several senior work profiles and transitional job opportunities you can consider, and each of these has ample progression scope. To begin, you need a bachelor’s degree in a preferred field, such as marketing, public relations, communications, accounting, or finance.

The average base salary of a Marketing Manager is ₹685,464 /year. It is the most common work profile for any marketing professional where they are required to design, plan, and execute marketing campaigns for the company. Their roles are targeted to enhance the growth and development of a company, its product, and its services. 

A marketing manager’s salary is a sum total of base salary, bonuses, profit sharing, and commission, and with experience of over 10 years, they can earn an average base salary of ₹956,988 per year. In addition to this, health benefits, dental, and vision are common. Supplementary skills like market planning, business strategy, market analysis, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Content Management, and Regional Marketing can result in lucrative career hikes. 

To attract higher roles and salaries, a master’s degree is optimum. Furthermore, there are plenty of certification courses you can take up to supplement your skills set. 

Marketing Manager Job Roles

Let us now discuss the various positions a marketing professional can pursue:

1. Marketing Analyst (Average Base Salary – ₹ 4,89,702 /year)

As the name suggests, as an analyst you will be required to conduct comprehensive research and analysis for every campaign that is rolled out. It will be in terms of the market trends, customer reviews, customer expectation, price expectation for the product and other such details. These details will then be handed over to the marketing team and will be used as a guideline for their work. 

2. Monetisation Manager (Average Base Salary – ₹ 7,35,450 /year)

A Monetisation Manager is responsible for increasing the revenue of the company. They are required to identify the areas where revenue can be increased, the cost can be reduced etc. They are also required to submit development plans and strategies to improve revenue. They work closely with the leaders of the organization and provide them with regular updates on the work. 

3. Business Development Manager (Average Base Salary – ₹ 5,97,373 /year)

The most important job responsibility of a Business Development Manager is to develop a business and attract more clients. This work profile can involve meeting with prospective clients, speaking to them over the phone, putting together presentations for them, or even reaching out over emails or through social media platforms. By doing so, they are required to identify new opportunities for expanding a business and generating more revenue. They may also act as client support managers for newly acquired clients. 

4. Email Marketing Manager (Average Base Salary – ₹ 7,41,000 /year)

As is evident from the designation, these managers specialize in running marketing campaigns over emails. They also need to keep a database of email ids of the prospective clients. Keep a track of the follow-ups needed and also ensure that the email campaigns are relatable to the client. They need to assess the success of an email campaign and work towards making the upcoming campaigns better.

5. Social Media Manager (Average Base Salary – ₹ 3,24,828 /year)

As a Social Media Manager, you will be responsible for maintaining all the social media handles for the organization. This would include posting relevant content on the handles, responding to comments or queries, and engaging with the audience. They report back the social media trends to the marketing team, which are then used in other campaigns. 

6. Advertising Manager (Average Base Salary – ₹ 4,88,730 /year)

As an Advertising Manager, you would need to support the advertisement in the non-digital media i.e. newspapers, magazines and electronic media like TV, radio etc. They specialize in offline campaigns and would work closely with the people in media to improve the brand presence. At a senior position, they will also be responsible for funding the campaigns. They have the authority to approve or disapprove of a campaign and decide for how long it needs to be run. 

7. eCommerce Manager (Average Base Salary – ₹ 4,45,260 /year)

An eCommerce Manager is responsible for handling the eCommerce portfolio for retail companies. They manage the products for sale, handle the returns, plan for promotions or discounts to improve the sales, and also undertake market research to keep the inventory up-to-date. 

8. Digital Marketing Manager (Average Base Salary – ₹ 5,44,155 /year)

The work profile of a digital marketing manager would be similar to that of a Social Media Manager with the added responsibility of digital media apart from social media. This can include digital forums, online magazines, and more. They promote the company’s product, services and brand. Another part of their work is to work with the digital tools to analyse the digital trends, analyse metrics or data, and co-ordinate the other aspects of marketing. 

9. Product Manager (Average Base Salary – ₹ 7,68,832 /year)

A product manager specializes in the end-to-end lifecycle of a specific product. They are responsible not just for marketing but also for overseeing the development of the product, beginning from product design, getting raw materials, assembling a team, tracking the work to completion, and representing it in the market. 

Top reasons why marketing is important?

Marketing is very important in today’s times for businesses and everyone strives to gain the best benefits out of it and beat their customers. 

Increased consumer engagement

Businesses aim to engage their customers in order to gain positive attention. And marketing is an apt medium to fulfil this aim. There are various ways to stay engaged with the customers either through content, liking, comments, posting videos, etc. 

Reputation

For any brand; its reputation is of utmost importance. The professionals are in charge of maintaining this reputation, and this is why marketing manager salaries are high in the current marketplace. The image of the brand in the marketplace is very important to the business as it decides the consumer buying behaviour towards the brand. There are various aspects behind building a reputation for the brand; first and foremost is the customer satisfaction and customer delivery, other is the ethical and moral standards the business stands for, and the list goes on. 

Relationship building

A positive relationship with the customers allows the brands to understand what their customers like or dislike, thus helping them contribute towards bettering their products. Moreover, understanding consumer behaviour, their patterns etc, helps the business to acquire and retain customers using the method of personalisation. 

Improved sale

Marketing is the process of using various methods to improve sales. The efforts are useful in business growth and thus lead to higher revenue and happy customers.

Market relevancy

Today’s market is moving fast. It is important to stay relevant in the pool of other competitors, where there are various options to choose from. If the customers do not find the brand, service or product relevant to them, they will not make any effort to buy from the company. 

Types of marketing

There are various types of marketing available in the market today that help brands to choose any of those that suit their brand. It is the responsibility of the marketing team to figure out which type of marketing strategy would suit their business model. And this is one of the reasons why the marketing manager’s salary is high paying. 

B2B Marketing

B2B Marketing refers to the Business to Business Marketing. This type of marketing is used when a business sells goods to the other company.

B2C Marketing

Refers to Business to Consumer Marketing. It is a type of marketing when a business sells its products/ services to consumers, and the promotion is done through ads.

C2B Marketing

The term represents consumer-to-business marketing. It is a type of marketing where the consumer gives its goods/ services to the business. 

C2C Marketing

refers to the consumer to consumer marketing. In this type of marketing, the consumers interact with other consumers sharing common goods and services. 

The strategy of the 5 Ps in Marketing

The 5 P’s in marketing refer to the strategy used by marketers, which allows them to methodically approach their actions according to the goals. There are various channels in the market and managers have to critically analyse and choose the best strategies. This is why a marketing manager salary in India is high paying.

The 5 P’s of marketing are –

Price

Refers to the price of each product or service set according to the target audience. The pricing must include the cost of goods, advertising and promotion costs, cost of development, distribution, and so on. 

Product 

It is the first thing that the consumer interacts with. The product includes quality, warranty, branding, appearance, etc.

Place 

It refers to the time at which the product reaches the customers and channels used. Place includes distribution channels, logistics, market coverage, service quality, etc.

Promotion

refers to the ways the products get promoted in the marketplace. Some of the general promotional ways include social media, publishing, advertising, etc.

People

People are the wheels that run a brand or any organisation.  They are an essential part of any organisation, and the company need to take care of internal to external range, i.e. from employees to their customers.

Final Thoughts

Jobs in marketing and sales are evergreen roles – the only changing aspect is the mode through which we accomplish marketing goals. In the initial stages, marketing was practised through word of mouth, however, with advancements in technology, marketing is now entirely digital and involves leveraging industry-specific tools to run targeted ads and promotional tactics. 

If you are someone who loves to interact with people, has an eye for detail, and is good at convincing people, then marketing is the right field for you. Further, if you possess effective leadership management skills to steer marketing teams towards organisational goals, now is the right time to kick-start your career. With demand for marketing managers at an all-time high, there is no dearth of opportunities in the field, and the sky’s the limit in terms of remuneration for the right candidate. 

upGrad is an online higher education platform providing industry-relevant programs in collaboration with world-class faculty. It creates a good learning experience anywhere and everywhere through online programs. upGrad offers students an online MBA in marketing degree from Liverpool Business School and Deakin Business School. Along with these, upGrad offers MBA programs with a specialization in Finance, Operations, Strategy & Leadership, and Executive.

Learn Online MBA Courses from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career.