Tech Marketing Roles

One of my friends was looking to switch industries recently and mentioned that seeing all of the different marketing roles in Tech was pretty confusing for someone on the outside. The names of roles aren’t always consistent across companies and the job descriptions are generic enough that it’s hard to tell what type of work you’d be doing.

I’ve tried to group the roles into larger buckets and give short descriptions of the work you’d do as a reference guide to those looking at marketing career pathways in Tech. I hope this is useful for college grads or professionals looking to jump into Tech. A few things to note:

  • Larger tech companies (publicly traded companies, Series E or later) will usually have very specific roles whereas younger startups will ask for marketers to be more of a generalist. The larger tech companies want to find specialists because they have the money to hire many people. Startups are more resource-constrained and need generalists who can do everything pretty well, but don’t need them to be domain experts.
  • Some of these roles will change a bit depending on the industry, B2B vs B2C, and how organizations are structured within the company, but the overall career pathways are fairly accurate.
  • I will likely miss some roles. There are simply too many and I don’t think it’d be helpful to list all of them. The goal here is to help people understand the role of each bucket.
  • The example projects are all made up. They’re meant to be illustrative so you can get a sense of the work for each role.
  • I’m focusing on these roles at larger tech companies.

Here are the roles that I’ll be covering:

Growth Marketing

It may be pretty obvious, but the goal of the team is to grow the number of users or revenue of the company.

Also known as: Growth Hacker, Marketing Manager, Marketing Analyst

Growth Marketing is generally split into two categories: Paid Acquisition and Engagement. From there, it splits out even further depending on how big the team is.

img Example of how Growth Marketing can branch out.

If you think about the customer funnel, Paid Acquisition typically owns everything ‘above the funnel’ and Engagement owns everything after a user enters the funnel. In other words, Paid Acquisition gets people to consider your product. Engagement gets people who have considered your product or used it in the past to continue using your product.

If you’re at a smaller company, they often times just have a ‘growth marketer’ role, which combines the Paid Acquisition and Engagement side into one role.

  • Goal of role: To use various paid channels to acquire users.

  • Also known as: SEM Manager, Performance Marketing, Demand Generation, Marketing Analyst, Digital Marketing Manager

  • What you’ll be doing: Startups need to grow and one of the fastest ways of growing is paying for users to try your product. On the Paid Acquisition team, you’ll spend money on various channels (search engines, social media, display ads, etc) to entice people to come to your site and try your product. You’ll test everything from headlines to key messages to creative to landing pages in order to get more efficient with your spend.

  • Example project: YouTube wants to acquire more subscription users for YouTube Music Premium. You know that generally, people who subscribe have a lifetime value (LTV) of $250. Your internal goal is to acquire users profitably, so the target cost, or Cost per Activation (CPA), is set at $100 per new subscribed user. Your job is to use the paid social channels to drive these new users — other members of your team will focus on other channels (paid search, display ads, etc). Your Research team tells you that people love the ability to watch music videos from the YouTube Music app (a feature Spotify doesn’t have), so you work with the Creative team to come up with a campaign to talk about how awesome that feature is. You and the Creative team create a beautiful ad with the headline “Watch music videos and listen to millions of songs with YouTube Music Premium” (illustrative example only, this is a pretty terrible headline). Then you use the Facebook ads platform to launch the ad on Instagram and Facebook with a $50K test budget. After a few days, you see that 5% of people who saw the ad ended up subscribing to the premium service. The CPA is only $50 / new subscription, well under the target of $100. You increase the budget to $500K to see if it scales while monitoring your other campaigns.

    Things consider on the project:

    • How long will it take to get statistically significant results?
    • At what stage(s) of the funnel should you be tracking results?
    • At what point can you consider the experiment a ‘success’ and either scale it or stop it?
    • How can you test whether or not the additional users are actually incremental (people who would not have used your product without the campaign)?

Engagement Marketing

  • Goal of role: To get users who are in the funnel to spend money or use your product more.

  • Also known as: Lifecycle marketing, retention marketing

  • What you’ll be doing: Think about an app that you downloaded but never used again. Or maybe an app that does something very similar to some other apps you already have. Why did you never use the app again? What could they have done to bring you back?

    The engagement team’s role is to get users to become more engaged with their product or spend more money with them. The team should be breaking down the userbase into different segments and then mapping out their full journey. From there, you can see where the drop-offs occur for each segment and think about what you can do to bring them back and keep them on as engaged users.

  • Example project: Adobe Creative Cloud offers millions of students discounted or free access to their suite of products while they’re in school. However, they’re seeing that conversion from free trial to paid subscription after they graduate is lower than expected. Your goal is to figure out how to increase the conversion rate post-graduation. One insight you learn after surveying students is that a large portion of them don’t need the suite of products immediately after graduation. Sometimes it takes half a year to find a job in this economy. Taking that insight, you decide to experiment by extending the expiration date of their free access 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months after graduation. You find that the 3 month extension works best and increases conversion by 25%.

    Things to consider on the project:

    • What are all of the reasons why free users don’t convert?
    • Are competitors doing anything to steal these users away?
    • What is the cost associated with extending these memberships by 1, 3, and 6 months? How would you come up with that value? It’s probably not as straightforward as the lost revenue.

Product Marketing

  • Goal of role: Identifying consumer needs, ensuring the right product gets built, strategizing and executing the product launch, and positioning the product in the competitive landscape.

  • Also known as: PMM (Product Marketing Manager). Some companies may list this as a general marketing role or split it up into more specific roles like a GTM (go-to-market) specialist.

  • What you’ll be doing: This is generally the most cross-functional of the marketing roles. On a day-to-day basis, your work could touch almost every team and across the full lifecycle of the product. Early on in the lifecycle, the PMM should work with the Insights team to compile research and help inform the team of user pain points and potential product features. Ideally the Product Marketer and the Product Manager work closely to shape the product roadmap. As the product is being built, the PMM should craft the positioning, external messaging, and Go To Market plan. To ensure the overall product launch is a success, the PMM needs to make sure the Product, Engineering, Press, Marketing, and Legal (and many more) teams are all on the same page.

  • Example project: DoorDash is launching a feature that expedites delivery of an order. For an additional $10, users can ensure that their order skips the line and is prioritized for preparation and delivery. You should be on the team from the beginning, ensuring that this is a product that users want and are willing to pay for. After understanding the user, it’s time to craft the messaging and positioning. What do users care about and what can we say to ensure they try our product? You work with Product and Design to make sure that all external facing messaging is aligned (in-app, marketing materials, website, Press, etc). You also write a brief for the creative team to begin producing the marketing materials needed for this feature launch. Closer to launch, you put on your project manager hat to make sure all teams are adhering to the timeline and make adjustments as necessary.

    Things to consider on the project:

    • What is the most important thing for users to remember about your product and how do you say it?
    • Positioning: How does your product compare to the competition? How is it different?
    • What should the roll out plan be?
    • How much marketing / press is actually necessary for this product / feature?

Brand Marketing

  • Goal of role: Build the ‘personality’ of the brand. How does it show up in the world? What’s the tone? What does the creative look like?

  • Also known as: Brand Manager, Brand Marketing Manager, Integrated Marketing, Multi-Channel Marketing

  • What you’ll be doing: Brand Marketers try to shift people’s perception of the company. People generally think of billboards, Superbowl ads, and celebrity partnerships, but the brand team also does smaller projects like executing photoshoots or determining the voice of the brand.

  • Example project:** Apple is looking to expand it’s Apple Arcade service and has identified college students as a key target demographic. You’re tasked with rethinking the visual and voice identity of Apple Arcade and launching a marketing campaign in time for Back to School. After learning more about the demographic, you work with a creative agency to ensure the Apple Arcade brand appears inclusive, casual, and exciting. The art style that you’ve chosen is markedly different from the current trend of minimalist lines and colors that industry competitors have been using. You have a fairly large budget and decide to buy TV ads for a channel popular with college students and some product placement in a new Olivia Rodrigo music video. You also create some stand-alone assets in the same style to pass on to the Growth Marketing team for use in their campaigns.

    Things to consider on the project:

    • Does the style of art and voice make the product seem different than how users typically perceive the brand?
    • What is the main OKR that you’ll be tracking and how long will it take to see results?

Marketing Operations

  • Goal of role: Help enable the marketing team to work more efficiently.

  • Also known as: Haven’t heard of another name for this.

  • What you’ll be doing: Usually more of an internal-facing role, you’ll help make sure the Marketing team is operating efficiently by building processes, assessing resourcing and budgets, and coordinating annual planning.

  • Example project: The Marketing team needs to begin annual planning, but the team is unsure how to allocate resources and decide which projects should be on the roadmap. You create a framework for deciding the impact of projects across teams and the resources needed to complete each one. You do an internal ‘roadshow’ to explain to the team leads how to use your framework and submit projects for the roadmap. In the end, you have a clear view of all the projects across the Marketing Team and are confident that the team has the resources to execute them next year.

    Things to consider on the project:

    • How do you compare impact of projects across teams?
    • How do you calculate the amount of resources you have (budget, creative team hours, senior staff for larger projects, etc)?
    • What is a good framework for deciding which projects should be resourced? This typically requires input from team leads since Marketing Ops isn’t always close enough to make this decision in a vacuum.

Creative

  • Goal of role: Act as the internal team that designs, writes, and creates materials for marketing campaigns or other marketing needs. Companies without this team usually outsource to a creative agency.
  • Also known as: Content Strategist, Writer, Copywriter, Designer, Visual Designer, Producer, Art Director, and many more.
  • What you’ll be doing: I won’t write much about this team because it’s often structured very similar to the Creative Team of an ad agency. I do want to point out that usually, UX / UI Designers (people designing the app or website) fall under a different team. The Creative Team is generally under the Marketing umbrella.

Closing Thoughts

The most important quality that a Marketer can possess is a deep understanding of the customer.

Imagine you’re trying to convince a stranger to take a trip to Las Vegas with you. What would you say? You could talk about the grand hotels, gambling, shows, clubs, free drinks, spas, and restaurants. Or maybe you could talk about how Vegas has an awesome Asian food scene off the strip, or maybe the hiking trails and hot springs nearby. The problem is, you have no idea what would appeal to them the most.

Now imagine trying to convince your best friend. You probably know exactly what they would love doing, what their hesitations would be, and how a perfectly timed mention of the Celine Dion concert would seal the deal. That’s how deeply marketers need to understand their customer.

In general, I think most smart, driven people can learn to do each of the marketing roles I’ve listed. They all have their differences - some are more numbers heavy (Paid Acq), some require more cross-functional work (PMM), etc - but what eventually separates the average Marketer from the top Marketer is their ability to understand the customer and figure out what it’ll take to convince them to take that trip to Vegas.