Early this year, one of my students Michael found a decent digital marketing job in Toronto. It triggers my interests to do a research on the rise of digital marketing job market in Canada. I want to share my findings with you in this blog. I will first give you an overview of Canadian digital marketing job market. Then, I will talk about the popular skills required for the related jobs. Lastly, I will give suggestions to people who want to pursue an exciting career in digital marketing.
Part 1: An overview of Canadian digital marketing job market
Compared to other industries, digital marketing is still relatively young in Canada’s job market. I could hardly find any well-documented historical data on the growth of the market. I will use the US data from Indeed.com to give you an idea of the market trend. Indeed.com is the world’s #1 job site.
This chart shows the growth of job listings containing “social media marketing.” It has a significant increase in 2015 after a slowdown in 2013 and 2014. As a matter of fact, “Social media” has been on Indeed.com US top 10 job trends in 2015.
The chart below shows the growth of job listings that mention “digital marketing” or “online marketing”. It follows a similar trend as that of job listings containing “social media marketing.”
Let’s take a look at job listings in Canada. This table shows the number of job listings in Canada that contain digital marketing, online marketing, social media, content marketing, search engine optimization and eCommerce. (The data was collected on August 18, 2015.)
| Canada Listings | Digital Marketing | Online Marketing | Social Media | Content Marketing | Search Engine Optimization | eCommerce |
| Indeed | 3113 | 4428 | 5327 | 2914 | 1135 | 1042 |
| workopolis | 456 | 2596 | 508 | 452 | 303 | 200 |
| 2344 | 3484 | 6428 | 1822 | 557 | 1944 |
Indeed.com Canada shows that almost 2/3 of job listings are from Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Toronto has the biggest concentration of digital marketing jobs. Many of the openings are from mid-size to big companies such as Husky, Bell, Rogers, Scotiabank, TD, etc.
| Indeed | Digital Marketing | Online Marketing | Social Media | Content Marketing | Search Engine Optimization | eCommerce |
| Toronto | 1518 | 1719 | 2144 | 1323 | 160 | 461 |
| Vancouver | 451 | 720 | 920 | 469 | 52 | 184 |
| Montreal | 326 | 341 | 506 | 309 | 39 | 197 |
According to PayScale.com, the average salary for a Digital Marketing Manager is C$62,331 per year. The highest paying skills associated with this job are Social Media Optimization, Marketing Management and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The median pay in Toronto is $70,000 which is 12% higher than the national average.
Part 2: Popular digital marketing skills required
Most of the digital marketing positions require candidates to have a broad range of digital marketing skills such as social media, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and Google Analytics etc. Let’s go over 3 essential skills.
Social media marketing
Businesses now can connect with their customers and reach out to their target audience almost everywhere through online social networks. Companies are competing for attention on social media. You need to be familiar with the major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. If you can help companies reach out to their audience by using well-defined social media strategies, the hiring manager wants to talk to you.
Content Marketing
As content plays a key role in digital marketing, many companies struggle to produce enough blog posts, eBooks, social media posts, and videos to be used in different digital channels. The demand for content marketers is high. You need to be able to create content in the forms of blog post, eBook, email, video and ad copy, etc. Develop your skills to write compelling content that connects with people and answers their questions. The ability to use content management system (CMS) such as WordPress is a must.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
The new search engine optimization strategy is intertwined with content marketing and social media marketing to become a more holistic approach. You create quality engaging content, distribute it through different channels and encourage people to share it and link back to it. You also need to have some technical skills to implement more advanced SEO techniques. Most of the digital marketing manager, digital marketing specialist and content marketer positions require SEO skills.
Part 3: Suggestions
If you are a young professional or new graduate who wants to enter the exciting digital marketing field, here are 3 suggestions for you:
- Attend digital marketing training to equip yourself with solid digital marketing skills
Digital marketing covers a wide spectrum of areas. It is very hard for you to learn everything by yourself. Taking a creditable digital marketing training is the short-cut to learn these fundamental skills. You need to have a general knowledge of all aspects of digital marketing, then focus on one area to be really good at it.
- Build your experience by implementing what you’ve learned
Knowledge is not enough. You must apply it and be able to do the work. The best way to gain experience is to build your own website. Start to blog, and apply different marketing strategies on your website. Your website becomes the showcase of your digital marketing skills. Don’t forget to set up your social media presence on major networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you have a strong optimized LinkedIn profile, you can even catch recruiters or hiring manager’s attention. It is part of your social media marketing 🙂
- Get certificates
Besides training certificates you get from local or online training, you can also acquire Google Analytics certificate to increase your credential. In my opinion, your experience is more important than the certificates. But when you have less experience, the certificates count.
In conclusion, there are tremendous digital marketing job opportunities in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. With the required skills and experience, you can pursue your career in digital marketing with great confidence. Need help from Mary? Book a private free 30-minute consultation with Mary.
