Hong Kong marketing professionals, what's your worth? Morgan McKinley's 2020 salary guide has arrived!
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In the current climate, it’s good for anyone in marketing, advertising, PR, and media to know they’re still being paid their fair share. Fortunately, professional services recruitment consultancy, Morgan McKinley (MM) Hong Kong has released its 2020 salary guides, including its marketing industry report. And in addition to the pay grades, it also contains some interesting findings.
MM found that, despite appearances, demand for marketing talent has remained strong throughout the last year and that recruitment was active. Traditional sectors such as fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and IT and telecommunications (IT&T) were healthy.
However, as expected, due to the political and economic situation in Hong Kong, key players in these industries have been shifting their regional offices abroad, with some IT&T companies preferring to place their regional offices in Singapore, and FMCG outfits going to Shanghai. Marketing candidates have therefore followed suit.
In 2019, The eCommerce and fintech sectors showed noticeable growth in opportunities for marketing professionals, especially roles including digital marketing, data and analytics, cyber, 5G and robotics skills. But digital also unsurprisingly ruled across the board, as specialists were being valued over generalists, especially those that could accelerate online growth by developing platforms and building digital marketing strategies.
The top proficiencies for candidates that hiring managers were looking for were experience with CRM, marketing communications expertise, and an understanding of digital data and analytics. In that last category, Google Analytics experience was especially sought out but all digital analytics knowledge was prized.
However, while digitisation may be getting a lot of attention, traditional marketing roles in advertising, public relations, and marketing communications continue to be in demand and jobseekers are being advised to leverage their own experience and advantages in these fields.
One interesting quirk that was discovered in the report - and defies stereotypes - was that marketing candidates were found to care far more about job satisfaction, exposure, growth opportunities, and a work-life balance than their salary. In response, many of the industry’s multinationals are in the process of adapting to allow flexible working arrangements, increase talent development, and introduce internal mobility/ transfer programmes as methods to retain staff.
But no matter how altruistic that makes our readership sound, we’re sure many of you still want a cheeky peek at the pay stats, so here you go:
| Job title | Low | Average | High |
| Marketing manager | $35,000 | $45,000 | $60,000 |
| Marketing director | $60,000 | $75,000 | $90,000 |
| CRM manager | $35,000 | $45,000 | $60,000 |
| CRM director | $60,000 | $70,000 | $85,000 |
| Digital marketing manager | $37,000 | $50,000 | $60,000 |
| Digital marketing director | $60,000 | $75,000 | $90,000 |
| eCommerce manager | $37,000 | $50,000 | $60,000 |
| eCommerce director | $60,000 | $75,000 | $90,000 |
| Brand manager | $32,000 | $35,000 | $45,000 |
| Product marketing manager | $36,000 | $40,000 | $52,000 |
| Trade/channel marketing manager | $33,000 | $40,000 | $50,000 |
| Account manager (Agency) | $36,000 | $40,000 | $50,000 |
| Account director (Agency) | $51,000 | $65,000 | $80,000 |
| Public relations manager | $36,000 | $45,000 | $55,000 |
| Public relations director | $56,000 | $70,000 | $80,000 |
| Corporate communications manager | $40,000 | $50,000 | $60,000 |
| Corporate communications director | $60,000 | $80,000 | $100,000 |
| Events manager | $30,000 | $40,000 | $50,000 |
| Content manager | $35,000 | $42,000 | $50,000 |
| Investor relations manager | $40,000 | $52,000 | $65,000 |
If you fancy a comparison, you can find last year's guide here.
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