How Stressful is Digital marketing? Are people working in digital marketing happy with their job?
In this article I touch a topic not always discussed enough in the marketing community: how stressful is digital marketing?
Often times, digital marketing is seen as THE career path to take.
Most of the times, people always look unrealistically at the benefits of the job, without considering what it takes for a career in digital marketing.
One of the questions that I wanted to ask myself is: how stressful is digital marketing?
But before that: are digital marketers happy?
Are Digital Marketers Happy?
One point I noticed by going through a number of articles about how stressful is digital marketing is that for many digital marketers good salary equals job happiness ((Waithered Wambua, D. Are SEO Managers Happy? SEO Manager Career Satisfaction and Salaries, careerkarma.com, December 2021)).
If you look at some of the data, it seems that the job satisfaction for a Digital Marketing Manager is 3.8 / 5((Average Digital Marketing Manager Salary, Payscale.com)).
The job satisfaction drops to 3.7 for a Digital Marketing Specialist((Average Digital Marketing Specialist Salary, Payscale.com)) but spikes to 4 for a Search Engine Optimization Manager((Average Search Engine Optimization Manager Salary, Payscale.com)).
If you want to take a look at digital marketing salaries, you can also check my article ‘Digital Marketing Salaries in Ireland 2021 (Great Insights)‘.
Some of the benefits and rewards of working in digital marketing include ((Gero, Itamar 10 Reasons Why Digital Marketers Love Their Job, 3rd June 2021, tweakyourbiz.com)):
- You can work for yourself
- You can theoretically work anywhere and from anywhere
- You tend to stay current on technology
Without taking any of this for granted, I think a better approach to the question ‘are digital marketers happy?’ is to investigate what causes unhappiness in digital marketing.
In a word: stress. How stressful is digital marketing?
According to a survey, Director of Marketing is one of the unhappiest jobs globally((Brenner, M. Your Director of Marketing is Miserable, Sep 9, 2021, Marketinginsidergroup.com)).
What makes marketing and digital marketing so stressful?
Most Common Causes of Stress for Digital Marketers
Many authors((Segura (Ward), A. 7 Causes of Stress for Digital Marketers, May 22, 2018, Searchenginejournal.com)) agree that among the most common causes of stress for digital marketers you can find:
- Low budgets
- Unrealistic objectives by the client
- Having to wear too many hats
- Google algorithm updates
- Lack of strategy aka what do I do next?
- Not generating results
- Measuring Metrics
- Pricing
- Competition
I will discuss each of these causes of stress individually in some upcoming articles.
It’s also important to notice that the stress is different whether you work in a digital marketing agency or in-house role((Dalley, S. How Stressful is Digital Marketing, Sep 2, 2020, Growtraffic.co.uk)).
Regardless of where you work, there are some things you can do to decrease your levels of stress as a digital marketer and avoid burnout((How to Avoid Burnout & Survive Long-Term in Digital Marketing, 2018, Mohittater.com)).
How to Manage Stress in Digital Marketing
Some of the general things that I find helpful to reduce my stress levels as a are:
- Eating healthy food, preferably vegetarian and organic
- Sleeping 7-8 hours per night
- Exercising regularly 4-5 times a week
- Meditating at least 10 minutes per day
I hope you liked this short article about hos stressful is digital marketing. I am hoping to write some more in the coming days.
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
