Digital - a profitable career?

For those of us wondering whether we've earned enough in 2007, the regional recruitment firm, ambition, has come out with it's annual report on trends in sales & marketing salaries in Hong Kong.

Apart from being informed that we should have raked in an additional 15-20% more this year, the report pinpoints the influential role that digital media and the internet are having on this immense growth. As stated by Richard Broadhurst, Manager of Sales & Marketing Recruitment, "There are few signs of a let-up in the pace of growth in the 12 months ahead and the expansion is being fuelled strongly by the re-emergence of the internet."

Perhaps, this is best shown by comparing the salary expectations in their report, whereby a Head of Online Marketing (12+ years experience) can earn as much as a traditional Director of Marketing with equal experience. Given that only a few brave souls in Hong Kong dared enter and stay in the internet space since the late 90's, I'm not surprised that recruiters would find it a challenge to identify the right candidates locally. Again a simple case of supply and demand driving the prices!As more clients start to accept the value of digital marketing and direct larger portions of their advertising budgets onto the internet, salaries for online media sales staff have started to head north but are yet to reach levels of their peers in the offline world, as can be seen by comparing the two charts below (online vs. print publishing).


As Richard so nicely summaries it, "The second coming of the internet has seen it rise from the ashes as a way to bring a sophisticated, scientific edge to marketing which is delivering solid and calculable returns on investment."