How is your career and role changing? Take our survey

We want to hear about your search marketing career. Please take the Salary and Career Survey from MarTech, Search Engine Land’s sibling site.

This year’s survey should take you only about three minutes to complete. The survey results will be released in the first quarter.

TAKE THE SURVEY

If you thought ushering the 2020s in with a global pandemic would be the unlikeliest thing to happen for a while, you weren’t alone. We’re just early into 2024, but we know unexpected and unexplainable things are ahead for companies, marketing teams, agencies and you.

While the pandemic devastated industries like travel, tourism and hospitality, it created a boom for segments like B2B technology, home goods retailers and home improvement businesses. But with every rise comes a fall, and areas like tech felt the pain in 2023. We didn’t even mention inflation, interest rates and global political instability.

Layoffs in the technology sector alone totaled nearly 250,000 jobs according to Layoffs.fyi. Job losses also piled up in sectors like financial services and brick-and-mortar retail.

It’s often the case that marketing is among the first areas of an organization to be impacted by job cuts, and that remains true.

But job losses aren’t the only thing impacting marketers and their broader organizations.

• The AI explosion. Is it a tool? Is it a job killer? Is it a skill that marketers need to master? It might be all of the above. It can help teams scale and move faster, and it helps automate manual tasks. But many of the tasks were previously done by people.
• Scrutiny of martech stacks and other investments. When budgets are getting slashed, tech investments get a long, hard look. Contracts up for renewals and new deployments need to show rapid ROI or they don’t stand a chance.
• Changing the channels. X, once one of the most impactful social media channels, lost a significant number of advertisers since Elon Musk took over. In early 2024, Google and Yahoo will implement new rules for email senders.

TAKE THE SURVEY