Discover how much digital marketers earn across Canada, with average salaries by role and experience level. Use this guide to benchmark your salary expectations or plan your next career move.
While exact salaries depend on various factors including qualifications, experience, and seniority, we've covered average salaries in Canada for entry-level, mid-level, and senior digital marketers below.
Average digital marketing salaries are equally valuable for applicants, professionals, recruiters and agencies looking to expand their teams or hire digital marketing specialists.
From a recruitment perspective, offering below the average may mean you put off highly skilled applicants who would be perfect for your team – whereas offering too high may mean stretching your staffing budget far beyond that of your competitors.
Likewise, if you’re applying for a job, promotion or transfer, you need to have a good gauge about what salary to expect to ensure you’re entering negotiations with confidence and neither asking for less than you should be earning nor for more than other applicants – leaving you out of the running.
However, as we’ll clarify shortly, it’s always wise to approach averages with an understanding that some elements will drive a salary higher or lower. Staff loyalty is a great example since a workplace is likely to offer a staff member above the standard rate if they have worked for the same business for several years.
It’s also important for job applicants to review salary and remuneration packages as a whole rather than making career decisions based solely on the gross salary offered.
Added perks and non-cash benefits like life and health insurance, paid time off, discounted childcare, bonuses and commissions, workplace pension schemes and employee assistance programs can all be worth considerably more than another role with few benefits but a slightly higher salary.
Canadian junior and entry-level digital marketing jobs pay an average salary of $44,500.
Junior roles, apprenticeships and entry-level positions are designed for applicants without prior workplace experience, including school leavers and inexperienced job candidates. Most entry-level digital marketing jobs provide opportunities to learn, shadow senior colleagues and gain new skills, sometimes including funded formal qualifications or certifications.
Canadian entry-level digital marketing jobs could include:
Digital marketing jobs in Canada aimed at applicants with moderate experience pay an average salary of $76,031.
Medium-level roles are great for digital marketers who are not yet at the managerial level but have sufficient work experience to take on greater independence and responsibility or project manage areas of a digital marketing team reporting back to the relevant manager. Digital marketers at this level earn an average of $30,000 more than juniors, although they may work their way up the pay scale progressively as they improve their abilities and confidence.
Examples of digital marketing jobs in Canada with a mid-level salary include:
Digital marketing jobs in Canada for senior professionals pay an average of $98,493.
Senior digital marketers command a further salary uplift, with an average pay rate roughly $20,000 higher than mid-level colleagues. At this stage, digital marketers can apply for managerial and supervisory posts, take on greater decision-making and oversight of campaigns, and report back to boards, directors, and often the Head of Digital Marketing.
In Canada, roles with a senior-level salary could include:
Directorship and board positions within digital marketing pay an average salary of $142,848 in Canada.
Directors and board-level executives have ultimate control, leadership, and decision-making about an organization's digital marketing activities. They usually work within larger, established corporations or for mature digital marketing agencies with strong market share. These roles are often linked with partial company ownership or weighted voting at stakeholder meetings.
Experienced VPs and directors working in digital marketing in Canada include the following positions:
The average digital marketing salaries show a baseline standard salary for a wide range of roles throughout Canada. They include metrics for every major city, province, agency, freelancers and in-house employees, new recruits, and long-standing team members. Therefore, they provide a broad-stroke outline of what you might expect to offer or earn in a particular post.
Considering the variables that will have the greatest impact on average salaries and how these differ will help you establish whether your salary should be towards the top or bottom of the average scale and provide a steer as to whether you should expect a below-average or above-average wage.
Digital marketing salaries vary between regions and provinces, as do all professions and sectors. They are influenced by factors like the cost of living, the number of competitors or businesses in a city, and the availability of high-caliber job applicants.
As a guide, the highest average salaries tend to be in Quebec, followed by Ontario and Alberta. Regions like British Columbia, Manitoba and Nova Scotia pay slightly less than the national average, although digital marketers working in the larger cities earn more than their counterparts further out.
Digital marketers with years of experience will naturally earn more than their less experienced counterparts. However, the earnings gap between workers with two and three years of workplace experience is among the smallest.
The more senior the role and the greater the level of responsibility, the bigger the distance between the highest earners, with a solid track record and those new to the world of digital marketing—roles with a salary of $150,000 or more can pay as much as 50% lower for candidates with less experience.
Most digital marketing jobs don’t require essential qualifications for applicants to be eligible—although this doesn’t always apply to more senior positions or technical digital marketing vacancies. Digital marketers working in more complex sectors, such as software services, education, and finance, are more likely to require a formal qualification or at least a degree to apply.
Higher-level accreditations can also mean digital marketers in top-level management, strategic, and growth-orientated jobs earn more, even if they are fulfilling the same job specification because they appear to be more desirable candidates given their proven credentials.
The type of role and the structure of the job will all influence the average salary, whether you are working as an independent freelancer, within an in-house digital marketing team, or as part of a digital marketing department.
It’s also common for some higher-demand roles to be the best paid, especially within digital marketing agencies, which rely on strategists, analysts, copywriters, content creators, campaign managers, and client liaison professionals to represent their brand as the first point of contact.
Inevitably, a bigger company, agency, or organization will usually have a larger staffing budget and can afford to invest higher salaries in the most capable, talented, and skilled candidates. Most will also have greater perks, such as workplace pension schemes, paid time off, and generous insurance packages.
The contrast may be where smaller start-ups offer non-remuneration bonuses, such as stock options or equity shares, which can become significantly more valuable than a much higher salary in the long run if the business succeeds.