The State of Demand Generation: Salary Survey & More 2024

When we approached demand gen marketers for this survey, we weren't entirely prepared for some of the responses — and that's despite talking to candidates in this space every day. What came back was an industry at a genuine turning point: salaries higher than the average marketing role, job satisfaction that's fine on the surface, but a real fear about the future of the function itself, and a sense of a ceiling in the job market. It plays out on both sides of the Atlantic.

AI is at the heart of a lot of the conversations we had — how it will change the role, how it will affect results, what's next. But there's also a broader worry about whether people outside the function actually understand what demand gen does, and whether there's much of a career ladder left to climb. So here's what the data says, from salaries and salary expectations through to motivations, fears, and where we think this goes from here.

Salary Survey

We surveyed over 150 Demand Generation professionals in January 2024, covering low, average and high salaries in the UK and the US, broken down into Managerial and Senior titles.

Manager vs Senior Titles

Current Salary vs What They Expect Next

The takeaway: if you're hiring a Demand Generation Manager in the UK, budget a base of around £70,000; in the US, around $145,000. Go more senior and the range widens considerably, but that positions UK Demand Gen professionals around the £100,000 mark, and US professionals a little below $200,000. Expectations sit above even those figures — anyone hiring now or over the next 12 months should expect candidates to be asking for roughly 20% more than current averages, if our survey is anything to go by.

Motivations

We asked respondents to weigh up what mattered most to them in their career right now, split by UK and US.

Money is obviously the prime motivator on both sides of the Atlantic, but there's an interesting lean towards wanting a challenging role in the UK, ahead of the US, where work-life balance edges it out instead. Remote work is barely a primary driver for a Demand Gen specialist to make a move at all — which suggests that for most, a hybrid setup is already the accepted norm, and that in the UK at least, a genuinely challenging role can be just as much of a pull as the pay.

Job Satisfaction

We asked respondents to rate their happiness in their current role on a scale of 1 to 10, and how likely they were to seek a new employer over the next 12 months — giving us a Job Happiness Index and a Propensity to Quit Index for each market.

The gaps are marginal, but a stark reminder to employers that their team is liable to jump ship for any number of reasons. What we see is a slightly unhappier US workforce overall, with a greater propensity to find something new, while UK demand gen specialists are slightly happier and slightly less inclined to move on — probably more a reflection of the differences between the two job markets than anything else. LinkedIn's own data backs this up: over 26% of Demand Generation specialists in the UK, and 29% in the US, are marked as open to new roles. With salary expectations rising the way they are, the cost of replacing someone could be significant.

Where Do the Women Go?

LinkedIn also gave us complementary data on Demand Generation Manager roles specifically — open-to-work rates, 2023 turnover, and demographics.

On open roles, the UK had 18 roles advertised for 237 Demand Gen Manager professionals on LinkedIn; the US had 166 roles for 1,421 professionals — a rough sense of scale, if not quite a like-for-like ratio, given the size difference between the two markets.

This data takes Demand Gen Managers in isolation, and it's a highly female demographic — especially in the US. But progress into Head of Demand Gen, and that number tightens noticeably.

“A wellspring of female talent at Demand Generation Manager level isn't all finding its way up to Head of or VP roles. This feels like a missed opportunity.”

Headwinds

There's a general feeling, on both sides of the Atlantic, that while AI is coming, it isn't necessarily coming for their jobs, nor is it about to start making mistakes on their behalf. But the prevailing mood seems shaped by the twin pressures of an economic downturn and the AI revolution. Nearly half believed their responsibilities could be trimmed, and just over four in ten believed their role itself may actually be at risk. Worse, nearly two thirds said there may not be enough strategic roles for them as they progress through their career.

There's a feeling of being 'on the edge' — partly, we suspect, because of the vast range of responsibilities Demand Generation marketers hold, often without a team underneath them, and often without real buy-in or understanding from the top.

Demand Gen marketers need to be a lot more creative in their channel selection, messaging and overall marketing strategy because it isn't working any longer. Innovations are coming and they need to be on the lookout and constantly innovate and evolve.

That comes with a particular note for hiring managers too — it's a role that carries its own stresses around getting results, layered on top of the stress of responsibilities being taken away and having to constantly adapt to new tools. AI doesn't look like much of a concern on the face of it — a separate cut of the data put the figure worried about AI mistakes at 21% — but when we spoke to respondents directly, we got a rather different, more textured picture worth reading in their own words.

The more we play into the fear of AI replacing us, the less we use the tools and shape the narrative. I personally use several AI tools daily, and can tell you that they are nowhere near capable of replacing talented marketers. If you're afraid of the tools, though, you should lose that fear. The future of marketing will require leveraging AI to increase speed, efficiency, and time to market. Your competitors are using AI. They will be able gain prospects and serve customers faster with it. Do you really want to fall behind because you didn't want to learn something new?

I think AI will make or break Marketers' careers. Marketers who learn how to leverage AI in their Demand Generation campaigns will easily grow their careers. The ones avoiding the topic will get slowed down by the pace of change.

With AI comes an expectation of across-the-board improvement in Demand Gen outcomes — efficiency, quality, pipeline impact, you name it. Soon, it will no longer be enough to be experimenting with AI tools. They will need to be driving results better than what they were previously able to achieve. Marketers will have to figure out which solutions are actually able to drive those improvements, then how to incorporate those solutions into long standing workstreams.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Looking at the tightening picture in the UK ahead of an election later this year, and a runaway payroll in the US, the two markets have quite different backdrops. It's likely UK employees are 'sticking around' as long as possible, waiting to see what a new government will do on investment and economic stability. In the US, the most recent payroll data showed the economy faring far better, which may be underpinning both the salary expectations we've seen and some of the extra positivity around finding new roles. As in the UK, though, much hinges on November — just in a very different way.

A special note should be reserved for anyone hiring senior positions: there's a wellspring of female talent at Demand Generation Manager level, but not all of it appears to be finding its way up to Head of or VP roles. As we've said, that feels like a missed opportunity.

Our view is that the Demand Generation function is frequently misunderstood — especially in a start-up context, where VCs call for a Demand Gen specialist and expect them to simply turn the taps on. For that reason, Demand Generation Managers can command a salary often 20% higher than their paid-media cousins, Performance Managers, because they own the whole funnel: the martech stack, the organic strategy, the relationship with sales teams, and more.

There's little appetite for that list of responsibilities to shrink. But there's also a fear that Demand Generation is primarily a middle-management role, with an increasingly narrow path to the top — potentially resulting in more fractional Demand Gen professionals working sizeable day rates rather than climbing a conventional ladder.

Demand Gen will eventually go away and return back to the basics of true marketing. AI will take over the numbers and optimization aspect. People will have to identify the market fit.

The Final Word, Finally...

We've spent many years in the Demand Gen space, and we're light years on from the conference we attended in 2014, where not even the attendees really knew what Demand Generation was. Since moving out of digital marketing and into digital recruitment, we've probably spoken to around 200 demand generation specialists about different roles, and often found them to be some of the fiercest marketers we've ever met — in a good way. There's a tenacity and a drive for revenue that comes with a genuinely cross-departmental mindset, principally with sales, but equally with product and operations. In many ways, despite their reservations about future opportunities, they're the CMOs of the future.

If you're hiring in Demand Gen at any time, we're right here if and when you need us. Having done the role ourselves, and having worked on multiple demand gen positions already, we're well placed to help you find your next demand gen specialist.