The Truth About Industry Salaries (and how they detract from hiring the best employees): Catalog Marketing Hiring Tips, Part 3
For the past two weeks, I’ve offered my take on what’s wrong with the catalog-marketing hiring market. I did this after a survey published by Bernhart Associates (www.bernhart.com) stated that 24 percent and 53 percent of direct marketing companies were having a “difficult” and “somewhat difficult” time finding top-notch talent.
This week, I submit my thoughts on the state of our industry in terms of hiring salaries. As a preface, it’s been a long, uphill battle, but I think that direct marketing is finally starting to get the recognition it deserves. It seems that the rise of the Internet has helped legitimize our industry. (For more on this, I suggest you read The Editor’s Take in the June issue of Catalog Success, either in print or on our Web site here in the current issue.)
With the advent of a single response device (the URL), our industry has been transformed. Direct and catalog marketing are no longer seen as the redheaded stepchildren of marketing services (with apologies to redheads and stepchildren, of course). Nowadays, all marketers, merchants and businesses need to be at least somewhat direct marketing savvy. More and more businesspeople are applying direct marketing principles to their businesses.
Don’t Get Crushed
It’s either market direct, or be crushed by the competition.
Furthermore, as catalogers, we have an edge over our direct marketing brethren. Catalogers are not seen as junk mailers, and we set the standard for the direct marketing industry. We offer consumer value with great products, ease of purchase and superior customer service.
Thus, I think it’s time for the world to view the direct marketing process and career path as a profession. We have very specific trade tools, as do doctors, lawyers, architects and accountants (the big four “professions” in my view), right?
Major universities now offer master’s degrees in direct and interactive marketing, and I anticipate more programs such as these will pop up in the near future.
So why is it that salaries in direct marketing just plain suck?
Consider this. My friend’s son just graduated from law school in the Northeast. He landed his first job right out of school at $160,000 per year. Compare this to a catalog marketing manager. According to recruiting firm Crandall Associates (www.crandallassociates.com), which publishes the annual National Salary Guide for the Direct Marketing and Telesales Industry, a catalog marketing manager with one to three years experience can expect to earn between $52,400 to $61,600 (for B-to-B) or $60,300 to $66,400 (consumer). And that’s not even an entry level position, such as catalog marketing assistant or catalog marketing coordinator.
On Trial
Based on the salary survey, a consumer-based catalog marketing director with seven-plus years of experience ($145K) doesn’t even make what a newbie lawyer with little or no experience makes.
I have nothing against lawyers (OK, my lawyer told me to say that), but I just don’t see how the value the legal profession equals what us catalogers bring to the table. I believe that the catalog industry makes the world a better place. We provide products that make people happy and make a difference in their lives (I ask you: When was the last time a conversation with a lawyer made you happy?).
Despite the fact that catalogers always work on slim margins and cough up much of our revenue to hard costs like postage, if we are to attract better talent from other so-called professions, we really need to look at how much we pay our employees.
Finally, we also need to push for more courses and degrees in our industry. And the only way we are going to do that is to create the demand for it; by sending our employees to courses, back to school, to seminars, etc.
Maybe then someday, we can tell our children that when they grow up, they should be a doctor, lawyer, or cataloger or multichannel marketer.
Speak to you next week.
Jim Gilbert is president of Gilbert Direct Marketing, a full-service catalog and direct marketing agency. Reach him at jimdirect@aol.com or 561-302-1719.
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Jim Gilbert has had a storied career in direct and digital marketing resulting in a burning desire to tell stories that educate, inform, and inspire marketers to new heights of success.
After years of marketing consulting, Jim decided it was time to “put his money where his mouth was" and build his own e-commerce company, Premo Natural Products, with its flagship product, Premo Guard Bed Bug & Mite Sprays. Premo in its second year is poised to eclipse 100 percent growth.
Jim has been writing for Target Marketing Group since 2006, first on the pages of Catalog Success Magazine, then as the first blogger for its online division. Jim continues to write for Total Retail.
Along the way, Jim has led the Florida Direct Marketing Association as their Marketing Chair and then three-term President, been an Adjunct Professor of Direct and Digital marketing for Miami International University, and created a lecture series, “The 9 Immutable Laws of Social Media Marketing,” which he has presented across the country at conferences and universities.
