MBA careers
How To Become A Marketing Manager
Jobs nationally
395,240
$90,260 to $293,610 across them
Ranked MBAs in this field
37
Marketing concentration
Marketing management pays like senior finance and asks for the same shape of career: a bachelor's degree and experience in a marketing, advertising, promotions or sales job. The MBA concentration is where the budgeting, analytics and general management sit that the individual-contributor route does not teach.
What Marketing Managers Do
The Occupational Outlook Handbook describes the work this way: “Marketing managers estimate demand and identify potential markets for products and services that an organization and its competitors offer.” That is the occupation BLS surveys for the pay figures on this page, so the job description and the wage belong to the same definition. The Handbook page is the source, read on September 22, 2026.
How To Become A Marketing Manager
BLS sums the route up in one sentence: “Advertising, promotions, and marketing managers typically need a bachelor's degree. They also typically need work experience in a related occupation.”
BLS asks for experience in a related advertising, marketing, promotions or sales occupation rather than naming a degree beyond the bachelor's, so the route runs through the work: campaigns first, then the budget that pays for them.
What this site can add to that is the price of the degree and what its graduates earned. Across the 37 ranked online MBAs reporting a marketing concentration, whole-program tuition has a median of $34,254, and their graduates' median earnings a year after finishing were $80,536. The BLS median for marketing managers is $166,790, $85,878 above the $80,912 median a year out of these programs, which is the distance experience covers rather than the degree.
What Marketing Managers Earn
The May 2025 wage survey reports 395,240 jobs nationally, with these figures:
| Percentile | Annual pay | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 10th | $90,260 | Lowest tenth of the occupation |
| 25th | $123,020 | Lower quarter |
| Median | $166,790 | Midpoint, half earn more |
| 75th | $216,410 | Upper quarter |
| 90th | $293,610 | Highest tenth |
Marketing management is the second best paid occupation this site tracks and sits within $220 of financial management at the median, which is not the order most people would guess. MBA salaries by occupation sets all thirteen side by side, with what graduates of the ranked programs earned.
Online MBA Programs For Marketing Managers
The marketing concentration covers the demand side the job description names. The analytics concentration covers the measurement that now decides which campaigns keep their budget. Full profiles, prices and sources for each of these are on the concentration page; the score describes the whole MBA, because neither federal earnings nor AACSB tuition is reported for a single concentration.
| Program | Tuition | Graduate earnings | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Nebraska, Nebraska | $33,600 | $113,196 | 22nd |
| Saint Joseph's University, Pennsylvania | $36,480 | $116,023 | 28th |
| University of North Alabama, Alabama | $16,830 | $83,366 | 31st |
| Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma | $11,730 | $76,648 | 35th |
| University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Wisconsin | $26,000 | $87,090 | 55th |
All 37 ranked online MBAs in Marketing ยท Online MBA in Business Analytics
Common Questions About Becoming A Marketing Manager
Do you need an MBA to become a marketing manager?
How much do marketing managers make?
Which online MBA concentration is best for marketing managers?
Is the job growing?
Other Careers An MBA Leads To
Sources For This Marketing Manager Page
- Accreditation, online MBA offerings, concentrations and tuition: AACSB's list of accredited schools, retrieved September 21, 2026. Program details on that list are reported to AACSB by each school.
- Graduate earnings and debt: U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard, field-of-study file (Most-Recent-Cohorts-Field-of-Study_06102026.zip), business master's in CIP 52.01 and 52.02.
- Institution identifiers: IPEDS, used to match each AACSB school to its federal records.
- Wages: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.