The UK median gross annual salary for full-time marketing and commercial managers was £55,215 in 2026, up 1.9% on 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics. This is a provisional 2026 figure from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, published 22 October 2026, and the year-on-year changes on this page compare it with ONS's revised 2025 figures from the same release. The one exception is the regional table, which still uses 2025 provisional data because ONS had not published its 2026 regional table by 23 October 2026.
ASHE is the UK government's primary source for pay by occupation. It samples employee jobs through PAYE records, not job adverts or self-reported surveys. It does not cover the self-employed, so freelance and consultant day rates sit outside every figure below. If you are weighing an in-house marketing hire against outside help at these salary levels, a fixed-fee SEO audit shows where a specialist adds more value than a full-time role.
Every figure on this page covers full-time employees only, gross annual pay, unless a line states otherwise.
What do marketing managers and directors earn in the UK?
ASHE groups marketing roles by Standard Occupational Classification 2020 (SOC 2020) unit group. The table below shows gross annual pay for full-time employees, UK-wide, 2026 provisional.
Scroll horizontally if columns extend beyond the screen.
| Occupation (SOC 2020) | Jobs (000s) | Median | Mean | 25th percentile | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing, sales and advertising directors (1132) | 193 | £96,393 | £125,571 | £68,288 | £140,018 |
| Marketing and commercial managers (2432) | 102 | £55,215 | £62,463 | £40,908 | £72,160 |
| All UK full-time employees | 18,184 | £40,911 | £52,109 | £30,600 | £56,842 |
Both marketing occupations sit above the UK full-time median. Directors earn roughly 2.4 times the UK full-time median at the midpoint; managers earn around 1.35 times it. The directors' median rose 2.9% on 2025 and the managers' median rose 1.9%, both below the 4.5% rise for all full-time employees, and the managers' mean fell slightly, by 0.2%. The gap between the 25th and 75th percentile is wide for both groups, which means a single average understates how much pay varies within the same job title.
SOC 1132 covers sales directors alongside marketing and advertising directors, so this unit group is not marketing-only. The £96,393 median represents broader commercial leadership.
UK median gross annual salary for full-time marketing and commercial managers, 2026 provisional
UK median gross annual salary for full-time marketing, sales and advertising directors, 2026 provisional
How do marketing salaries vary by region?
ASHE Table 15 breaks pay down by workplace region. ONS had not published the 2026 edition of Table 15 when this page was last checked on 23 October 2026 (its dataset page says the table was delayed and will follow within three weeks of 22 October 2026), so this table still shows 2025 provisional figures (reference period: the pay period that included 30 April 2025). Read it on its own rather than against the 2026 national figures above. Table 15 covers Great Britain only; Northern Ireland runs a separate earnings survey and is not included in these rows. Several regional cells for narrow occupation codes are suppressed for quality reasons (marked "suppressed" below), usually because ONS's own coefficient of variation (CV) check on the regional sample exceeds 20%, its threshold for a reliable estimate.
Scroll horizontally if columns extend beyond the screen.
| Region (2025 provisional) | Marketing and commercial managers (2432), median | Marketing associate professionals (3554), median |
|---|---|---|
| London | £60,658 | £36,870 |
| South East | £57,105† | £33,470 |
| East | £63,851† | £35,758† |
| South West | £41,963† | £32,368† |
| Wales | £57,791‡ | £28,488‡ |
| West Midlands | £52,379† | £29,374† |
| North West | £48,865† | £29,291 |
| East Midlands | suppressed | £33,938† |
| North East | suppressed | £32,873‡ |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | suppressed | £30,653 |
| Scotland | suppressed | £28,916† |
† CV 10-20%: ONS rates this estimate as less precise than the unmarked figures above. Treat it as indicative rather than exact. ‡ CV unavailable: ONS published this median without a published coefficient of variation, so this page cannot independently confirm its precision; ONS itself has not suppressed the figure.
In the 2025 provisional data, London's median for marketing associate professionals is £36,870, around 26% above the North West's £29,291; both carry a clean CV (5.5% and 8.8%). Most of the other regional medians above carry a 10-20% CV and should be read as a useful range rather than a precise figure. Where a region shows "suppressed," ONS has withheld the estimate because its CV exceeds 20% or for confidentiality, not implied a value of zero or an unusually low figure.
How much do people working in SEO earn in the UK?
SOC 2020 has no separate "SEO" occupation. SEO roles are coded within broader occupations depending on seniority: many in-house SEO executives and specialists are likely to fall under marketing associate professionals (SOC 3554), while SEO managers and heads of SEO are more likely to be coded under marketing and commercial managers (SOC 2432) above. An "SEO salary UK" figure quoted elsewhere usually comes from a job-board average, a smaller employer survey, or an approximation using one of these broader ASHE groups. None of the published ASHE tables isolate SEO specifically.
Marketing associate professionals, full-time, UK-wide, 2026 provisional: median £35,000, up 4.7% on 2025; mean £44,119, up 6.3%. The middle half of this group earns between £29,000 (25th percentile) and £45,317 (75th percentile). The UK SEO statistics page covers the wider SEO industry, including UK agency counts and search-market data, separate from the pay figures here.
Scroll horizontally if columns extend beyond the screen.
| Percentile | Marketing associate professionals (3554), full-time |
|---|---|
| 10th | £25,497 |
| 25th | £29,000 |
| Median | £35,000 |
| 75th | £45,317 |
| 90th | suppressed |
This broader occupational group provides an approximate official proxy for SEO pay.
UK median gross annual salary for full-time marketing associate professionals, the closest SOC 2020 proxy for SEO executive and specialist roles, 2026 provisional
How much do PR and advertising professionals earn?
Public relations sits in its own SOC 2020 codes, separate from marketing. Public relations professionals had a full-time median of £40,043 in 2026, up 6.3% on 2025, with a clean CV of 8.3%. Public relations and communications directors had a full-time median of £79,560, with a CV of 9.9%. ONS publishes no year-on-year change for that median because its 2025 revised estimate was suppressed; the group's mean of £95,792 is up 10.9% on 2025. This unit group's small UK sample means its 75th and 90th percentile cells are suppressed and its jobs count is less precise, so read it with more caution than the larger occupations above.
Scroll horizontally if columns extend beyond the screen.
| Occupation (SOC 2020) | Jobs (000s) | Median | Mean |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public relations and communications directors (1133) | 14† | £79,560 | £95,792 |
| Public relations professionals (2493) | 36† | £40,043 | £43,328 |
| Advertising accounts managers and creative directors (2494) | 30† | £50,121 | £57,581 |
† CV 10-20%: the jobs count for this row is less precise than the unmarked figures. Every median and mean in this table has a CV of 10% or less.
What do self-employed SEO consultants and freelancers charge?
ASHE only samples employee jobs through PAYE records. It excludes the self-employed entirely, so none of the figures above tell you what a freelance SEO consultant, sole trader or contractor charges. This page does not attempt to estimate consultant day rates from ASHE data because employees and the self-employed are not comparable populations.
For published UK consultant pricing, hourly rates, day rates and retainer ranges, see how much does an SEO consultant charge in the UK.
What does ASHE not measure?
ASHE draws its sample from HM Revenue and Customs PAYE records, so every figure on this page describes full-time employee jobs, not self-employment income, freelance rates, part-time pay, or equity and share-based pay. The 2026 ASHE reference period is the pay period that included 22 April 2026. Annual pay estimates cover the tax year ending 5 April 2026 for employees who have been in the same job for more than a year, a separate window from the April reference date used for the point-in-time pay figures. The 2026 edition used here is provisional, and ONS will revise it in its next annual release. Year-on-year changes are ONS's own published changes against the 2025 revised figures, which differ slightly from the 2025 provisional figures this page showed before; for example, the 2025 median for marketing and commercial managers was revised from £53,703 to £54,193. The regional table is the exception: it is still 2025 provisional, with a reference period of the pay period that included 30 April 2025.
This page reports full-time pay because it matches how most salary searches are framed. ASHE also publishes an all-employee figure that blends full-time and part-time jobs together; that blended figure is lower than the full-time-only figures here, since it is pulled down by part-time pay, and the two bases should not be compared directly.
ONS scores every estimate with a coefficient of variation (CV): the ratio of an estimate's standard error to the estimate itself, expressed as a percentage. ONS treats a CV of 5% or less as precise, 5-10% as reasonably precise, 10-20% as acceptable but less precise, and anything over 20% as unreliable enough to withhold from publication. This page follows that same threshold: every value above marked with a dagger (†) carries a published CV between 10% and 20%, every value marked "suppressed" carries a CV over 20% or an ONS confidentiality flag, and every value marked with a double dagger (‡) is a case where ONS published the estimate itself but did not publish a CV for it, so this page cannot independently confirm its precision. Do not treat a suppressed cell as £0 or interpolate a number for it.
The marketing-managers and SEO-pay tables earlier on this page carry no markers because every median, mean and shown percentile in those two tables has a clean CV of 10% or less. The CV checks on this page cover the medians, means, percentiles and job counts actually published here; ONS calculates additional CVs, for example on other percentiles, that are not reproduced.
SOC 2020 unit groups are functional job classifications, not company-specific titles. A "digital marketing executive," "SEO specialist" or "content marketing manager" job title can be coded to marketing associate professionals (3554), and a "head of marketing," "marketing director" or "commercial director" can be coded to either marketing and commercial managers (2432) or marketing, sales and advertising directors (1132), depending on seniority and scope. This page reports the SOC unit group, not individual job titles, because ASHE does not publish by job title.
All figures are gross annual pay for full-time employees, United Kingdom, unless a table states otherwise. Source: Office for National Statistics, Employee earnings in the UK: 2026, published 22 October 2026. Datasets: ASHE Table 14, occupation by four-digit SOC (2026 provisional and 2025 revised) and ASHE Table 15, region by occupation (2025 provisional, the latest edition published). ONS has not yet announced the date of its next earnings release. Checked 23 October 2026.
Download the full data as CSV or as JSON, including every national and regional row shown above plus the suppressed cells marked as such.
More sourced figures from this site are collected in the statistics hub.
How to cite this page
Sunny Patel, "UK Marketing Salary Statistics," sunnypatel.co.uk, updated 23 October 2026, citing ONS ASHE 2026 provisional (the regional table is ASHE 2025 provisional). Link to this page and to the underlying ONS release rather than restating the figures as your own research.
ASHE counts full-time employee jobs through PAYE records. It cannot tell you what a self-employed SEO consultant charges, and SOC 2020 has no SEO-specific occupation code.
