Entry-level digital marketing hiring remains strong, skills to matter more in 2026: Report
Entry-level hiring in digital marketing continues to gain momentum, with agencies leading volumes and brands offering higher pay, according to Kraftshala’s Digital Marketing Hiring Trends Report 2025. Skills, analytics and AI adoption are expected to shape hiring in 2026.
Hyderabad: A report by Kraftshala, an outcome-focused edtech platform for marketing and sales, has highlighted continued momentum in entry-level digital marketing hiring and a skill-heavy outlook for 2026.
The report – Digital Marketing Hiring Trends Report 2025 – analysed over 750 entry-level roles floated during Kraftshala’s placement processes across its flagship programs, offering a data-backed view of how hiring patterns are evolving for early-career marketers in India.
Agencies continued to be the largest hiring engine, accounting for nearly 70 per cent of all entry-level roles. Brands, while hiring fewer candidates, demonstrated a stronger focus on depth of skill and ownership.
While agencies drove volumes, brand-side roles were 62 per cent more likely to offer higher CTCs, reflecting expectations around analytical ability, cross-functional collaboration, and direct business impact.
Geographically, hiring remained concentrated in India’s major metros. Delhi-NCR (30 percent), Bangalore (27 percent), and Mumbai (18 percent) together accounted for over three-fourths of all roles, continuing a trend seen over the last few years.
At the same time, cities such as Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, and Chandigarh showed growing participation, indicating a gradual broadening of India’s digital marketing hiring footprint.
Workplace preferences remained largely unchanged through the year. Around 91.5 percent of roles in 2025 were in-office or hybrid, with employers continuing to emphasise collaboration, faster learning cycles, and on-ground problem-solving for early-career hires.
The report also highlighted a clear shift in the types of roles driving entry-level hiring. Growth marketing, e-commerce and D2C roles, programmatic, account management, and brand marketing emerged as some of the most in-demand and better-paying entry-level opportunities. The expectation around entry-level talent being equipped with using AI as a part of their jobs to increase both productivity and quality of output.
