Marketing recruitment in Manchester isn’t about finding more CVs
I’ve recruited marketing, digital, PR, communications and agency people across Manchester and the North West for a long time.
And the market has changed.
Technology has made finding people easier.
LinkedIn can find people.
AI can find people.
Job boards can certainly find you lots of people.
The difficult bit is still working out who’s genuinely bloody good, who’s right for your business and whether the role you’ve taken to market makes sense in the first place.
That’s what good marketing recruitment should help you solve.
What does the Manchester and North West marketing market look like in 2026?
It’s mixed.
There are more candidates available in some areas than we’ve been used to historically, but that doesn’t automatically mean the best people for your particular job are easy to hire.
From the searches and conversations I’m seeing, there are still pockets of demand at senior salary levels. At the same time, the wider recruitment market has been cautious and candidate availability has remained high.
The North West also remains a smaller marketing talent market than London and the South East. Marketing Week’s 2026 survey found 8.3% of respondents were based in the North West compared with 53.9% in London and the South East.
That’s why I wouldn’t approach a Manchester search by simply taking a London brief, knocking a percentage off the salary and hoping for the best.
The regional market has its own agencies, brands, candidate networks and salary realities.
What marketing roles can you recruit for in Manchester?
At Essential Resourcing, my core market covers senior and specialist roles across:
Marketing leadership: CMO, Marketing Director, Head of Marketing and senior marketing leadership.
Digital and performance: Digital, paid media, performance, SEO, PPC, CRM, eCommerce and analytics.
PR and communications: PR, corporate communications, content, social and reputation.
Agency: Client services, PR, digital, performance, strategy, operations and agency leadership.
Strategic Interim: Experienced marketing and agency leaders brought into a business for a defined period rather than another permanent hire.
That doesn’t mean I’ll claim to recruit absolutely everything with the word “marketing” somewhere in the title.
Specialist, not generalist. That’s the point.
Start with the problem, not the job title
This is probably the biggest thing I’d change about how businesses recruit.
Don’t start with:
“We need a Marketing Director.”
Start with:
“What do we need this person to have changed 12 months after they join?”
Maybe you need to build a marketing function.
Maybe acquisition has stalled.
Maybe you’ve got a good team but nobody senior enough to lead it.
Maybe the founder is still making every marketing decision.
Maybe you’ve grown quickly and the brand hasn’t kept up.
Those situations could all result in somebody being called Marketing Director.
They require very different people.
The job title isn’t the brief.
What should you pay?
Again: scope first, title second.
My 2026 North West salary research found meaningful variation even within apparently similar senior roles.
A Marketing Manager with broad execution responsibility isn’t automatically the same proposition as somebody leading a team, owning significant budget and carrying commercial accountability.
The same becomes even more pronounced at Head of Marketing, Marketing Director and CMO level.
Look at:
Team size.
Marketing budget.
Business size and stage.
Reporting line.
Commercial ownership.
Geographic remit.
Decision-making authority.
What they’re inheriting.
What they’re expected to change.
Then benchmark the salary.
Not the other way around.
Agency and client-side hiring aren’t the same
I’ve worked extensively across both.
And that matters.
Agency hiring needs an understanding of client handling, commercial pressure, pace, margin and the fact that the same title can mean completely different things from one agency to another.
Client-side hiring requires understanding the business stage, marketing capability, budget, team and what commercial outcome the person is expected to own.
Someone being excellent agency-side doesn’t automatically make them brilliant client-side.
And vice versa.
Do you need contingency recruitment, retained search or Strategic Interim?
It depends on the problem.
For a specialist role where there is a reasonable active candidate market, contingency can work perfectly well.
For a senior, confidential or business-critical appointment where you need proper market mapping and direct approaches, retained search may make considerably more sense.
And sometimes you don’t need another permanent employee at all.
You need an experienced senior operator for two or three days a week, or for six months, to create direction and momentum while you work out the longer-term answer.
That’s where Strategic Interim comes in.
What should a good marketing recruiter actually do?
Not send you the most CVs.
I’d expect them to:
Challenge the brief.
Tell you when the salary doesn’t stack up.
Understand the market.
Find people who aren’t applying.
Get underneath what candidates have actually achieved.
Tell you when somebody isn’t right.
Manage the process.
Keep good candidates engaged.
And occasionally tell you:
“You don’t actually need a recruiter for this one.”
Because the objective shouldn’t be another recruitment fee.
It should be a better hiring decision.
Looking for a marketing recruiter in Manchester or the North West?
Essential Resourcing is Manchester-led, North West-rooted and works across the UK on senior and specialist marketing, digital, PR, communications and agency appointments.
If you’ve got a role coming up, I’m always happy to sense-check the brief before you start.
Talk to David.