A lighting marketing manager fills the sales calendar for three lines that peak at different times: holiday displays, landscape lighting and commercial LED retrofits. They set each line's budget, approve every ad and email, and direct the marketing coordinator and outside vendors.
By the HireBus team · Updated · Pay data: BLS, May 2025
Median pay, electrical contractors · BLS, May 2025
You'll generate leads for each of our lighting lines on its own calendar: holiday lighting in late summer and fall, landscape lighting in spring and summer, and commercial retrofits year-round. You run ads, email, the website and reviews, and lead the Marketing Coordinator.
2. Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Plan seasonal campaigns: early holiday booking, landscape lighting in spring, and retrofit outreach to facility and property managers.
Run renewal campaigns to past holiday lighting clients before the install calendar fills.
Manage paid search, social ads and the website, with budgets by service line.
Describe utility rebates accurately in retrofit marketing, explaining the process without quoting amounts.
Get night photos and video of finished projects, with the customer's permission.
Manage online reviews and responses with the Office Manager.
Lead the Marketing Coordinator and outside vendors.
3. Key Tasks / Daily Activities
Check leads, cost per lead and booked estimates by service line.
Approve ads, emails and social posts.
Meet with the Sales Manager on lead quality.
Update website pages and project galleries.
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Leads by service line: [your target].
Cost per booked estimate: [your target].
Holiday renewals from past clients: [your target].
Online review rating: [your target].
Revenue from marketing-sourced leads: [your target].
5. Required Qualifications and Skills
[4+] years in marketing for a home service, contracting or local service business.
Hands-on experience with Google Ads, Meta ads and email marketing.
Ability to read lead and sales data and shift budget.
Clear writing for ads, email and web pages.
6. Preferred Experience
Experience marketing seasonal or holiday services.
Experience marketing to property and facility managers.
Photography or video skills.
7. Physical Requirements
Computer work for most of the day.
Visit job sites, including at night, to photograph finished work.
With or without reasonable accommodation.
8. Work Environment and Schedule
Office-based or hybrid: [your setup].
Evening shoots in fall and winter when holiday displays are lit.
Busiest planning stretch in late summer before holiday booking opens.
9. Compensation and Benefits
Pay: [range and hourly or salary basis].
Additional pay: [overtime, bonus or incentive terms, or none].
Benefits: [health, dental, vision, retirement, paid time off, and when they start].
10. Company Culture and Overview
[Two or three sentences on what your company does, the area you serve, and the support a new marketing manager gets in the first 90 days.]
11. How to Apply
[Apply link or email]. Our process: [phone interview, in-person interview, and next steps]. Contact [hiring contact] if you need an accommodation during the application process.
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A lighting company sells to homeowners, neighborhood boards and facility managers, each on its own clock. These are the places where the marketing manager's job changes.
Night drone video needs a certified pilot
Aerial video of a lit roofline or a newly bright parking lot sells the next job. Under FAA Part 107, whoever works the controls must hold a remote pilot certificate, unless a certificate holder supervises them directly. Night flights also need a knowledge test or training passed after April 6, 2021, and anti-collision lights visible for 3 statute miles. Check the certificate of any pilot you hire before the shoot. Source: eCFR: 14 CFR Part 107, small unmanned aircraft systems (107.12 and 107.29).
One opt-out list across three lines
Renewal offers to last year's holiday customers and retrofit pitches to property managers both count as commercial email. The FTC's guide is plain that business-to-business mail gets no exception. Every send has to carry your physical postal address and an opt-out that works, and an opt-out request gets honored within 10 business days. The guide allows a menu of mail types only if it includes a way to stop all marketing. Without one, treat each unsubscribe as covering all three lines, on a single suppression list. Source: FTC: CAN-SPAM Act, a compliance guide for business.
Rebate copy names the program, not a figure
TVA's EnergyRight program serves businesses across the seven-state Tennessee Valley, and its contact form starts by asking for the local power company. Its site says the Fast Track Lighting option needs no pre-approval and can qualify LED fixtures already bought, based on invoice date. It also invites contractors into a Preferred Partners Network. Ads can name the program and link to it. Leave incentive amounts out and let sales confirm what each building qualifies for. Source: TVA EnergyRight: business incentives.
Fill returning clients before buying new ones
Holiday install days are limited, and past clients book faster than strangers. Send renewals first, with a reply-by date, then ask operations how many install slots are still open before new-customer ads go live. If returning clients fill most of the calendar, shift spend to landscape or retrofit leads instead of paying for holiday clicks you can't schedule.
How much lighting marketing managers make
Marketing managers who work for electrical contractors earned a median of $124,790 a year ($59.99 an hour) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s below the $166,790 median for marketing managers in all industries. About 680 of the 395,240 marketing managers in that survey work for electrical contractors.
Lighting contractors usually pay this role a straight salary, sometimes topped up by a bonus on booked estimates or revenue from marketing leads. The template leaves pay blank, so decide which numbers any bonus follows before you post the job.
Electrical contractors
$124,790$124,790 median Middle half $80,080–$155,360 10th–90th $74,060–$201,080
All industries
$166,790$166,790 median Middle half $123,020–$216,410 10th–90th $90,260–$293,610
$0k$50k$100k$150k$200k$250k$300k$350k
10th–90th percentileMiddle halfMedianAnnual pay, May 2025. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
Annual pay by percentile
Group
10th
25th
Median
75th
90th
Electrical contractors
$74,060
$80,080
$124,790
$155,360
$201,080
All industries
$90,260
$123,020
$166,790
$216,410
$293,610
BLS doesn’t publish pay for lighting installers on their own. These figures cover electrical contractors, which include them. Post a real range for your market in the ad.
Skills to hire for, and what you can teach
Hire for these
Running Google Ads and Meta campaigns with a separate budget for each service line
Reading cost per booked estimate and moving money between lines mid-season
Writing plain ads and emails for homeowners and for facility managers
Managing a coordinator, an agency and freelance photographers against deadlines
Working from the install calendar so ads never sell days the crews can't cover
Teach these on the job
Lighting terms such as color temperature, lumens, retrofit kits and transformers
Your utility rebate programs and what you may say about them
Your CRM's lead sources and service line tags
Night photography basics, if they will shoot some projects themselves
Your review reply guidelines, agreed with the office manager
Day to day, this role works in Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, an email platform, the website's content system and the CRM where leads land. A camera and tripod that handle long exposures at dusk, plus a certified drone pilot on call, cover the project galleries.
Lighting marketing manager interview questions
Two of the 6 questions we'd ask, and what a strong answer sounds like. Ask every candidate the same questions, and rate each answer on your own before you compare notes.
Situational · Planning by season
Holiday, landscape and commercial lighting each sell on a different calendar. Walk me through how you'd plan the year's marketing.
A strong answer: Starts holiday booking and renewals in late summer, landscape in spring and summer, commercial year-round, and matches each push to crew capacity.
Behavioral · Building a photo library
Tell me about a time you built a library of project photos or video, such as night shots of finished lighting jobs.
A strong answer: Planned shoots, got customer permission and made it easy for crews to capture shots.
Each KPI here ends in a blank. Fill it from last season's leads and bookings for each line, and reset the numbers before the next season starts.
Leads by service line
Count new leads each week tagged holiday, landscape or retrofit in the CRM, and compare each line with the same weeks last year rather than with the other lines.
Cost per booked estimate
Divide each line's ad and agency spend for the month by the estimates that line booked. An estimate counts once it is on the sales calendar, not when the form arrives.
Holiday renewals from past clients
Track how many of last season's holiday clients signed again by the reply-by date, and how many needed a call from sales after the emails went out.
Online review rating
Each month, read the star average across Google and the other review sites, plus how many new reviews came in and how fast each got a reply.
Revenue from marketing-sourced leads
Add up signed contract value from leads whose first touch was an ad, email, web form or review site, using the CRM's lead source field, and report it by line each quarter.
Career path
Marketing coordinatorRuns campaigns day to day and learns how the three selling seasons overlap.
Marketing managerOwns the plan and budget for each line, the vendors and the lead numbers sales relies on.
Director of marketingTakes on new branches or a second brand and joins pricing and service line decisions.
General managerSome move into running the whole company after years spent close to sales.
Can we post photos of a customer's lit-up house or building?
Ask first, in writing. A line in the contract or a short release should say where the photos may appear: website, ads, social posts or printed pieces. Crop out house numbers, plates and faces unless the owner agrees. On commercial jobs, find out who can say yes. A property manager may approve the building, while a tenant brand controls its own signs and logo.
How much does a lighting marketing manager make?
Marketing managers who work for electrical contractors earned a median of $124,790 a year ($59.99 an hour) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle half earned between $80,080 and $155,360 a year. Pay also depends on your local market, experience and bonus terms.
How should the marketing manager and sales manager split the work on leads?
Marketing owns a lead until an estimate is booked, and sales owns it after that. Agree in writing what makes a lead qualified for each line. A holiday lead might need an address inside the service area and a rough roofline. A retrofit lead might need a named decision maker and a building address. Review lost leads by reason in the weekly meeting the template calls for.
What should a lighting marketing manager work on in January and February?
Holiday takedown wraps up, so this is the time to sort the season's photos, update galleries and plan the spring landscape push. Many facility managers plan the year's projects early, so retrofit outreach and case studies from last year's jobs fit here too. Ask finished holiday clients for honest reviews, with no reward attached, and close out the season's lead report by line.
What's a good work sample for a marketing manager candidate?
Hand over last season's spend and booked estimates for each line, plus a fixed budget for the next eight weeks. Ask how they would split it, what they would cut first and what report they would bring to the general manager. Strong candidates ask how many install days are still open and which lines carry the best margin before they move any money.
