The owner of an IELTS prep centre in Almaty posts in the work chat: "The Meta test brought 11 leads at 896 ₸. Can we get twice as many students?" Imagine four marketers of different levels answering that question. The junior checks the ad account against the lead list and adds what the account doesn't show: of those eleven people, three came to the free trial lesson. The middle proposes a second two-week test and writes down in advance at what lead cost the budget goes up further. The senior asks for a shared lead list across all channels, to compare Meta with TikTok and retargeting. The head of marketing asks how many students stay until the third month and how many seats the trial lessons have.
None of them is wrong. Each answers from their own area of responsibility, and marketing levels differ first of all in how wide that area is. The centre and the numbers in this lesson are illustrative: it is the same example as in the lessons on the Meta test and scaling campaigns.
A grade is an area of responsibility
Junior, middle, senior, head of marketing, CMO: companies use these words differently. At an agency a junior media buyer runs ad accounts to a senior's plan, while at a small dental clinic the only marketer handles the ads, the website and the replies to reviews on 2GIS. Years of experience say even less: you can spend three years launching campaigns from someone else's instructions and never once decide where the money goes.
So a level is easier to pin down with two questions: what result is the person responsible for, and which money decisions do they make on their own.
| Level | Responsible for | Decides alone | How it shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Junior | A task: an event, a campaign to plan, a report | How to do the task. Budget and goal come from a senior or the client | A setup verified with a test lead, and a table of numbers |
| Middle | A channel or a whole project | Tests, bids, budget within the channel, when to stop growing | A test plan with a stopping condition and a review of the results |
| Senior | Several channels and measurement from click to payment | How to compare channels, where measurement is wrong, what to hand to the team | A report that compares channels by payments from the CRM |
| Head of marketing, CMO | The business's marketing money: plan, budget, team | With the owner: how much to spend, on what, and where the ceiling is | A quarterly plan in money and how it was delivered |
Moving up starts before your title changes: you take on part of the work from the next row of the table and can show the result. A junior who proposed a stopping condition for a test and then checked whether it worked is already doing a middle's job.
One question from the owner at four levels
The centre's economics come from the scaling lesson. The course costs 45,000 ₸ a month, the centre keeps 16,000 ₸ a month per student, 48,000 ₸ over three months, and the owner is willing to spend up to half of that on ads: 24,000 ₸ per student. One in four people who submit the form comes to the trial lesson, and one in three of those pays for the course, so one student takes 12 leads. That gives the targets: a lead up to 2,000 ₸, a person at the trial lesson up to 8,000 ₸.
The junior set up the lead event so that a second click on the button doesn't create a second lead, ran the test to plan and handed over the table: 9,860 ₸, 11 leads at 896 ₸, three people at the trial lesson, which is 3,287 ₸ per person who came. Their contribution to the answer is numbers you can trust. What to do with those numbers isn't their call.
The middle owns the channel and leaves the budget alone on eleven leads. First comes a second test over two weeks: 28,000 ₸, 20 leads at 1,400 ₸, five people at the trial lesson. Then a step up to 3,000 ₸ a day for another two weeks: 42,000 ₸, 26 leads, an average CPL of 1,615 ₸, under target. But compared with the second test, spend went up by 14,000 ₸ and leads by six. If the first 2,000 ₸ a day brings in as much as before, each added lead cost 14,000 / 6 = 2,333 ₸, above target. So the middle goes no higher than 3,000 ₸: they hold that step for another two weeks and recalculate, because six leads are too few for a final conclusion. They judge by the cost of the added leads, not by the average CPL.
The senior compares channels against each other, and for that needs one yardstick: the cost of a person at the trial lesson, taken from a shared lead list where the manager marks who came. A week on TikTok brought four people to the lesson at 17,325 ₸ each against a target of 8,000 ₸, while four weeks of Meta brought eleven for the same money. Four against eleven, in different weeks and at different daily budgets, doesn't yet show that TikTok is worse, and the senior says exactly that in the report. Retargeting delivered a person at the lesson for 4,667 ₸, but it follows up people who have already seen the course page, so it isn't put side by side with a campaign aimed at new people. Without the shared list each channel would report its own numbers, and there would be nothing to compare.
The head of marketing is responsible for how much the centre can pay per student and where growth hits a ceiling. There are two trial lessons a week with eight seats each, enough for about 64 leads a week, while the Meta campaign at the 3,000 ₸ step brings about 13 leads a week. Judging by the last step, doubling runs into price, not seats: the added leads there cost more than 2,000 ₸. And the target itself may move. The 24,000 ₸ of ads pays back only in the second month of the course, and if one student in three leaves after the first month, average contribution drops from 48,000 to 37,333 ₸ and the allowable lead cost from 2,000 to 1,556 ₸. So the owner gets neither a yes nor a no from them, but a plan: check in the CRM how many students finish, look for cheap leads in new creatives and on the course page rather than in the Meta budget, and set a date to recalculate everything.
The higher the level, the less work in the ad account and the more decisions that depend on other people. The manager marks who came, the owner decides on the course price and a third trial lesson. So the step from senior to CMO needs no new tool, just the ability to express the marketing budget in the business's money and agree it with the owner. That is also the core of any conversation about the CMO's role: which decisions the CMO makes alone, and where they bring data and negotiate.
How to prove your level
Your level is confirmed by work someone else can check. "Studied GA4" tells neither a client nor a manager anything. "Checked the lead event, found the form sending twice and explained to the developer how to stop it" tells them a lot, because it can be opened and repeated.
Evidence of a practical skill
| Work | Result |
|---|---|
| Lead event | Checked |
| Repeated form submission | Found |
| Developer handoff | How to stop repeated submissions |
The work can be opened and reproduced.
For a junior that proof is three case studies without clients: a 10,000 ₸ test, an audit of someone else's business, and a test site with verified tracking. A middle shows a test review with budget steps and the rule they stopped by. A senior brings a report where channels are reduced to payments and explains which measurement error they found in it. A CMO shows a plan in money and what came of it.
Google and Meta certificates don't show your level, so in a portfolio they go after the case studies. Academia doesn't issue certificates, and its quizzes are for self-assessment.
One direction in depth, the rest well enough to talk
A strong junior doesn't know a little of everything. They do one thing well and understand what the people next to them are talking about. Choose the direction by the work you want to take on first.
| Direction | Where to start in Academia | The first work you can show |
|---|---|---|
| Paid ads | The Meta test, search ads | A case study of a test on a real budget with a plan vs actual table |
| Web analytics and tracking | GTM, GA4 | A test site where the lead is verified in DebugView |
| Product analytics | What a product analyst does, funnels | A funnel with its biggest drop-off and the reason for it |
| CRM and retention | CRM systems, cohorts and LTV | A lead table with sources and statuses |
| SEO and content | Technical SEO, keyword research | A site review: what keeps its pages out of search |
Every direction needs the same base: metrics and their formulas, unit economics and the technical minimum. Without it an ads specialist won't understand why the analyst doesn't trust their CPL, and an analyst won't be able to explain to the owner what their report means.
If your goal is your first paid projects within a couple of months, the Start track has already picked ads plus tracking for you. In six weeks you will have a test site with events, a case study on a real budget, an audit of one business, a proposal with an estimate, and report templates.
Employment or projects
There are two ways through the first level. You join an agency or a company through job ads, and there your level is decided by the interview and a test assignment. You get projects through audits and outreach to businesses, and there, from the first client, you do a junior's and a middle's work at once: you set things up, decide when to stop a test and report to the owner yourself.
What each level is paid in your city isn't in this lesson: salaries change faster than lessons do. Open hh.kz, write down ten recent job ads in your direction that state a salary, and sort them by the rows of the first table. Repeat in six months. A project rate is worked out differently, from a list of work and hours, as in the lesson on pricing and contracts.
Exercise: answer the centre's owner
Write the owner from the start of the lesson an answer to "Can we get twice as many students?" in four or five sentences. Use only the numbers from this lesson. Then fill in three lines about yourself:
An answer at junior level retells the test: 11 leads at 896 ₸, three at the lesson. All true, but it doesn't answer the owner's question. A middle's answer adds the cost of the added leads: at the last step they cost 2,333 ₸ each, above target, so by these numbers twice as many students won't come from the Meta budget alone, although six leads are too few to say so for certain. A head of marketing's answer starts with what limits growth. The trial seats aren't running out yet; the limit is the cost of a lead, and that also depends on how many students finish the course. If your answer has the cost of the added leads and a question about who finishes, you are already thinking beyond your own task, and that is how a manager decides who should own a whole channel.