So you want to build a career in Marketing?
Marketing jobs involves a very broad field in which many different tasks might be required of you, depending on the company and what they decide is included in the marketing department of their business. It’s closely intertwined with almost all departments of a business, and heavily involves customers more than any other department.
In general, it involves understanding the needs and wants of customers, and finding ways to provide a service or product to them, based on their needs. It requires you to identify customers’ needs, anticipate when and how they will need it, and then providing them with the supply when they do need it. But ultimately, marketing jobs entail providing customers with what they need in order to make a profit for the company. Marketing and sales jobs produce revenue from the products that the company makes. In other words, they create the customers for the company.
They can vary so much because they consist of almost all activities needed in order to get a product off the drawing board, into the public, and into the hands of customers.
Professor Neil Borden of Harvard University identified what is known as the “Marketing Mix” consisting of four elements: Product, Pricing, Placement, and Promotion. Some marketing jobs are in research, figuring out what is desirable to customers (Product). Another dimension to marketing involves pricing strategies, and setting a price that makes it appealing to the customer due to cost and function that is expressed to them through advertising efforts (Pricing). Other jobs involve deciding which channels to utilize the get the already price product out to market, be it retail, wholesale, mail-order only, or online (Placement). Finally, there are jobs in which you are solely responsible for the promotion of a product, using tools such as public relations, advertising and “marcom” or marketing communications to enable people to know about a product that has been produced, priced, placed and now available.
But with marketing jobs needing to focus on the customers’ needs, some state that the Marketing Mix above is inside-out, with companies needing to build a product that customers want, not the other way around.
To further complicate the already muddied clarification of marketing, there are many more specialty areas under this field. With the advent of social media, social media marketing jobs are in high demand. There’s global, international, political, product, direct, database, and nowadays, mobile marketing jobs which are very popular with the mobile applications leading modern technology. With the latest boom of search engines, scrapers, and spiders for search engines, Search Engine Marketing is also a very popular position within this field.
Having a successful career in marketing, therefore, involves a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience in various facets of business. For one job, you may be involved in product creation and development where a company has found a need in “society” (customers) and is performing all research and development (R&D) in order to bring the product to life. For another, you may be involved in brainstorming how to take a product that already exists to market, by researching which stores to place your product in, which to leave it out of, which channels to use (Internet? Wholesale? Direct mail? Retail?), and which to avoid for your particular product. Marketing jobs must associate with all other departments in the company, including business development, research and development, sales, and customer service in order to complete many assigned tasks.
While it may be the most ambiguous division in a company, having a marketing position enables one to gain a very broad range of experiences and will open the door to many other positions in your career.
Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing in very simple terms, is the practice of marketing products and services to enterprises in order to keep them operating. This is in contrast to Business-to-Consumer (B2C) marketing which focuses on the consumer. Popular business to business markets include manufacturers, government, resellers as well as non-profit organizations. They focus on selling their services and products to other enterprises. One major way of distinguishing between business-to-business and a business-to-consumer marketing is the kind of products and services being sold and the type of enterprises that are targeted in the marketing efforts. While the former promotes products and services that are mean to help other enterprises operate such as equipments, spare parts and components, raw materials for production as well as supplies and services for processing.
In business-to-business marketing, the process of purchase process is also a marked difference from the B2C marketing. This is because in B2B marketing, the sale is based more on logical considerations than emotion which is what obtains in B2C marketing. However, the cost associated in marketing in B2B in quite higher than what obtains in B2C. In marketing to other businesses, it is important to place emphasis on the logic of buying the product or service to the organization. The features and usefulness of the product or service in the achievement of organizational goals is what will drive the organization to make the purchase. This is because the key issues in the B2B market are information and knowledge.
Business-to-business marketing also involves a lot of research although the research is more complex than consumer marketing research. There are four issues that differentiate the research in business markets to consumer markets:
i. The comparative complexities in the decision making unit in B2B markets
ii. The comparative complexities in the product/services and applications for B2B markets
iii. The small size of customers in B2B markets that however have a bigger consumption of products and services than the B2C markets.
iv. The crucial nature of personal relationships in B2B markets.
B2B marketing also has also found an outlet on the internet as many enterprises have established their operations online. Enterprises like those that are involved in import and export have found the internet very useful conducting their businesses. This is because of some comparative advantages that the internet offers them. These include:
i. The enhancement of the supply chain management system’s operations
ii. Enhances the product content and internal messaging system
iii. Enhances the Return on Investment (ROI)
In the course of conducting business online, B2B companies need to bear some facts or statistics in mind in order to succeed:
i. B2B companies need to be listed on search engines: According to statistics, over 70% of B2B buyers begin their purchase by searching on search engines
ii. B2B websites must be optimized for the right keywords: Bear in mind that 77% of B2B prospects prefer to use Google than other search engines and they also usually click on organic results.
iii. Invest in Pay per Click: Inasmuch as the organic results get the most returns, it is important to cover all bases by also investing in PPC programs.
Marketing and PR go hand in hand when it comes to promoting business and making sure that the business develops and grows. With the vast amount of opportunities that are available in this field it is absolutely possible for people to start their careers in this field as entry level professionals.
• Since the field is very popular, there is always a chance that the competition for jobs in the field would be at its maximum. This is precisely why people have to be completely prepared and be ready to face all sorts of challenges when they want to start as a professional in marketing PR jobs.
• Marketing public relations combines both the challenging aspects of the different fields and makes it more lucrative for the companies so that they can promote their products and their status to increase the customer growth and the financers’ support. Of course, this means that the marketing and PR jobs become doubly challenging for the professionals who want to take it up as a career.
• There are many aspects which increasingly create opportunities for people in marketing PR jobs. Advertising marketing jobs are very popular and this field requires people to be more creative with their talents.
• There are also media marketing PR jobs which would require the professional to be conversant with all the aspects of media so that they can seamlessly construct a strong relation between the media and the company’s promotional policies.
• Opportunities in marketing PR jobs are also created by marketing PR firms which outsource marketing jobs to people who are interested in this field. Many such firms offer different kinds of opportunities to people to start training for better positions in other companies as marketing PR professionals.
• In fact, marketing PR entry level jobs are probably the best possible way for people to start a career with some company in which they want to proceed to higher levels. It is a very good start to get to know about all the aspects of the company because as a PR professional they have to be conversant with almost all the departments of the company.
• Many companies also offer the opportunity of marketing PR internships. This can help a lot of young people to train themselves in this field.
• Fashion marketing career can also be a great opportunity for people who are passionate about fashion and also have the necessary skills to make it big in the marketing field.
• There are many degrees and courses available for people nowadays to be conversant with the various aspects of marketing PR field. The basic criteria for the people to land a good position in the marketing PR field is to know about almost all the aspects of the company. Many people can also be a part of the academics who help the new talent to train in the ropes of marketing.
• This makes it easier for them to prepare sales pitch for the target customer group and also promote the company and the company’s policies to the financers. This field is extremely enriched with the opportunities that can help a person to be at the top of their career.