4 Things No One Tells You about a Career in Marketing Management
Marketing jobs offer an exciting and fast-paced career that can often be challenging – fit for those who thrive in a constantly changing and evolving environment. Marketing managers have strong negotiation skills and know how to inspire their teams to produce the best work, because they are passionate about their brands.
If you are looking to enter the industry as a marketing manager, here are a few things you should know that no one tells you about a career in marketing management:
1. You need to develop sales skills
The cliché saying that great salespeople can sell ice to an Eskimo is also true for marketing managers. Because marketing managers need to be able to sell ideas to their teams, sell to their audiences, and work closely with sales teams, they need to have sales skills.
Having sales skills also helps them when it comes to understanding how consumers think, what consumers want, and what consumers will respond to. This, in turn, helps them to communicate effectively with their target audiences.
2. You need to be customer-focused
Having sales skills links with being customer-focused. This means that you as the marketer need to centralise the customer in your marketing. You need to know what your customers need, what they want, what they look for, where they look for it and how they want to access it. Remember, it’s the customers that drive your business.
3. Soft skills are extremely valuable
Together with technical skills, marketing managers need to have leadership and collaborative skills.
They need to be able to motivate employees and inspire them to create effective marketing campaigns and to complete tasks. They also need the ability to teach and mentor the employees under their direction.
Additionally, they need to have excellent communication skills. Communication skills are important because marketing managers are constantly dealing with different people, including team members, other managers and external parties who play a role in the activities of the marketing department.
4. You need business insight and passion for your brand
Apart from having to develop and implement a specific marketing plan,the marketing manager also needs to have business insight into the overall plans of the company. Good knowledge of the market is crucial in this role, and a keen interest in aspects that affect the market and the business itself will result in effective marketing.
Together with business insight, it is important that marketing managers have passion for the brands they represent. When the marketing managers love their brands, they are able to inspire their teams to create effective and brilliant marketing for them.
While you may prepare to become a marketing manager by studying a marketing management course, it is also important to know what the workplace expectations are that no one tells you about. Having the ability to motivate your team, negotiate and mentor will take you a long way. Marketing managers are customer-centric. They understand who their customers are and what they want and how to communicate with them. It takes someone who is passionate about their brand to have the ability to effectively drive their ideas forward and create brilliant marketing!
Do you have what it takes to make it as a marketing manager? Learn more about the National Certificate: N4 Marketing Management qualification from Oxbridge Academy.
