Career Roadmap

Marketing

Overview

All businesses need a plan and a process for marketing their products or services, and all but the smallest companies have professionals dedicated solely to this function. Marketing, along with sales, production, and finance, is a core functional area in most companies. Indeed, many businesses -- including some of the largest in the world -- rely on marketing strategy to drive company profits.

Marketing executives have a prominent place among the senior managers of any business. In fact, in many "marketing-driven" firms -- such as large consumer-products companies -- the most senior general managers typically advance to their positions from the marketing function.

Marketing professionals interface extensively with a company's other major business functions. For example: Marketing strategy affects the company's business development strategy (and vice-versa) and the allocation of advertising resources. Marketing works closely with the company's production or service delivery departments to ensure that product or service specifications will meet consumers' demands. Marketing professionals must understand the company's finances and the costs and profits associated with a particular product or service. Marketers have to get involved in the company's long-term strategic planning, including assessing market changes and the potential that new business alliances may bring. Given the scope of business concerns that marketing professionals interact with, it's not surprising that marketing is often thought of as a "microcosm" of the entire business enterprise. Marketing managers must have strong skills in business analysis and a broad-based appreciation for business as a whole. Therefore, many people see experience in this discipline as ideal training for general management.
The job of any marketing professional is to ensure that his or her company's products or services become consumers' top choices in the marketplace. A marketer must therefore be many things: a psychologist who studies potential customers' behavior; an artist who can identify the visual and linguistic images that will capture consumers' attention; an analyst who uses the most effective statistical modeling to tease out customers' buying patterns; a leader who can manage a team of marketers and motivate professionals in other functional areas while implementing a marketing plan

Different marketing professionals take different approaches to their work. They may: develop strengths in specialty areas, such as market research, marketing strategy, and creativity (as it relates to the language and imagery associated with a product's advertising and packaging); develop general management abilities approach marketing as an extension of sales, using direct interaction with customers and the intuition they've developed by working "in the field" to inform their decisions; rely on sophisticated analyses of market dynamics to guide their marketing plans; combine sales and market-analysis approaches

Sometimes different marketing styles can lead to specific careers within the field. For example: Professionals with a more analytical approach to the discipline may gravitate toward roles such as director of marketing research. Those who like to combine a sales approach with analysis may head for a position as vice president of sales and marketing. The more creatively inclined may choose to work with advertising firms or actually join an advertising firm.

Different organizations also emphasize different aspects of marketing. For instance: Companies known for their meticulous attention to continual and detailed market research reward and support marketers who show interest and facility in that area. Companies known for their creative collaboration with advertisers value marketers with a strong artistic bent. Larger organizations offer work in many different marketing specialties. The individual styles and interests of managers within all three kinds of firms exert a strong influence on the way a company handles marketing. People enter marketing careers in different ways. Individuals with business or liberal arts undergraduate degrees, or those who have sales experience, can often find entry-level positions in this line of work. These positions require both analytical ability and creativity.

For mid-level and higher marketing management positions in larger organizations, you may need an MBA degree. Most MBA programs provide marketing coursework in addition to courses in other functional areas important to general management, such as strategic planning and organizational behavior. In a consumer-products company, successful performance in entry-level staff roles can lead to the assistant brand manager role. The assistant brand manager works under a brand manager who has ultimate responsibility for the marketing of a particular product. In several ways, brand managers' work strongly resembles that of general managers: Brand managers have profit-and-loss responsibility for the product they manage.
In the case of a high-revenue product, brand managers lead a large team dedicated to that product.

A brand manager can move on to various other positions, such as group manager, in which he or she manages a group of related products. From there, a group manager may advance to various general management positions that involve running whole business areas within the company. Ultimately, a marketing professional can assume the most senior management position with the company as CEO or President. Professional titles and specific roles in marketing may vary, depending on the organization. For example: In non-consumer product companies, the title comparable to brand manager may be "product
manager." In some manufacturing environments, the product manager gets heavily involved with the manufacturing process itself. He or she is often the one who "shepherds" the product from conception to marketplace. In some firms with highly technical products, product managers must have a technology background, even an engineering or computer sciences degree. In other such firms, technical background is less important than general analytical and management expertise. If you have an engineering or computer-related degree and genuinely enjoy technology but are interested in a marketing career, you'll have a competitive advantage as a marketer in a technology-oriented organization. If you don't have a technical degree and most of the product managers and senior managers in the company you're considering do have one, think carefully about whether the company will offer you enough career advancement opportunity.
Source: CareerLeader

Print Resources

One to One Fieldbook - the complete toolkit for implementing a 1to 1 marketing program.

So You Want to Be a Brand Manager - industry overview, interviewing tips and company profiles.

Web Sites

American Marketing Association - classified ads, AMA publications, professional chapter directory http://www.marketingpower.com/index.php?&Session_ID=9336637c2ad18fa418be1dfaac4cfad6

Direct Marketing Association - trade association for businesses engaged in direct and interactive marketing http://www.the-dma.org/

Direct Marketing Educational Foundation

Marketing Classifieds

Sales & Marketing International

Marketing Jobs

More Resources- http://www.som.yale.edu/careers/resources/career_sectors.asp

Job Search Web Sites - http://www.som.yale.edu/careers/jswebsites/jswebdefault.asp

Periodicals
Brandweek
Quirk's