Introduction to Five Marketing Careers
Marketing is a word most uttered by people in the world of business. Still, their perception often doesn’t go beyond designing a product, launching it, selling, and getting consumer feedback. Not surprisingly, the terms people most frequently associated with marketing roles are sales, branding, product promotion, market research, advertising, and public relations. And job openings related to such functions are most frequently seen in newspapers, job sites, and social media.
Conventional marketing jobs are expected to grow nine percent through 2024, including marketing, advertising, and promotion functions at the managerial level, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2016-17 Occupational Outlook Handbook. However, there are a variety of other career opportunities that many people may not have heard about but offers immense opportunity for growth and advancement.
What are the Five Marketing Careers?
Here are Five Marketing Careers to learn.
Marketing Communications
Marketing communications is a multi-disciplinary activity that combines the core marketing functions in an organization combined with public relations, advertising, and brand promotion activities.
Marketing Communications (Marcom) professionals require a range of skills considering the interdisciplinary nature of the job. For example, the Marcom professional needs to create marketing plans and be involved in or co-ordinate the creation of logos. In addition, promotional content on websites, and social media, organizing trade shows and corporate and consumer events, managing the marketing budget, evolving the style and presentation of emails and email campaigns, creating press releases, and holding press meet.
The job of Marcom professionals is to reduce the time required from generating a sales lead to the final product sales. Shortening the sales cycle means assisting the sales and channel partner in their efforts to identify, engage, and deliver a customer. The effectiveness of Marcom depends on how effectively the communication process of the firm is aligned with the goals of the firm. Understanding the customer’s buying process is critical for shortening the sales cycle.
A buyer begins with problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, post-purchase evaluation, and feedback.
Marketing is a 100% result-oriented activity, from conceiving the product to doing market research and launching the product. There after sales and customer feedback, public relations, and crisis management.
Marcom professionals can expect to earn much more than the median annual salary range of $61,290- 1,21,000 earned by other marketing professionals considering the multi-tasking involved in the job apart from usual traveling, interaction with clients or customers, preparing marketing budgets, and so on.
Digital Marketing
This is one of the Five Marketing Careers. In simple terms, digital marketing involves promoting products and services on a digital or electronic platform. It includes websites, social media, emailing, blogging, television, and radio channels, mobile applications, and hoardings.
The industry can no longer ignore digital media as technology becomes an inseparable part of their lives. The digital space is becoming crowded, but content, cross-platform marketing, mobile, data, and personalization will continue to dominate the trends for 2016. Although content is not restricted to words and images alone, with the rapid growth in video streaming, content marketers need to readjust content definitions, experts said.
The digital marketing professional has a challenging role as much as his counterpart in the traditional media. Trends keep changing quicker in the electronic space, so one needs to be on the toes to keep up with the competition. As a result, early adopters of the the digital medium are more likely to see better results than late starters.
Mobile internet traffic is increasing at a fast pace. Google has said this year that mobile overtook desktop traffic in 10 countries. As a result, Google released an algorithm update, willing to accept two versions of the site but to show more affinity to mobile.
Content in websites and blogs remains the King. Blogging and content will remain indispensable for brand positioning. In short, words will not be the only touch points for brands.
Hot jobs in digital marketing: Some of the most common job titles in digital marketing are – digital marketing manager, marketing manager, digital marketing specialist, marketing coordinator, SEO specialist, web developer, account executive, social media manager, recruiter, digital marketing analyst, marketing specialist, content marketing manager, user experience manager, account manager, marketing director, content strategist, SEO manager, executive director, paid search specialist, social media specialist.
The average annual salary ranges from $51000 for social media marketing to $102,000 for SEO-related jobs.
Among the jobs listed above, the most in-demand jobs are a digital marketing manager and a marketing manager. Among the skills in this area that companies look for are – social media marketing, SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC), content marketing, Google analytics, and digital marketing.
Data analytics has also evolved as a subset of digital marketing efforts, with some reports predicting a 60% increase in marketing analytics spending. The prediction is that for some industries, the growth would be 73% and almost 100% for large-cap B2C companies.
Data analytics is set to become complex, with the interpretation of data becoming a critical aspect of business success. Analysts said that it is not enough to know how to analyze and use data. In 2016, companies should focus on creating a refined, almost personalized digital journey consumable on any device, at any touch point, and can be attributed to the brand’s marketing efforts.
Social Media Marketing
This is one of the important careers from Five Marketing Careers. The social media landscape is now emerging as an effective platform for the industry, especially Business to Consumer (B2C). Ayaz Nanji wrote on Marketingprofs.com that the auto industry had witnessed the most active engagement by social media users.
Quoting from the TrackMaven report, he said that CPG, entertainment, food, hospitality, insurance, restaurant, retail,, and telco/cable verticals were the other sectors seeing rapid growth in social media engagement of the audience.
This data proves that social media has come of age as a part of digital marketing but also has a very separate and unique identity. A social media manager need not be a technical person but has a keen interest in understanding the nuances of the social media landscape and its possibilities. Understanding design, content creation, hashtagging, video and image postings, and popular and trending topics will go a long way in utilizing the marketing, software,, and design team to achieve the identified objectives.
The results in digital marketing can only come through paid promotion, and this has been proved over 2015. Therefore, the social media manager must select the right platform and budget for each. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, and Google plus all have inherent strengths and weaknesses in brand building and promotion.
Social media marketer needs to know the nuances of using appropriate images and videos that are not copyrighted to gain an edge over competitors. A recent survey of U.S.-based advertising and marketing executives revealed that most felt public relations and communications departments should handle the social media postings in organizations. The survey revealed that 51% of the respondents were for the the communications department handling the job,, while 28% felt the the marketing team should do the job. About 5% felt the CEO should handle it, while 9% said it should be held by customer service. However, the rapid changes in technology, complexity, and diversity of markets have all made it possible for marketing communication as a separate function to evolve within organizations.
It is a relatively new development and hence may take time for the professionals in marketing, communication, and other departments to adjust. Marketing Communication can be developed as a standalone department, or in older companies, they can draw on the resources of advertising, public relations, marketing, and content management teams and handpick the most appropriate to create a new team that works on an integrated mission right from product conceptualization, branding, logo, trademarks, business communication strategies and so on that constitute marketing communication efforts of any organization.
SEO Marketing
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a term associated with increasing website traffic. It involves programming skills, use of keywords, tags, titles, descriptions of the page, loading time, and placement of features on a page.
The importance of SEO jobs in a company can be gauged by the average double-digit growth in salaries for this category since 2012, according to a report from Conductor. The report said that starting salaries for SEO professionals have increased by 17% since 2012, with marketing managers/SEO managers seeing the biggest hike of 26% in pay.
Among SEO-related roles, marketing directors have the highest average salary of $104,235, while SEO coordinators/associates have the lowest pay of $52,613.
There are a lot of myths regarding SEO, even among experts,, as Google continuously evolves its algorithm to meet the needs of the web visitors seeking information. So it concerns the the importance given to keywords, meta tags, inbound links, and page rank, among others. Google’s algorithm has evolved to detect such trickery adopted by SEO experts. The message is simple- put good quality content with relevant information, original images,, or using stock images. So the success lies not in tricking Google but in putting that much effort into creating quality, original content.
Content Marketing Manager
Content marketing was perhaps unheard of until the internet and mobile became popular. Then, one could think of advertorials- a cross between advertisements and editorial that was paid for but looked more editorial than an advertisement.
Content marketing can be done through websites, blogging, and articles in newspapers and magazines. It need not necessarily be about the product, brand, or company. Still, it can be about the new technology, issues related to the industry, and new research advances in the area of operation- for example, health, nutrition, sports, food, or any other industry.
The content marketer should not indulge in hard sales but gently engage the consumer or client into learning more about the product and its advantages. WordPress and Tumblr are ideal for blogging so is Google’s blogger platform. The company can also utilize talent in-house to write blogs on other websites related to the industry, which has to be managed by the content marketing manager.
Email marketing and SMS promotion can also be included in content marketing, and the clever use of timing, headlines, and words will ensure that the effort doesn’t end up spam or have a lower click-through rate (CTR).
The content marketing team’s efforts are divided into two- one creating a plan that obviously should have the details to make money for the company, and secondly, convincing the management to undertake that exercise by making available the funds. First, they have to lay the facts on the table, and it has to be supported by real numbers,, which come through thorough research. Then, they have to put the buying process (or customer acquisition) process in perspective and share the vision of what would happen if the campaign is executed. Besides text and images, content managers can use infographics and video effectively to build new businesses and brands.
The content manager should be able to write and edit articles apart from producing projects to expand the digital footprints, awareness, subscribers,, and leads. It is a creative job that requires the ability to collaborate with internal content experts and clients to leverage industry knowledge.
Most probably, they are drawn from a journalism/communication background with good analytical and management skills. They need to manage the editorial calendar and be good in analytics of Google, Facebook, and Linkedin, among others.
Conclusion – Five Marketing Careers
In this article Five Marketing Careers it is visible that the new job opportunities in marketing; they have a few things in common- it is challenging, multi-disciplinary, quite new, and innovative. It involves using technology and communication techniques and creating relevant, good-quality content. In addition, several new jobs or functions are being created thanks to data, analytics, social media growth, video streaming, blogging, mobile internet, and apps.
Naturally, the potential growth in salary is earned, and career progression would be much better compared to conventional marketing jobs in the future as the industry tries to increase return on investment and make marketing communications a good tool for furthering business.
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