How to Excel in your Marketing Career? – Although marketers are often creative, ideas-led people, that is not to say they are not ambitious and driven too.
And so there may come a time in many marketing professional’s careers where they feel it is necessary for them to move on — be it in order to get a promotion or to join a more progressive company, where the clients are more attuned to the individual’s own tastes and beliefs.
However, like many other sectors, the path from junior to senior management is not a straight line, and there may be a number of obstacles for you to overcome in order to climb the ranks and achieve your objectives — whether that is a pay rise, a senior position or some other perk.
The good news is that there are tactics you can deploy that will hasten your rise to the top of your chosen profession, and so you should consider how you can achieve one or more of the strategies outlined below.
Boost your employability
It is a no-brainer, really, but anyone seeking a promotion in the marketing sector — or any other industry for that matter — should be looking to enhance their employability, regardless of how stacked with achievements their resumé already is.
One way you can do this is by taking on a course of further education in a related field. This shows a complete commitment to a career in marketing, and will also enable you to learn new skills while building upon an area of expertise or specialism that you wish to follow.
An Online Master’s in Marketing, for example, teaches both theoretical elements (e.g. the use of storytelling in promotional content) and practical, real-world skills that will enhance what you can bring to the table, such as data analytics.
The modern marketer needs to embrace old-school creativity and vision with comfortability in using digital tools, whether that is to deliver game-changing content or to provide decision-makers with the key insights they need.
This holistic approach can be achieved by further study, and the good news is that these courses do not have to cost the earth, and can be fit into your busy work-life schedule as you need them t
Many master’s and postgraduate marketing degrees can be completed quickly — within a year, in fact, for the most dedicated. Additionally, their online delivery means you can improve your employability from the comfort of your own couch.
Get certified
Going hand-in-hand with studying a further education course is the desire to attain essential industry certification.
Different company directors and senior managers have their own beliefs as to which of the marketing certificates are truly necessary these days, but clearly, there are some modes of study that have an obvious and universal appeal.
Google Analytics would be among the first pieces of certification that the modern marketer may seek. You can actually utilize Google’s own free Academy platform to learn more about how you can deploy insights into your campaigns, and you can walk away with a ‘qualification’, of sorts, that would showcase the extra value that you could then offer your employer.
There are stacks of other marketing certifications you can study for, but the key is to consider the added value that these will bring to your career — is the money and time spent ultimately going to be worth it?
Prepare to specialize
This is a piece of advice that generally goes against the accepted logic, but if you want to secure better pay, and work for a major marketing company, you should be prepared to specialize in order to stand out from the crowd.
Yes, modern marketers should be able to offer that ‘holistic’ approach we have already outlined, but if you can offer ahead-of-the-game specialism in a particular area — it could be digital, campaign management, social media, etc., — then you will be able to pinpoint specific roles within a larger organization.
Many companies are now evolving from a basic ‘marketing officer’ model into more specific areas of accountability — social media management, for instance, is now a cornerstone of many marketing operations. Ten years ago, that would have been unthinkable.
The rise of the internet, of course, has also changed the whole customer experience — marketers can learn so much about their audience’s behaviors and expectations from their digital footprint, and so it’s no surprise that many firms are employing the services of in-house number crunchers and data nerds to attain targeted insights.
Happily, many marketers are comfortable with theoretical concepts that are ‘transferable’ skills — effective PR and crisis management, branding and storytelling, all of which generally come naturally to skilled marketing professionals.
Other skills, such as customer behavior monitoring and data analysis, are not everybody’s cup of tea — so finding your niche, while retaining the key principles that all career-focused marketing workers need, is a good way to stand out in the employability stakes.
Be an influencer
Now, we’re not saying that you need to channel your inner Kim Kardashian or Jake Paul to be a success in marketing.
But there is plenty of worth in building your own profile, and almost seeing yourself as a commodity to your current employer or prospective other workplaces. What is your product? What is your USP? What are the benefits you will bring compared to another marketing professional?
Having the skills that a marketer needs is one thing, but being able to go beyond and offer something else, in addition, will take you to the next level in your career. Are you a natural leader, perhaps? Are you an effective communicator that can easily share knowledge? Are you a cool and collected decision maker?
Your day-to-day working life shouldn’t just revolve around marketing your products or managing your brand portfolio. It should also entail marketing yourself as an entity that your employer simply cannot live without — pay increases and possibilities of moving up the food chain tend to follow in due course for individuals that can do exactly that.
