Marketing jobs: the different types - Marketing Motor Mouth

By admin • Apr 20th, 2008 • Category: Top tips for students

A very warm welcome to all marketing students, graduates, post-graduates and 6^th formers wishing to find out more about marketing in the workplace.

Marketing top tips for students: Series 1 of 10

This is the first instalment in the series. By the end of the series, you’ll be in a position to understand what is involved in marketing in the workplace, what skills are needed, how to interact with colleagues from associated departments and most important, what you need to do to prepare yourself for your first role in the world of marketing.

When it comes to graduates possibly one of the most frustrating things you experience to as a client side or agency employer is the quote:

“I am looking for a job in marketing, I can work in any capacity”

Very occasionally out of sheer frustration and in the vain effort to help students, I will call one out of every hundred applications I receive, to assist them. Here is a typical list of things I hear in response to questions I may ask during the conversation:

Q. What type of marketing job are you looking for?

A. I don’t know, what type are there.

Q. Are you looking for an agency side or client side role?

A. I don’t know the difference. I’m good at advertising, creative, like market research and I would be good in any of the roles.

Q. Have your tutors at University explained the difference between client and agency side and if they have, what have they told you about the different roles?

A. They haven’t really told us anything about the different roles.

The one thing I really love about students is their absolute honesty, sincerity and enthusiasm for wanting a career in marketing. I have to say that academic institutions have much to answer for, not in their teachings but rather in their failure to prepare young learners for life in the industry.

If there’s one thing for sure it is that it is very hard to secure a role in marketing, whatever the qualifications you have and however skilled you are. Therefore, in order to prepare yourself for the workplace there’s a number of things you need to do. I’ll touch more on these things later in this series of articles for marketing students.

There are two major areas that you can work in as a marketer and both of these areas are distinct in the roles and diversity they provide:

• Client side marketing – working for a commercial, public sector or charitable organisation
• Agency side marketing – working for an advertising, PR, market research exhibition or similar type of agency

Within each setting there is usually a distinct career pathway and once you have decided which side of the fence you wish to work, the majority of marketers tend to stick to their own side. I have equal experience on both sides of the fence, in commercial and public sector client side marketing, plus working in an agency environment as a marketing consultant and head of advertising & design. This has provided me with a unique insight into both worlds and whilst the jobs are completely different, job satisfaction is high, whichever side you choose.

Marketing job titles vary widely depending on the company, with titles such as Executive often applied to the most junior of roles or in some companies, this can be the highest position. For the sake of simplicity, typical client side roles include:

Client side marketing roles

• Marketing Executive / Junior Marketing Assistant / Marketing Assistant – helps the department with the day to day tasks, promotion to this role is generally from within an organisation or in some environments, graduates occupy such roles.
• Marketing Co-ordinator / Marketing Officer – depending on department size this is generally a role which carries more responsibility. Tasks can include conducting or arranging market research, working directly with creative agencies, mailing fulfilment, organising events or promotional campaigns such as literature for product launches. Most Marketing Officers/Co-ordinators report directly to a product or marketing manager
• Product Manager / Senior Product Manager / Group Product or Category Manager – these roles are most often specific to companies that market products. Dependent on company size the Product Manager may have only one product or many, with the Category Managers being responsible for the entire group of products that his or her team market.
• Marketing Manager / Marcomms Manager – This role can be a position in a one-person team or can also be the position which is responsible for teams from 3-10 staff. The marketing manager in the smaller company may do every role from assistant through to manager, or in larger companies they manager the junior management level marketers. Note that one would not normally describe a category manager with a marketing budget of £5m as a junior marketer. As mentioned previously, the titles may be confusing.
• Head of Marketing / Marketing Director – The most senior marketing role in the organisation. In some companies the title is bestowed on the sales manager by default, however the Marketing Director or Sales & Marketing Director within a large company is the driving force behind the management of all marketing and sales activities. Both sales staff or marketers can usually be promoted to this role.

Agency side marketing roles

As many marketers aspire to client side roles, we’ll keep this section brief. Agency side roles fall into the following areas:

• Account Management – Ranging from Account Handler through to Account Director – individuals responsible for working in an agency environment and looking after client accounts, organising, managing and liaising with the client, right through to providing strategic support, dependent on the level of experience of the incumbent.
• Market Research – a number of roles exist within the research environment, this is a completely distinct and important area of marketing, with specialisms such as qualitative market researcher, quantitative research. Market Research is a fascinating area of marketing and in many ways is similar to client side, except for the fact you will be working on agency accounts across a number of market sectors.
• PR – as with Market Research, the PR environment has diverse career opportunities. They generally operate a similar structure to advertising agencies in that they have Account Handling to Account Director positions.

Finally, whatever the ultimate role you end up doing in marketing, you should now have a good appreciation of the diversity of opportunities available.