How To Become a Marketing Manager
If you think creatively, analyze ideas and envision yourself in a managerial role where you make important decisions, you might wonder how to become a marketing manager. Marketing is the business practice of promoting an organization, product, or service. The marketing manager directs the efforts of an in-house marketing team or marketing agency to make campaigns as effective as possible.
Marketing may include print, digital, or broadcast advertising; building brand awareness; publishing content that informs and appeals to potential consumers; establishing and maintaining good customer or client relationships; and even hosting events. Because marketing practices are so varied, campaigns are often collaborative efforts. Marketing managers may seek feedback from managers of other departments, such as public relations, sales, research and development, and services. In larger agencies or companies, marketing efforts typically are coordinated between teams that may include personnel to write and edit text content, produce images and videos, handle social media interactions and make Websites user-friendly and search engine-friendly. The marketing manager oversees all of these employees, from choosing which candidates to hire to fill open positions to determining the big-picture goals and supervising employees’ day-to-day work.
Marketing managers make decisions on strategies and campaigns. To do this successfully, they need to base their decisions off of important data, such as sales trends, product or service usage, customer satisfaction and competitors’ success. Analyzing such information allows marketing managers to make informed decisions about what products or services will be in demand in the future and what qualities prospective customers are looking for when choosing a product or service. A marketing manager may decide that the company should branch out into a previously untapped market and how to go about doing so. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that approximately 22 percent of marketing managers work in the advertising, public relations and marketing industry, such as in marketing firms that handle the strategies and campaigns of other businesses. Marketing managers may also work in-house as part of manufacturing and professional services companies.
To prepare for a career as a marketing manager, candidates should first earn a bachelor’s degree. Popular courses of study for this profession include marketing, advertising, management and business. Regardless of which major a student chooses to pursue, he or she should be sure to study mathematics, statistics, accounting, finance and economics extensively. As a management-level position, this role requires prior experience in the field. Some marketing managers begin by working as a marketing, advertising, or public relations specialist, and eventually work their way up the corporate ladder to a management position.
Marketing managers earn a median salary of $112,800 per year, according to the BLS. Actual pay may depend on education level, experience, location and size of the company or agency. If you have an analytical mind, the creativity to help develop marketing strategies and the management skills to coordinate campaigns, knowing how to become a marketing manager could be the start of a rewarding new career.
