Marketing is an expansive and dynamic industry, with many people being attracted to the profession’s many beneficial opportunities. From solving creative challenges to relying on original thinking and applying a keen understanding of customer needs to a range of different areas, marketing is a field in which almost all skills are welcome.

SEE ALSO: Life’s Too Short For The Wrong Job

To succeed within marketing, it’s vital that you have a background of experience suited to the standards you’ll need to meet on a daily basis. Fortunately, there are a number of different roles within marketing, so you’re spoilt for choice when it comes to deciding where your skills fit best.

Personality

Every role within marketing will require you to use your creative flare to approach new problems and recognise potentially successful opportunities for your company. However, not only is it necessary to feel comfortable expressing your own ideas, but you also need to tactfully collaborate with other creative people to arrive at the best solution.

Because of this, people with a proven track-record for working within creative teams are likely to have an advantage when entering the world of marketing. You need to be particularly determined to fight for your own ideas as well as put your energy behind somebody else’s idea when it’s selected for further development.

Specific Skills

Depending on which area of marketing you enter, you’ll be expected to perform any number of different duties. For some jobs, market research will be a continuing process. You’ll be expected to devise and implement strategies to accurately understand consumer needs enabling your organisation to plan more effectively in response.

Media relations are another important part of most marketing positions. As you’re aiming to promote and advertise a specific company or product, it’s naturally vital that you’re able to effectively work with media partners to spread the message – this means you need to be comfortable writing press releases, cold calling organisations and keeping up to speed about what sort of material they publish.

Qualifications

Although you can certainly take academic qualifications related to marketing, many companies will be just as impressed with real-life experience related to their field and marketing jobs have numerous entry routes.

People who have worked in communications, journalism or public relations often move to marketing as the skills developed in these industries are highly transferrable, allowing individuals to meet various challenges.

For example, someone who has completed a Master of Science in Communication degree might be more highly sought after than an individual with a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing because the communications degree is more diverse.

The MS in Communication degree provides skills that are transferable to marketing, advertising, government, and not-for-profit organizations, making anyone who holds it highly employable. Many organizations want to hire people with experience in a number of different fields, rather than focusing on candidates with a degree and very little experience. Therefore, while a marketing degree can help you to get into this field, it isn’t mandatory.

photo credit: Intersection Consulting via photopin cc