Marketing is one of the most popular job sectors due to its accessibility and potential for higher salaries. It’s a broad sector with plenty of room for specialisation and – despite what you might hear – offers plenty of potential for on-the-job training. In terms of demand, marketing is always required, it’s just become increasingly focused on digital mediums or ‘channels’ such as SEO, PPC or social media. In this article, we explore why marketing is a popular job sector, how to get jobs in marketing and potential skills you might need.
Why is marketing a popular job sector?
If you’re looking for a job sector that benefits from logical thinking, creativity, soft skills or an analytical brain, marketing is ideal. Fundamentally, marketing is an umbrella term that encompasses a vast range of roles that suit a variety of skill sets.
With a wide range of roles to choose from, a high ceiling for opportunity and the potential to earn lucrative salaries, why is marketing such a popular job sector?
1. You don’t need a degree
While a degree never hurts your job prospects, marketing is so popular because it doesn’t require one. There are a wide range of ways to start a career in marketing, with plenty of people starting out either freelancing or taking on an internship.
Entry-level roles often lead to career progression in marketing because it’s such a practical field. Everything you need to know about being a marketing Director, for example, you can learn on the job. It doesn’t require any qualifications or formal education – just a good understanding of people, modern marketing concepts and how to get results.
2. It’s highly collaborative
One of the best things about marketing is the scope for collaboration and cross-specialism learning. Any marketing project you work on will rely on multiple stakeholders. This could include a multitude of roles including copywriters, designers or analytics specialists – giving you a prime opportunity to expand your own skill set while you work.
At the same time – while you’re improving your technical abilities – you’ll be improving your soft skills such as communication, organisation and adaptability.
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3. Potential for higher salaries
While highly dependent on location, marketing assistants can earn anywhere between £24,000 and £42,000 according to Glassdoor. This is typically an entry-level role and shows the potential there is for higher salaries.
What makes marketing relatively unique is the potential for specialisation and how that impacts your take-home pay. If you were to specialise in pay-per-click marketing, for example, your average salary rises to £30,000 – £39,000 and the demand for your skill set increases dramatically.
4. It offers excellent flexibility
While you might start out as a jack-of-all-trades marketer, there’s always room to specialise and with that, a demand for your role.
Online courses – or in-person seminars – are plentiful and can help you decide on the specific marketing path you want to take.
Even then, if you spend five years in a branch of marketing and decide you want to move on, you’ll have almost certainly built up a bank of transferable skills that you can utilise in your new role.
5. Exceptional career prospects
Despite being a fluid job sector with plenty of choices for aspiring marketers, high-level marketing roles all offer relatively good salaries. The average salary of a marketing Director, for example, sits between £78,000 and £128,000 in the UK.
While this represents a lot of responsibility – you’ll likely be running multiple marketing divisions or channels – it’s still a fantastic salary that anyone can reach with the right experience, training and drive.
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How to get jobs in marketing
If you’re ready to start a career in marketing, there are several steps that you can take to give yourself the best possible opportunity. Below are our tips for finding a job in marketing:
1. Work to your strengths
While marketing is an incredibly flexible job sector, it still pays to work to your strengths. Take the time early on in your career to assess your own strengths and weaknesses – this is great information you can use to shape your career path.
For example, stereotypically, a creative person who enjoys art will have the passion to excel as a brand or graphic designer. Likewise, a logical person who thrives on finding patterns and rooting through statistics will be much better suited to an analytics-heavy role such as pay-per-click.
These aren’t set in stone but there are definite through-lines between certain marketing roles and skill sets.
2. Research early and maintain
If you’re considering a career switch to marketing or you’re just starting out and interested, you can never research enough.
Marketing is an incredibly agile landscape that changes on a daily basis. If you specialise in search engine optimisation, for example, a single update by Google can completely change your entire workflow.
This is why it’s so important to understand the fundamentals and then have the initiative to maintain your knowledge base, taking the time to read articles or theory crafting around your chosen field.
If you have this knowledge, once you come to the application process you’ll be in a great place to highlight and demonstrate this understanding, which vastly improves your chances of finding a new role.
3. Tailor your CV
We’re huge advocates for tailoring your CV to every individual role you apply for here at Alexander Daniels.
The application documents you send to a potential employer are the first impression they’ll have of you as an employee and they should accurately reflect your skillset and passion for the field.
Marketing is something that we all experience throughout our lives so even if you don’t have practical experience, you can still draw on your research and natural understanding to demonstrate this passion to employers.
Take the time to highlight any internships or work experience you’ve done – every little helps in this scenario. Likewise, detail any understanding you have of marketing-adjacent software such as word processors, design software such as Photoshop or analytics software such as Microsoft Dynamics.
4. Build a portfolio
While this is difficult if you’re just starting out, the best way to earn a marketing job is to demonstrate your knowledge – particularly for copywriters or designers.
Even if your work hasn’t been published, take the time to create some marketing samples that you can show to potential employers – it not only shows initiative but gives them an idea of your natural aptitude and style.
This is particularly important for visual marketers such as designers, social media professionals or branding specialists. While your designs may have never seen the light of day, you can still create great examples of your work to use in a portfolio. If you can tailor this to the company you’re applying for, even better.
5. Network early
Marketing is an inherently close-knit community. As you start to forge a career in the industry, you’ll realise that many marketers not only know each other but have probably collaborated at some point.
Because the industry is so wide-ranging in both demand and potential for specialisation, it never hurts to build relationships that may result in work further down the line.
Networking events and training seminars are great places to pick up some tips as well as filling out your contacts – something which will serve you well during your entire career.