What does it take to have a career in marketing and advertising. What are my choices?
I’ve written several blog posts addressing this and I’ve linked them below:
PR + Building Cred:
http://www.leechon.com/build-credibility-now-3485.htm
Personal Online Presence:
http://www.leechon.com/7-actions-to-manage-reputation-3715.htm
Marketing Career:
http://www.leechon.com/5-tips-marketing-career-3185.htm
Resumes + LinkedIn:
http://www.leechon.com/know-about-linkedin-3899.htm
LinkedIn Recommendations:
http://www.leechon.com/how-to-get-linkedin-recommendations-4063.htm
In Summary:
If you have a background that somehow or someway related to business or communication, then it’ll be easy getting a job in marketing. Essentially it comes down to knowing business. You have a product or service, and you have to get it out to people, all while making a profit.
When it comes to the communicative aspect, there’s Public Relations, which is all about building credibility for the company or the brand. There are a lot of various opportunities available in PR.
You also have Social Media, which is an interesting animal. No one is purly a social media person. Some aspects of the job fall under PR, other aspects fall under search engine marketing. Some social platforms are search engines, like YouTube.
You also have the whole analytical aspect, which involves number crunching, done by statistical geeks. These folks look at a lot of data. If you want to go in that direction, learn to become a ninja in Microsoft Excel. Flip and understand numbers. Not simply just report them, but also understand what it means and communicate that to the decision makers.
I personally found myself to be in the middle ground. Although I pride myself on being a geek, I’m not that anti-social number cruncher. But at the same time, I’m not that fast-talking slick sales guy. My strength is in building rapport and making friend quickly, understanding numbers, and knowing how to communicate it well. This many times results in me being a liason between the number crunchers and decision makers.
As a marketing professional, it helps if you have a comfort level with math, basic statistics, MS Excel, with some managerial ability.
If you want to go toward the creative direction where one develops multimedia, design and working with photoshop and/or visual effects. This type of person usually ends up being a multimedia designer or working with agencies.
You also have the opportunity to work in sales too. This is someone who isn’t afraid of being rejected. In reality, not one likes being rejected. However, as a sales professional, it’s haveing the mindset that a rejection is simply a step closer to getting a yes.
I started off in sales out of high school doing telemarketing. After that I was selling vaccume cleaners door to door then telecom services. In selling telecom, our instructions were to simply knock on 50 doors which would result in 2-3 sales each day.
It really comes down to classifying whether you’re a strong presenter, a multimedia specialist, someone who can write really well, or a combination of these.
Again, check out the links below.
PR + Building Cred:
http://www.leechon.com/build-credibility-now-3485.htm
Personal Online Presence:
http://www.leechon.com/7-actions-to-manage-reputation-3715.htm
Marketing Career:
http://www.leechon.com/5-tips-marketing-career-3185.htm
Resumes + LinkedIn:
http://www.leechon.com/know-about-linkedin-3899.htm
LinkedIn Recommendations:
http://www.leechon.com/how-to-get-linkedin-recommendations-4063.htm