Marketing - an industry for anyone?

It is often said that marketing is a job for anyone. Every person connected with the company, who has a contact with a client or a potential client, performs a marketing function. It is not about people from the marketing department only. Marketing is not only a new advertising campaign, series of e-mail or current promotion this month. Marketing usually filters through every aspect of the company and is a part of every person' position, from administration department to management. Therefore internal marketing and official marketing trainings are so important.

Internal marketing is basically promoting goals, visions, products and company's services among its workers. Client's feelings and opinions about the company depend not only on the products or services offered, but also on the overall experience they have with the company. Internal marketing's ultimate goal is ensuring that employees can convey proper value to the clients because they understand and believe in the brand, its goals and company's vision.

For example, an administrative person who mostly picks up calls, can have an order to pick up a call and forward it to the right person, however, in the marketing world, this person's task is to pick up the call and act on the first impression and brand's representation. This way marketing filters through every position in the company, not limiting to one department only.

A marketing expert...who?

Key tasks of a marketing expert can vary depending on the brand, size of the team and the level of work experience. Person on such position can be an individual employee or a team leader who manages other marketing experts. Such person can be responsible for creating marketing content such as websites, e-mails, social media and other or to delegate work to another employees. Margeting managers are often responsible for planning and following the budget and strategy of the whole department, its one segment or specific campaigns.

Generally the goal of a marketing expert is to help the company in reaching the target clients and improving involvement in the brand. Improving involvement in the brand can include encouraging customers to purchase as well as building a community that focuses on one brand and also encourage users to log in to the platform in order to get further information. Marketing experts can concentrate on B2C, business-to-consumer which means that their target recipients are individual customers or in B2B, business-to-business when the target recipients are other comapnies or organisations.

Someone who works as a specialist in a given department, such as social media marketing manager, can have more specific requirements and work goals and report to a bigger marketing department. Some of the most common marketing specializations are brand management, copywriting, product marketing, social media, e-mail marketing, growth management, event marketing, browser optimisation or marketing (SEO or SEM) and e-commerce.

Authenticity or consequence

In marketing one always work with data. Therefore a professional in this area has to know where to get proper statistics and how to interpret it. What it more, a lot of factors can influence marketing campaigns which means that there is unlimited amount of data. Therefore it is important to know how to isolate various variables and find keys for optimalisation every marketing action.

Marketing experts try to build relations between brands and customers. Understanding the target group of the brand and knowledge on how to convincingly communicate with it is crucial. Marketing department is also responsible on keeping the brand's image. Many of the reputation crisis are nothing else than simple communication problems. Whether it is needed to explain the new strategy, share campaign results or to give a presentation, talented marketing experts are usually good communicators.

Whether it is about posts on social media, blog entry or even simple e-mails, marketing experts who create such content have to know creative writing techniques. Many of marketing experts create such content, therefore the ability of clear and effective writing is a basic skill. It is also important for internal and corporate communication, especially when it comes to plan campaigns and reporting.

Technical skills are crucial, just as having the "spark" which helps to create unforgetable campaigns. Eventually most of the marketing success is about take recipients' minds off the competition, especially now when users' attention is divided between various platforms. Therefore a good marketing specialist have to be able to think outside the box and come up with creative and unique ways of communicating and problem solving.

Preparing

While preparing to work in marketing one should keep up with what the industry leaders promote and try in their own marketing campaigns. One can follow them on social media, subscribe their newsletters or read articles. When observing experts, one can learn basing on trends they see or new capaigns they start. A lot of experts publish case studies based on real brands and real campaign results, which can give a deep insight into the marketing strategies and the best practices. You can also use training platform run by experts.

You can also deep dive in the practical marketing world through learning online, preparing your own content for distribution and promotion. You can set up a blog that will help to practice digital marketing skills and show potential employers your capability. It's always good to have a creative, independent project that you can talk about during interviews as a way of showing your passion, hard work and skills, especially if you do not have a lot of formal marketing experience.

Another fruitful way of spending time is learning and improving skills that make you an attractive candidate for marketing positions, whether it is about getting familiar with Google Analitycs, the course on Webinar Universe or understand the basics of optimalisation of browsers (SEO). It's worth to sacrifice one or two hours every day to take part in digital marketing courses online in order to improve your skills and differentiate yourself among other candidates. Knowledge obtained on such courses can be deployed in your own projects whether it is a blog, a podcast or any freelance work.

First campaign

Standard outline of a marketing plan has few key elements such as:

• Summary for the administration A general summary of the marketing plan for the administration of a higher level, which usually contains the declaration of action and touches factors that will have impact on the project.
• Challenge A short description of strategic goals and challenges that marketing campaign should face.
• Analyse of the situation Detailed raport about various factors that impact the project, such as target clients, the competition, technological landscapre and even social and political situation. SWOT analysis, which helps to measure good and bad sides of the company and its chances and risks, is often a part of the process.
• Target market: identification of people who most likely will participate in the campaign
• Unique sale proposition: it shows the way company will have the edge on the market and often happens by providing customers with benefits such as low prices, excellent customer service or developing a unique or disruptive product.
• Budget Amount of money needed to finish the marketing campaign.
• Monitoring and evaluation Rates used to follow the efficiency of marketing campaign.
• As long as the key elements, such as the goal and the budget, are being considered, you can structure your marketing plan at choice. However, it's worth to use the plan above as a benchmark when deciding which elements to include in your plan.

Working in marketing can be very interesting and profitable, however it requires knowledge and the ability to think outside of the box. It is a job for those who like to have a clear objective, know how to deal with crisis and most of all - like to work with people.