What is marketing to you? This is a question you need to ask yourself if you want to have a career in marketing.
How you answer that question will impact how you plan your marketing career path. Do you focus on the promotion and selling of a product? Do you focus on understanding the consumers' behavior? Do you want to work in the digital world of ecommerce?
Marketing is comprised of a variety of different areas and functions. Marketing professionals create, manage, analyze and promote brands and products.
Typical areas of marketing include:
Do not underestimate how important quantitative and analytical skills are to a career in marketing. Of course some areas of marketing are more quantitative than others. See the flowchart above and read job descriptions to better understand the most and least quantitative marketing areas.
The functions mentioned above can be broken down into smaller categories. Below are a list of some common marketing keywords that are part of common job titles. These are entry points into the different functions and almost all can have a descriptor, such as Analyst, Assistant, Associate, Coordinator, Junior, Manager, Specialist either before or after the keyword below. For example, you could look for an entry-level job as an Account Coordinator, Account Executive, Account Manager, Junior Account Executive or Assistant Account Executive. So if you are interested in a job in account management, you should review all of these job titles when searching for jobs.
Pair the words below with the following descriptors to see full job titles: Analyst, Assistant, Associate, Coordinator, Junior, Manager and Specialist.
See the 10 companies that control almost everything you buy.
Some jobs in marketing could request additional skills and certifications. These may be specialties beyond your degree's curriculum. There are costs associated with these certifications, so do your research to better understand what employers really want. Are they just requesting it as a preferred qualification, or is it required? And also research what your competition looks like. If everyone who is applying has the same skills it's difficult to differentiate yourself. Would an additional certification help to differentiate you?
These are just a sample of certifications available through various vendors.
In addition to the two UB career management systems BizLink and BullsEye, use the following resources to find marketing opportunities:
To learn more about the Marketing concentrations and courses included within the concentration, please refer to the academic curriculum.