Even as the economy begins to move into what many experts are predicting will be a recovery in 2013, college students still must take great care in choosing a major. Not all careers are made equal and competition is expected to remain fierce for many jobs.
Against that backdrop, careers with expected growth such as marketing can be a solid choice.
The federal government – in projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) – is calling for a 13% increase in the number of marketing and advertising jobs between now and 2020.
Growth isn’t the only good aspect of a marketing degree: the average pay for marketing managers in 2010 was $112,800, according to the BLS.
Multiple Marketing Career Paths
Earning a degree in marketing opens the door to a variety of career paths, depending on the area within which a student wants to specialize. While the principles of marketing cut across all specialties, there are unique skills and interests required for each career within marketing.
Some examples include:
- Traditional marketing. This is what people often think of when they think of marketers. Those who work in print, television and radio marketing use these mediums to target certain demographic audiences with messages about products and brands, seeking to increase brand awareness as well as sales.
- Internet marketing. The goal for Internet marketers is the same as that of traditional marketers – increase brand awareness and improve the bottom line. But their medium is the wide-open world of the Internet, which combines advertisement with strategies such as search engine optimization and pay per click campaigns.
- Advertising. Those who move into this challenging field will build advertising campaigns for certain brands or products, raising awareness and interest in their client. Typically, those who work in advertising will join an agency and work as part of a team.
- Social Media Marketing. Still an evolving sector, social media marketing involves many of the same skills of Internet marketers with specialization in how people interact while using social media. Perhaps most importantly, they become specialists in learning how, when and where people are willing to accept marketing messages while using social media.
The Knowledge and Skills Learned in Marketing
Good marketers – and good marketing degree programs – focus on the skills that will help them succeed in the highly competitive marketing business. Most degree programs start with classes on consumer behavior, market research, sales and communication methods.
Those wishing to focus on management may typically study business management, economics and finance.
The more wide-reaching, so-called “soft skills” are simply good to improve not only for marketing, but also for other professions. Analytical skills – the ability to sift through data and find important patterns – are extremely important for marketers. Discovering those patterns is important, but so is the ability to communicate those finding to others, which is why communication and people skills are also important.
Creativity is perhaps harder to cultivate, but those with creative tendencies can do well within marketing, as it often calls for creative solutions and methods to best present products and brands.
