Career Opportunities with a Marketing Degree

Marketing is one of the most popular graduate careers, making entry level routes into marketing roles extremely competitive, but there are many career paths you can take with your Marketing degree.

Work experience counts for a lot in the marketing world, so make sure to actively develop transferable skills during your degree.

Due to this many universities allow flexible learning so students can work part-time and some universities also offer sandwich year courses for students to undertake one-year work placements. Some universities also offer the chance to spend a year abroad, either studying or working.

In any case, the roles you can apply for with a Marketing degree are incredibly varied and with a strong CV and a good work ethic you’re likely to land an excellent graduate role.

Here’s more about the career opportunities with a Marketing degree.

What skills will I gain during my Marketing degree?

During your degree you’ll learn a number of industry specific skills including:

• An ability to anticipate customer demand
• An ability to identify target markets
• Strong and effective communication skills

In addition to this you’ll also learn plenty of transferrable business skills that will aid you no matter which direction your career goes in.

These skills include:

• The ability to express yourself clearly (verbally and in writing)
• Advance planning and strategic thinking
• Research and analysis skills
• Presentation skills
• How to use your own initiative
• Creative thinking
• The ability to work independently
• The ability to work effectively as part of a team

Regardless of whether you go on to work in a big firm or as part of a small start-up business these skills will enable you to be an active, valuable member of the team from the minute you graduate.

Jobs directly related to your Marketing degree

Typically you’ll find a job with specialist marketing, advertising and PR agencies.

However, these are not the only major employers of Marketing graduates. Marketing is a core element of all organisations and, therefore, opportunities exist across all industry sectors - private, public and voluntary.

These can range from the financial, consumer and information technology industries to not-for-profit organisations, such as charities, local government and higher education institutions.

Roles usually taken by Marketing graduates include:

Marketing Assistant

As a marketing assistant you’ll work closely with a marketing executive and/or marketing manager and contribute to the creation and tracking of campaigns.

Usual tasks include organising and analysing market research, compiling financial and statistical information such as budget spreadsheets, writing press releases, reports and company brochures, arranging promotional events, assessing the results of marketing campaigns.

You could also assist the marketing manager in writing reports, helping to drive online traffic by producing online content, liaising with external agencies and communicating with clients.

Advertising Account Executive

Advertising account executives work within advertising or multi-service agencies, acting as a link between clients and the agency.

As an Advertising Account Executive you will be responsible for the coordination of advertising campaigns and therefore communicating clearly to all those involved.

Typical work activities include:

• Meeting and liaising with clients
• Working with agency colleagues devising advertising campaigns
• Working with the account manager
• Acting as the link between, the client and the advertising agency
• Negotiating with clients and agency staff about the details of campaigns
• Presenting creative work to clients for approval or modification
• Handling budgets, managing campaign costs and invoicing clients
• Writing client reports
• Monitoring the effectiveness of campaigns
• Making 'pitches', along with other agency staff, to try to win new business for the agency

Other common roles taken on by Marketing graduates include brand management, business development, customer relationship marketing, international marketing, copywriting, market research, marketing communications.

Jobs not directly related to your Marketing degree

As we’ve said above, a Marketing degree gives you many skills that are highly prized by employers from all industries, so you don’t need to limit yourself when it comes to looking for potential career paths.

Less common roles taken by Marketing graduates include:

• Teaching
• Sales
• PR
• Fashion marketing
• Graphic design
• Website design
• Event planning
• Publishing

Some of these roles may need further study and if you’re considering one of them after graduation it might be work looking into a combined degree or getting work experience whilst you’re still at university.