Choosing which marketing career is right for you might just be one of the hardest decisions. Or you may find it incredibly easy. There are many different career paths that you can explore when it comes to the world of marketing, more than just the ones listed within this blog. I’m just covering the most common ones here to start. Otherwise, this blog could become a book.
You can basically break down marketing careers into two sub-categories; specialists and generalists. The specialists focus on one key area within marketing to drive results and the generalists gather all of the components and pull them together in a big-picture strategy.
Which marketing career is right for me? Well, the decision on which career was right for me was pretty easy. I am a multi-passionate person and I truly love doing a little bit of everything. That automatically ruled out any of the specialized career paths. So I went with becoming a growth marketer… then I became a customer marketer for a few years… and returned to being a growth marketer.
But enough about me, this is about YOU and learning about all the options so you can make the right choice. There isn’t one career that is better than the other, they are all incredibly valuable and critical to the success of a marketing team. You’re also never stuck in just one, you can always pivot.
In all these roles, adaptability, creativity, analytical thinking, and effective communication are key attributes for success in the dynamic field of marketing. Marketing is highly complex and ever-changing which is what attracts most people to wanting to explore this kind of career.
Which Marketing Career Is Right For Me? Specialist Or Generalist?
Marketing Specialist Careers
Social Media Marketing:
Role: Social media marketing is a hot topic right now and a growing role as social media becomes a huge contributor to buying decisions. Social media marketers create, manage, and optimize a brand's presence on various social platforms. They develop content strategies, engage with the audience, and analyze performance metrics. Some social media managers are responsible for actually creating the content themselves, but others rely on content creators, graphic designers, and video editors to support their role.
Skills: Content creation, community management, social media platform expertise, analytics, and staying updated on social media trends.
Content Marketing:
Role: Content marketers focus on creating and distributing valuable content to attract, engage, and retain target audiences. They develop content calendars, create videos and podcasts, and write blog posts, ebooks, emails, templates, and other materials. This career often starts as a copywriter and works alongside the growth marketing manager to develop content that supports the overall business objectives.
Skills: Content strategy, writing, storytelling, SEO, data analysis, and an understanding of the buyer's journey.
SEO / SEM Marketing:
Role: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) roles work to improve a website's visibility on search engines and manage paid advertising campaigns. They conduct keyword research and develop strategies to rank for searches around the keywords relevant to the target audience of the business. They often work alongside content marketers to optimize content and ensure visibility.
Skills: Keyword research, on-page and off-page SEO, PPC campaign management, data analysis, and staying updated on search engine algorithms.
Event Marketing:
Role: Do you love to plan parties? If so, event marketing might be a good career path for you. Event marketers plan, promote, and execute live or virtual events to engage customers and prospects. They handle logistics, budgeting, and coordination of special events, pop-ups, tradeshows, webinars, speaking engagements, and more. This career requires more travel than others as tradeshows and events happen across the country.
Skills: Project management, communication, event planning, budget management, and an understanding of the target audience.
Email Marketing:
Role: Email marketers design and execute email campaigns to nurture leads and engage customers. They must have a strong understanding of the entire customer journey from lead generation to custom retention. They must develop nurture campaigns that address the needs and desires of the target audience that encourages them to take the next step in their journey. They segment email lists, create compelling content, build automation workflows, and measure email performance.
Skills: Email automation, copywriting, A/B testing, data analysis, and understanding of email marketing best practices.
Brand Marketer:
Role: Brand marketers are responsible for defining and maintaining a consistent brand identity. They build the brand image and values and ensure that all marketing efforts are communicating these properly. This role creates the essence and story of the brand to build trust with the target audience.
Skills: Branding, creative design, market research, customer perception analysis, story telling, and brand strategy development.
Marketing Operations:
Role: Marketing operations professionals manage the technology, processes, and data that support marketing efforts. They optimize marketing workflows, implement marketing software, and ensure data quality. This is much less of a creative role and much more analytical. Marketing Ops lives inside of the marketing automation platforms and CRMs building out programs and integrations.
Skills: Project management, data management, marketing technology proficiency, process optimization, and a good understanding of marketing analytics.
Marketing Analytics:
Role: Marketing analysts collect and interpret data to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. They identify trends, track KPIs, and provide insights to improve marketing strategies. This role lives in the numbers and helps direct future strategies to be data-driven. They to identify what channels and strategies are working, which need to be optimized, and where the team needs to pivot.
Skills: Data analysis, statistics, data visualization, reporting tools, and proficiency in marketing analytics platforms.
Marketing Generalists Careers
Demand Generation / Growth Marketing:
Role: Demand generation or growth marketers focus on generating leads and increasing revenue. They optimize the sales funnel, implement lead-generation strategies, and drive customer acquisition. The demand generation marketers will need to have knowledge and experience with many, if not all, of the roles above. They are the big-picture thinkers determining how SEO, SEM, content, events, social media, and email marketing work together to hit the funnel goals. In smaller companies, the growth marketer will need to execute all of these tactics, but larger corporations will have specialists within those roles to support them.
Skills: Lead generation tactics, conversion rate optimization, A/B testing, data-driven decision-making, basic knowledge of all marketing tactics, writing, storytelling, and a solid grasp of marketing automation tools.
Product Marketing:
Role: Product marketers act as the bridge between product development and sales/marketing teams. They develop product messaging, positioning, and launch strategies to drive product adoption and sales. They need to be able to understand the technical side of the product and translate it to resonate with their target audience. This role also plays an important role in developing go-to-market strategies.
Skills: Market research, product knowledge, competitive analysis, effective communication, writing, and sales enablement.
Customer Marketing:
Role: Customer marketers focus on retaining and engaging existing customers. They develop onboarding programs, loyalty programs, customer feedback loops, and personalized communication strategies to foster customer retention and advocacy. This role often works alongside the account manager and customer success teams to develop programs that reach customers at scale. Similar to the growth marketer they will need to have a basic understanding of the different marketing tactics as they likely will execute or manage content development, email marketing, social media, events, and build out workflows.
Skills: Customer relationship management, segmentation, basic knowledge of all marketing tactics, writing, feedback analysis, and content personalization.
Every role and job you step into will vary on their roles and responsibilities based on the needs or organization and the resources they have. As I mentioned above, larger companies will have more people in specialized roles, while smaller companies are going to expect you to be able to wear a lot of different hats.
Whether you decide to go into a specialized career or not, I suggest that you gain a basic understanding of how each area of marketing contributes and works together in the big-picture strategy.
I hope this blog can help you answer the very important question of, Which marketing career is right for me?