Preparing Yourself to Get a Top Marketing Job

Preparing Yourself to Get a Top Marketing Job

Noah Rue 28/04/2021 2
Preparing Yourself to Get a Top Marketing Job

It’s 2021, and the marketing world is more competitive than ever.

Businesses know that they need to branch out with digital strategies like content marketing, and they know they need to assemble savvy marketing teams with top-notch talent to reach their goals.

That means they’re looking for people like you, but if you want to get noticed for your dream job, you’re going to need to show off some elite skills as you contend with other highly deserving candidates. This guide will help you get started on distinguishing yourself from the pack. Read on, and learn how to prepare for your future in marketing.

Defining Your Marketing Niche

Not every role within marketing is the same. The specific skills you’ll need to succeed in a content marketing position, for instance, will vary from those that will make you a good fit as a marketing manager. Therefore, you’ll want to spend some time thinking about your specialties, so that you can focus your skill-building efforts later on. 

Some of the paths you might take within the vast marketing landscape include:

  • SEM and SEO: Search engine marketing and search engine optimization will require you to help businesses gain leads from search engine hits. This role will require fine-tuning an employer’s website and content to perform well in online searches.
  • Product marketing: These experts are all about marketing and promoting specific products to customers. Enter this niche, and you’ll become the go-between for those who design and manufacture the product and other departments within the business. You’ll also be busy building bridges between the business and potential customers.
  • Content marketing: This specialty will require you to do a lot of writing. Content marketing, and copywriting in particular, will see you weaving narratives that help sell a brand and inform potential customers about various relevant topics.
  • Email marketing: Email is still a powerful marketing channel, and businesses need individuals who are skilled with strategizing correspondence campaigns that connect with the audiences they are after. 
  • Social media marketing: There’s a large potential audience for almost every business on social networks. If you’re savvy in navigating these online spaces, brands will want you to help them bring in the likes, subscribers, and sales.
  • Marketing analytics: Those skilled with numbers and data might find a home within marketing analytics. This niche will have you combing over metrics to help businesses strategize their future marketing campaigns.

This isn’t a comprehensive list, mind you, but it should help you narrow down which direction you’ll want to head in when you’re building up your skill set. 

Sharpening Your High-Level Skills

While specific roles in marketing will require you to train a narrow set of talents, some high-level skills will come in handy no matter what specific marketing role you’re after. Case in point is soft skills — the non-technical skills that will make you a more effective team member and help you thrive in almost any work environment.

Soft skills include being able to communicate with others, work as part of a team, solve conflicts, network, manage your time, and think creatively. 

These are the sorts of things that you don’t typically learn in a course, and that employers will need to see you demonstrate to determine if you’ve got them. You can still suggest that you possess these skills, however, by highlighting specific scenarios from your career in which they came in handy on your resume.

Another broad skill that will come in handy during this digital age is the ability to collaborate remotely. While some organizations are planning a full-scale return to the office once the pandemic dies down, many others are not. Having the ins and outs of remote working under your belt, therefore, will make you a more attractive candidate wherever you apply.

Be sure to think about other high-level skills that may translate across marketing roles, then train up on them to the best of your ability so that you remain prepared.

Learning How to Interview

Finally, you’ll want to bolster your interviewing skills to help you land that marketing job. By and large, most standard interview advice you’ve received will still come in handy — dress the part, exude confidence, research your employer beforehand. 

Marketing jobs, however, may have some unique questions that could potentially throw you for a loop, so you’ll want to make sure you’ve got all those bases covered. 

An employer may, for example, ask you questions about marketing strategy and expect you to quickly diagram your approach to a specific marketing challenge. Or they might throw you a hypothetical scenario to see how you would manage customer complaints or the launch of a new product.

While you might not be able to prepare for every possible query, expanding your knowledge of the types of marketing questions you might need to field during the interview will give you a massive advantage during your job search.

Wrapping Up

3 Marketing Principles

Finding a marketing job will be competitive, but you can still make the cut if you first define the role that you’re after and start training specific skills for the position. 

Follow that training up by working on your soft skills and team working abilities, then make sure you’re prepared for whatever interview questions might come your way to give yourself the best chance possible for landing your ideal marketing role.

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  • Alex Stemplewski

    Thanks for the help !

  • Peter Wilson

    Very useful

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Noah Rue

Digital Expert

Noah Rue is a writer, a digital nomad, an ESL teacher, and an all around good dude, if he doesn’t say so himself.

   
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