A Deep Dive into the different teams/organizations within marketing
Part 2 of the Series — Recent Graduates Guide to Discovering the right career in Marketing
This article is part of my series to guide recent marketing graduates to the best of my ability and knowledge.
In part one, I cover why marketing organizations are unique to a company and how even within an industry, different companies can have diametrically opposite marketing team structures. I also discuss the general structure of a marketing organization at a high level laying out the different roles within marketing.
In this part, I will deep dive into the different parts of the Marketing organization, name some starting positions in those teams to give recent graduates ideas on the roles to keep an eye on.
The Core Marketing Team:
1. Content Writing: Have you ever read an article and thought this is great content, but this should be written in a better way, so more people read it? Then content writing is where you belong. The company Upworthy is entirely based on this premise (plus they are one of the best social media, A/B testing companies out there). But I digress, if you fancy yourself a wordsmith, love reading and writing and love grammar — this organization is the perfect fit for you.
You will learn to write copy that converts (reads, clicks, learn about using click bait consciously I hope and more.) Most companies today have content written primarily for the web, so you will learn metrics behind what kind of content works, what doesn’t. It would also involve some aspects of being an editor to manage the content calendar for a company’s social media. Some of the starting roles in content writing teams involve proofreading, copywriter, junior social media manager, and more.
2. Design: This is a tough one. Unless you specifically study design in college or have experience in design, it may be tough to kick your career in design (I have seen a couple of exceptions). Most designers today especially ones who work in the company (in-house) will know how to design a website/webpage, marketing brochures, and more. If you fancy yourself and hate poorly designed websites, this team may be for you. I won’t go in too much detail here since I am yet to meet a designer who didn’t know they wanted to be one from a young age or were inherently good at design. If they find out later on, they had to go back to school to become a designer (animator, web designer and more). Some junior roles include designer, junior web designer, and more.
3. Web Development: Although a web developer sometimes sits in the technology team rather than in marketing, most smart marketing teams have their own developers, UX designers, etc. who can design the website, manage the web properties, and more. Again, without at least learning some web designing course — it’s tough to become a developer. This does not mean that if you don’t take a web developer path in your career, you won’t have to understand the basics of HTML, web design and more, but this is a highly specialized role that requires technical skills.
4. Digital Marketing: Since most marketing these days is digital, this is where you will find many open positions as most teams have a strong focus on digital. Digital Marketing roles often utilize a mix of content with technology and design. So in my opinion, they are an ideal place to start your career because you understand multiple aspects of marketing quickly.
Look out for roles in search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), display marketing, and more. In small organizations, the same person would be managing these different roles, but the specialists in this area have long and famous career trajectories. (Hello Avinash Kaushik! — the most renowned analytics celebrity). Some of the starting roles in this organization are SEM analyst, SEO analyst, Email Marketing Manager, etc.
Advice: The above roles within marketing are sometimes just outsourced to an agency. So if any of these roles are of interest to you, you can also find positions in a marketing agency. The benefit of working in an agency is you get to work on different accounts (companies) — experience the difference between b2b (business to business marketing) and b2c (business to consumer). But like everything, there is also the benefit of working within a company in one of these roles since you get a chance to truly understand a marketing strategy behind a piece of a content/webpage and more. In big organizations, these roles are sometimes also housed in a central services team that works as an in-house agency. So this is another option of working in an agency like environment but still being on the client side.
I have seen many digital marketing specialists, and content writers grow into product marketers or marketing communications director and then into a CMO; I have seen developers moving from website development to digital marketing and then to a CMO. I am yet to find a designer who became a CMO. Generally, designers grow into Creative Director Roles (which are often as high paying roles and prestigious as CMO’s themselves). But I am yet to meet a CMO who doesn’t understand the basics of design. So as you kick off your career in marketing, befriend a designer or five in your organization.
Also, if you also have entrepreneurial ambition, going the agency route may be of interest to you. In a marketing agency, you end up learning the three roles in depth, and with the right contacts and personality, you can eventually have your own agency (although this sounds much easier than it is).
Please note that a marketing agency is different than an advertising agency. I will explain this later in the article. An agency might have both advertising and marketing capabilities, but the function and work are inherently different.
The Essential Marketing team:
1. Product/Brand Marketing Team: Often the stepping stone for most CMO’s, this team often sits within the organization as they need to be tightly aligned with the rest of the company especially the sales and distribution channels but also operations, customer service and more. A product marketing/brand marketing marketer will often set the strategy for the product. They will then work with the content writing, design, digital marketing teams to ensure the strategy is executed.
There are few junior roles in this organization like Associate/Junior Marketing Manager but they still tend to need some experience — either in copywriting, digital marketing or others. In my opinion, these roles are the ones you should aim for, after your first 3–5 years in marketing (after you have learned a particular skill within marketing like digital, copywriting, etc.) I may be wrong, but it’s generally tougher to get this role right out of grad school unless you end up with a marketing assistant role in a startup or a small organization.
2. Marketing Communications Team: MarCom for short, think of this team as the creative engagement team. If you love to come up with creative ideas to engage a prospect and like to test ideas (a/b testing, MVT testing, etc.) this is your team. MarCom team has a couple of different functions like engaging with prospects, clients, media and even internal employees. The roles in this team can vary from one person leading all communications via emails, social media with prospects and clients, to having a full suite of team members dedicated to engaging with the media and even internal marketing teams as its important to ensure the sales teams are on board and in the know about the marketing strategy.
There are quite a few starter roles in this team from marketing communications assistant to media coordinator to internal marketing communications assistant. My personal experience has been that these roles are often a bit more general and unless you specialize quickly in one of the roles like public relations, email marketing, client engagement strategies, you can go down the rabbit hole of being stuck in a general role without growth in this department.
The Specialist:
Like I mentioned in Part One, the roles below are often where the marketing organizations become unique from one company to another. Not because any of these roles are less important, in fact, it’s the opposite. It’s because these roles depend on not just the marketing team’s overall focus but also the companies goals and ambitions.
1. Advertising/Acquisitions: If the show Mad Men is your thing and you love coming up with eccentric one-liners or can quickly sketch an idea — try advertising. The Acquisitions Manager — and sometimes this is just an advertising agency is responsible for negotiating the media buys, creating cool advertisements — both content and design and more.
To be specific, an advertising agency is different than a marketing agency. Although the overall structure/look may be similar in that both marketing agency and advertising agency both have copywriters and designers, web developers; advertising copywriters often have a tough time writing long article form copies, and long-form article writers have a tough time writing ad copy — since the techniques and styles are so different.
2. Public Relations: If you love the show Scandal or like to reframe disasters into something positive — consider a role here. But to be specific, unless you work solely on a crisis management team, you won’t be doing Scandal type work. Often the PR teams are charged with bringing attention to a company/product and work closely with journalists and influencers. Working in-house or as an agency, a public relations team works closely with the CMO, CEO because of the high visibility nature of the work.
3. Marketing Research: Love numbers? Are even better at looking at numbers and telling a story? Then Marketing Research is for you. Some companies solely do marketing research, and then you also have research roles/team in-house. The work is often exciting and very important to an organization as you may be charged with coming up with new ideas, understanding why a perfectly good product fails to much more.
4. Event Marketing: Are you one of those super organized folks and love organizing and throwing parties? Event marketing is your thing. They are event marketing agencies and even specialists within an organization and even within public relation agencies, marketing research companies and more.
5. Customer Experience: There has been a renewed focus on this aspect of marketing in recent years. Ever had to deal with bad customer service or felt like you as a customer have been shuffled from one organization to another in a company? They often lack the customer experience manager/team. A customer experience team/manager is focused on keeping current clients happy and satisfied and focuses on process optimization to ensure the customers are happy. The Hotel industry and most retail companies in the US have got this down pat and telecommunication, and the B2B world is still catching up on this one. So if you are good at thinking from someone else point of view, are good at looking at the same information with a new set of eyes — then this is your calling. The starting roles in this organization are customer experience assistant/analyst/junior manager.
I understand that this is a lot of information and if like me, when I first started my career, you still don’t know what you are interested in — don’t lose hope. In the next part, I will give some tips about how to kick-start a career in marketing irrespective of which role you start your career in and even if you don’t know what interests you.
So be excited, marketing rules the world. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t have an iPhone today. So put that picture of Steve Jobs — the best product marketer in the world — next to your bedside and imagine a career in marketing.
Here is the link to the next part where I talk about tips for recent grads in marketing and my personal opinion on where and how to kick off your career in marketing.
