Marketing Specialist, how to begin?

There are a multitude of different things you can do in the marketing field. One of the most popular is internet marketing. While the market is saturated with people who are familiar with the internet, there will always be a need for internet marketers.

One of the things you can do is begin to market yourself. Whether you want to be a food critic or an online gamer, you need to get discovered. This means familiarizing yourself with all social media platforms and constantly updating them with relevant and interesting information. Creating an engaging website, finding your target audience, and involving them in promotions, deals, or what fun thing you will do next can prove difficult, fun, and profitable.

Another thing you can do is marketing for a company. This means running coupon or discount ads through Social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Stumble Upon, etc. You will also be responsible for writing content for blogs, content for the company website, and creating engaging videos to help bring customers to your company website. You will also be engaging your clients through emails and social media to discuss popular topics in the industry. Your success is measured by how often the phones are ringing and how many new clients seek out your company's products and services.

The last thing you can do with internet marketing is working for an or owning your own internet marketing firm. Here you will be handling all of the above stated duties for multiple clients. Working part of a team to handle the social media campaigns, blog content writing and posting, updating your clients' websites, tracking the success rate of certain advertisements, Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, and other similar marketing opportunities. The benefit of working in a marketing firm is that you can learn all of these different methods of internet marketing online and decide what kind of industry you enjoy creating marketing materials for.

As with all careers, It is difficult to get a job without prior experience and/or a formal education, but if you can get a foot in the door, you will learn a lot about the marketing industry in a short period of time. On the other hand, getting a formal education and graduating with a degree will help you get a higher paying job and better train you for the position.

I got my start in Marketing right out of school by taking a role at a smaller company leading various Marketing project including events, sales enablement, creative development, website management etc. There are many jobs roles and titles out there at small companies such as Marketing Coordinator, Marketing Specialist, Marketing Assistant, Events Coordinator, etc. The great thing about getting started at a smaller company is you get exposure to a lot of Marketing functions and roles in a very short period of time. After a few years, I took a specialized job at Dell in Marketing Operations and have been here for 6 years now in various roles. Good luck to you! Marketing is a very exciting career choice.

Think about a specific area of marketing to specialize in. Digital Marketing can be exciting if you're interested in web based customer engagement via creative website design (and content design). Marketing Campaign management is also a relatively new frontier - as people shop very differently today and customers want to be approached in a context that matters to them....and knowing a bit about web analytics, personalized marketing....all very cool areas to focus on and perhaps develop a specific area of subject matter expertise.

Keep in mind as well that there are many (many) facets of marketing - including marketing automation (if your technology inclined), or marketing demand management if you're interested in building and managing a marketing "engine" that generates leads that your sales teams will want to field....I happen to work in the area of marketing automation and demand.....and it's a blast!

If you are interested in getting broad exposure to all facets of Marketing, I can highly recommend Event marketing and Marketing Campaigns as great areas to start with. Both of these functions work cross-functionally with all areas of Marketing, as well as the broader organization including Sales, Finance, Legal etc. Working on events, you get to work with creative, venue finding, meeting space planning, speakers, performers, decoration, content etc - SO FUN! From a campaign standpoint, you get to oversee creative, content and are very close to driving results, which is highly rewarding.

Good luck!