What community college classes are recommended to take when wanting to go into marketing?

Hello Sylvia. I had a career in marketing and hope I can help. When you have a community college in mind then you gotta talk to a guidance counselor there to make sure you take the right courses and don't waste time or money. You will be required to take certain general 'core courses' and you will likely have a few marketing classes you must take, and some that are electives to take. Try to cram in all the marketing stuff you can......HOWEVER...........here's a tip. Take some classes in topics that you are fascinated by and find easy! Usually when we are very interested in something it makes a college course in that subject fascinating and easy!

So, where does all this lead? If you want an inside tip here it is. It is leading you toward 'specialist marketing' in an area that you find exciting. So if you took courses in that exciting area, plus the marketing stuff you will make yourself more 'marketable' in a job search. So, wanna do fashion marketing, sports marketing, marketing to Mothers, automobile marketing? What's your passion? And once you have a little background in marketing here's an article that lists 159 types of marketing skills and techniques. Good luck!! https://www.splashcopywriters.com/blog/types-of-marketing

Its great that you are thinking about community colleges to get a degree for marketing. In general I would highlight some of the skill sets which are critical in order to be successful in online marketing world. In order to do online marketing you can work on honing 3 skills:

1. Data and analytics: This is the core of everything what we do in online marketing. Best part of online marketing is that its highly analytical and anyone with good understanding of data can learn and execute online marketing quickly. Focus on honing your analytical capabilities and if possible learn SQL and Python which will help you in going beyond a traditional marketer
2. Core marketing skills: I am going to cover this below. There are many resources available online for this.
3. Data visualization: Companies invest lot of money in online marketing and its easy to understand and see effect of that investment through data. Though it varies between company to company but some of the generic things which we like to see are: 1)year over year trend 2) month over month trend 3) week over week trend for all the core metrics like spend, impressions, visitors, conversion etc. There are many tools which are available for data visualization. Most commonly used one is excel where you can create charts and tables but few automated tools like tableau is also highly used in the industry and knowing them would make you more valuable.

Couple of things which you can do to learn core online marketing skills are:

1. Search Engine Marketing: Google has many resources online to learn adwords and understand search engine marketing. Here is one online link which you can use to learn search engine marketing https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9029201?hl=en
2. Subscribe to search engine journal which publishes multiple articles daily to keep marketers up to date with recent things in search marketing. You can read articles to stay up to date. Here is the website https://www.searchenginejournal.com/
3. Search Engine Optimization: There is no one place where you can learn SEO but subscribing to search engine journal will help you. You can also read Neil Patel's blogs which are pretty good (https://neilpatel.com/what-is-seo/).
4. Facebook advertisement: Facebook has lot of resources to learn marketing on their platform. You can go through some here https://www.facebook.com/business/marketing/facebook

Lot of information here but hope this gives you some direction.

Hi Silvia,

I am glad to hear you are interested in a career in marketing! I've found that having strong "soft" skills in the marketing field are just as helpful as technical skills, as the technical aspects of marketing tend to shift with technology, and need to be learned from scratch as the field evolves. When I say soft skills, I refer mainly to the ability to communicate effectively and in a professional manner. That includes written and verbal communication, as well as general interpersonal skills.

I started my educational career in community college before transfering to a four year school and eventually going on to get my MBA. Some of my community college courses were so important foundationally that I still look back to them today when I think about my career journey. Specifically, I think to my business writing, creative writing, and public speaking courses. Specifically, public speaking was a big challenge for me at that time and I decided to meet it head on. Eventually, you'll want to be the person at the front of the room giving an engaging, confident presentation. It's a long road to get to that point - at least it was for me - and it's something I continue to work on diligently 13 years into my career. The ability to write concisely and with impact is a "must" in the marketing field. I found that early on in my career, I was able to set myself apart with my writing skills. No matter what you end up doing in marketing, in your college or professional career, strong writing skills will be very important.

In my opinion, everything else will stem from the ability to communicate effectively. This is not to diminish any other disciplines within marketing or general studies, but from my own experience, working on your written and verbal communication in community college can be a good strategy.

All the best in your studies!

Hi Silvia. It depends on what area of marketing you are interested in pursuing. Most colleges both public/private university and community-based colleges have a handful of general education courses on marketing. The classes can be taken and applied to a marketing degree with a specific concentration -- e.g. brand marketing, sports marketing, channel marketing. I would encourage you to check out some of the community colleges first to see what they offer. You should be able to take a few of them to see how you like them.