Marketing Sector

Marketing is a term used to broadly cover many aspects of a company's brand, advertising and web content strategies. Generally, it involves how a product or service is sold. The function identifies customer needs, investigates how to meet them and then evaluates the best way to generate profit.

Marketing reflects the ever-changing business environment in which it works. The constant advances in information technology, including the Internet, and the demand for ever-more segmented markets have led to more sophisticated collection and analysis of data about existing and potential customers. New skills in customer relationship management (CRM) are often required of professional marketeers.

Market factors and changes in the retail landscape have placed greater importance on the internet as a channel to consumers. Today, search engine optimisation (SEO) is at the forefront of marketing strategy for many organisations, creating further demand for marketing skills in this area. Prompting businesses to generate greater spend in the sector and promote significant growth, this opens further opportunities for graduates within marketing.

 

Graduates need to understand that marketing encapsulates a broad range of specialist areas from creative ideas to numerical and business intelligence.

Graduates can choose to follow many areas of expertise in pursuing a career in marketing and graduates can take a creative or analytical route:

Creative

• Advertising
• Branding
• Communications
• Events Organisation
• PR

Analytical

• Database and Direct Marketing
• Marketing Analysis
• Market Research
• Web Marketing

With such an extensive range of options, the marketing industry offers a varied and interesting career for graduates. The competitive consumer marketplace will ensure a continued healthy demand for candidates. Begin your search for graduate marketing jobs. 

 

While graduate recruiters welcome applications from graduates from all disciplines, successful graduates must fulfil the personal criteria of drive, sound communication skills, team work and business awareness. The underlying quality graduate marketing sector recruiters look for in a candidate is the ability to convey ideas. Marketing is essentially a creative business, and the ability to generate original thoughts and plans is highly sought after. 

Over recent years, the growth in analytical marketing and market intelligence has resulted in heightened demand for numerate graduates. Such graduates tend to be problem-solvers who have the ability to disseminate large amounts of data or information and translate it into a strong business case.

Due to the popularity of marketing positions graduates who have undertaken an internship programme or gained relevant work experience, prior to applying, hold an advantage.  Therefore, it is worth considering offering your time to a marketing department or agency where possible, whilst at university, to gain experience.

Do you have what it takes? Begin searching for graduate marketing jobs today. 

 

Graduates will have to face the standard interview process, but further testing will differ depending on the area of marketing you decide to follow:

Creative roles will require graduates to take part in group exercises, complete verbal reasoning tests and display their creative skills in creative exercises.

Analytical roles will require the completion of numerical tests, case studies and often excel tests.

 

Competition for high profile marketing schemes can be intense, resulting in graduates facing a starting salary between £16,000 and £21,000. However, salaries steadily increase with experience and responsibility. Experienced managers holding professional qualifications can earn very competitive salaries.

 

British Retail Consortium www.brc.org.uk
Managing and Marketing Sales Association www.mamsasbp.com
Institute of Grocery and Distribution www.igd.com
Booksellers Association www.booksellers.co.uk
British Television Shopping Association www.btsa.org.uk
Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport www.iolt.org.uk
Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply www.cips.org
The Federation of Bakers www.bakersfederation.org.uk
Chartered Institute of Marketing www.cim.co.uk