Marketing Manager

What is a Marketing Manager?

The following job responsibilities are common for individuals in marketing manager roles:

• Manage a team of marketing professionals, including—but not limited to—branding, SEO, design, content, development, and public relations personnel
• Brainstorm ideas for new marketing campaigns and initiatives, and stay on top of industry news and research to seek new marketing opportunities
• Suggest and utilize software and programs designed to market products and services more effectively, optimize content and campaigns, and increase social shares
• Recruit, interview, and hire new department employees
• Provide reports on campaign and other initiative effectiveness to company senior leaders

A Day in the Life

Marketing managers oversee the working of marketing departments at small, mid-size, and large business across most industries. They manage a team of marketers across a spectrum of specialties, and may manage individuals working in search engine optimization (SEO), paid advertising, user experience design, web development, content marketing, and social media marketing roles, among others. The marketing manager monitors the effectiveness of campaigns delivered by their team, and reports marketing return on investment (ROI) to senior leaders and stakeholders.

The role of marketing manager is a blend of both manager and strategist. While the marketing manager performs general management tasks like interviewing, hiring, and employee reviews, he/she also forms strategic plans for company marketing initiatives. Marketing managers must stay up to date with changes and advances in the field, conducting research, engaging in A/B testing, and reviewing analytics to determine what campaigns and initiatives are successful, and which are falling flat and should be abandoned.

Marketing managers also work with senior leaders to make requests for products, services, or software than can improve campaign outcomes, enable advanced campaign monitoring and reporting, and extend reach for campaigns. They create detailed cost analysis models and cost/benefit presentations to highlight the benefits of third-party technologies like marketing automation software, influencer marketing campaigns, or SEO research platforms. Marketing managers’ ultimate goals are to increase reach, profits, leads, and awareness of the companies they work for.

Typical Work Schedule

Most marketing managers normally follow the standard working hour schedule of about 40 hours per week in office-based work. Some companies may also allow more flexibility by working from home for part of the time. However, you will also need to attend regular meetings and sometimes spend evenings and weekends traveling to different locations in order to fine-tune the products, conduct surveys and polls, attend filming and photoshoots or to manage a new product launch or visit exhibitions and conferences to promote brands to give the company an edge over the competition. Therefore, as you work for larger companies with larger products portfolio, the job may become more demanding. These companies will have dedicated marketing teams which needs to be coordinated to achieve the assigned tasks.

Projected Job Growth

According to the bureau of labor statistics (US) the overall employment of Marketing managers and other branding related fields is expected to increase by at least 6 % from 2019 to 2029 which is faster than the average expected growth for other jobs. This growth provides more opportunities to graduates joining the field. However, the field is changing rapidly because of the recent technological changes that transformed the field of branding and changed the formats of the branding platforms giving the Internet-based advertisement greater importance over other traditional means of branding. This trend is expected to continue in the coming years which makes learning modern and digital technology essential for you to stay competitive in the job market. If you have these skills and qualifications, then you should not find a problem getting a suitable job with the high demand for the job.

Career Progression

• Early Career: Marketer (SEO, Content Marketer, Designer, Social Media Marketer)
• Mid-Career: Marketing Manager, Brand Manager, UX Manager
• Late Career: Marketing Director, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

Typical Employers

Marketing Managers have a wide range of available employers. The first and most common employers are the marketing agencies as Proximity, Maxus, Asatsu-DK and the Engine Group. Marketing managers in these agencies are responsible for handling multiple brands and multiple clients making their job more demanding. In addition, some big private companies, manufacturers and retailers may have a marketing department with dedicated marketing managers. There is also increasing trend to hire marketing managers as freelancers through online platforms which is usually the case with small-sized companies or start-ups.