The Career of a Marketing Manager Essay Sample

Many people sit behind the television during Superbowl Sunday and watch the biggest advertisements of the year quietly, but I tend to ask myself questions. I ask myself, I wonder how many people it took to produce this one video, how much money is this company spending, or how much time and effort was put into this short video that is shown for only seconds? These questions are what forced me to Google, who is in charge of advertising and displaying a product to the entire world? Very little scrolling led me to a marketing manager description and this really caught my eye. More in-depth research on marketing managers has shown me that my love for using creative problem solving is a great trait for this career. Numerous years of school, long work hours, and competition are all downfalls, but even these make me want to pursue a career in marketing even more. 

Everyday classes may be something that everyone dreads, but taking marketing classes in the past has shown me that I surprisingly enjoy them. Spending my next 8 years or so taking classes with the goal of achieving a job in marketing is something that I look forward to hopefully doing. Becoming a marketing manager however, does not have any actual requirements for degrees meaning every job’s requirements are different. For example, Disney requires their applicants to have a,”Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Economics, Business, or related discipline.”(Disney) It is very much advised that I at least have a Bachelor’s Degree in marketing and plenty of jobs require a Master’s Degree. A degree may be important but Susan Heathfield states,” The value of experience can’t be overstated… Ideally, you will have 10 years or more of progressively more responsible positions in marketing…” (Heathfield). These 10 years will guide me to have the necessary skills to manage a professional marketing staff. This may sound like a long time to achieve a specific job, but there is no specific timeline to this profession and I believe that the jobs leading up are just as satisfying. 

Satisfaction is something that I truly seek in a profession. Long hours of work and constantly trying to solve problems may cause a substantial amount of stress which makes being a marketing manager one of the least satisfying jobs. Career explorer is a website that surveys millions of people to gather their feedback relating to their profession and rates them out of 5. This website has stated,” As it turns out, marketing managers rate their career happiness 3.1 out of 5 stars which puts them in the bottom 40% of careers.”(Sokanu) This is supposed to be something that would drive me away from the profession, but the complaints are surrounding the amount of time and how useful the worker feels which do not personally affect me. In contrast, the one significant upside is the salary and benefits. According to All Business Schools, in 2020 the median salary for a Marketing Manager was $142,170 in the United States. However, Susan Heathfield from The Balance Careers shows me that the top 10% of this career is making over $208,000 and the bottom 10% are making less than $69,840 per year. Most of these jobs come with a stock option which would allow me to own stock in the company while working within the building. Hearing the downfalls has only made me more interested in what exactly people don’t like about this job and if I could see a marketing department with my own eyes in the near future. 

The use of marketing is remarkably in a downward trend even though it is seen as something needed for businesses of our time. Denise Lee Yohn has written an article that explains how the major companies are starting to limit the use of marketing and she believes they are truly wrong. She believes that marketing is so directly correlated to a company's success that she states,”... if business leaders want to thrive in today’s cluttered, competitive, commoditizing marketplace, they need to unleash the powerful potential of marketing.”(Lee Yohn) I previously spoke about individuals in this profession feeling as if their work is not useful and this is where I believe I would find my use. When you are working your way through the marketing department it is hard to realize when you are working in a larger group, that the work you do actually makes a difference. Being a marketing manager I would feel satisfied with an upward trend in sales for the company, however a downward trend would lead me to believe that my work was not good enough and that I will need to work harder. This would eliminate the factor of not feeling useful for me because I will always be pushing for the success of the product or company as it is linked to my personal success. 

Problems within a company's promotion to the public is what a marketing manager is meant to fix and overcome. These problems seem like a lot for one person to achieve, but these exact problems are what I look forward to solving. Denise Lee Yohn in her article states,”Marketing is about connecting the right customers to the right product”(Lee Yohn). Just reading this statement has my mind going in multiple different directions about possible problems a company could face and possible solutions I could present. This restless mind is what I forsee could propel me to being a great marketing manager for any company because until I do something right, I won't quit doing it. 

Imagining myself in a new city is something I have always liked to do since I was raised in a small town in central Nebraska. When I was scanning through job listings for marketing managers, I started to see a trend. A large majority of the highest paying positions are located on the west coast. Best Marketing Degrees has even written an article that has five of the top seven cities to be a marketing manager in are either located in California or Arizona. Being raised in the Midwest I have always wanted to live on the west coast and now seeing that a majority of jobs are here is a major benefit. While doing my research through the article on the website Best Marketing Degrees, I have found that surprisingly competition is factored into their rankings as they take the amount of available positions within a 25 mile radius. The amount of competition in marketing is very low for the entry level jobs, but the further you go up the amount of competition gets higher due to the limited amount of jobs. However, if you qualify for a higher up position such as manager, you should have no problem finding a job as the numbers are very limited. Reading all of these articles about different cities and the opportunities that are available makes me want to pursue this career so much more. Seeing that large companies such as Apple and Disney are hiring marketing managers certainly gives me a drive to someday be ready to work at one of the biggest companies in the world. 

Before doing my research for the annotated bibliography, I didn’t know exactly what it was that I wanted to do. I had to think really hard about what actually caught my interest and what I could really see myself doing for the rest of my life. Through all of this thought I have found marketing and it is the first profession that I always feel intrigued to learn more about. I have already started to research marketing departments that offer summer internships for college students and plan on doing it in the future. From working to receive my Bachelor’s Degree to starting at the bottom of the marketing department, the ups and downs of being involved in marketing seem like the ups and downs that I want to surround myself with. I hope to finish a Bachelor’s Degree and begin working on a Master’s Degree while I begin to climb the ranks in a major company on the west coast. However, before I even start to do that I will do more in depth research surrounding the field of work I seriously wish to pursue.