A Career in Marketing
Marketing is the activity undertaken by an organization to inform its customers and other stakeholders about its products and services and influence them to buy those products and services. The activities undertaken by marketers include advertising, promotions, mail campaigns, events etc.
Crucial to the success of marketing is marketing research. Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information—information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. There are several types of marketing activities that can be undertaken. Some of the more popular ones are:
a. Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is a form of marketing which places focus on influential people rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that influence potential buyers and orients marketing activities around these influencers. The nature of influencer marketing is such that consumers tend to trust influencers more than traditional marketing and advertisements.
Earlier there were celebrity endorsements but what has made influencer marketing unique in the present is how social media communication has leveled the playing field and given anyone and everyone the opportunity to share their voice. That’s what makes it powerful, and if done right, it can lead to tremendous business success and growth.
b. Relationship Marketing
Relationship marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on customer loyalty and long-term customer engagement rather than shorter-term goals like customer acquisition and individual sales. The goal of relationship marketing is to create strong, even emotional, customer connections to a brand that can lead to ongoing business, free word-ofmouth promotion and information from customers that can generate leads.
c. Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is a marketing strategy which inspires users to spread or share the message about a product or service to other users on various networks that they frequent which can lead to multi-fold growth. Building and setting a viral marketing campaign into motion is basically creating content so engaging and so relevant that people can’t help but share it with their friends.
d. Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is marketing in which customers initiate contact with the marketer in response to various methods used to gain their attention. These methods include email marketing, event marketing, content marketing and web design.
e. Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing is a newer term for traditional marketing coined when the term inbound marketing came into popular use. In outbound marketing, the marketer initiates contact with the customer through methods such as TV, radio and digital display advertising. It is often used to influence consumer awareness and preference for a brand.
f. Content Marketing
Content marketing is a technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action. It involves various methods to tell the brand story. More and more marketers are evolving their advertising to content marketing/storytelling to create emotional bonding with the customer.
The responsibilities of a Marketing Executive are demanding and involve a lot of juggling between tasks from writing articles, to mastering Search Engine Optimization (SEO) research and always being ‘on’ in terms of social media. Day to day responsibilities involve developing and launching successful marketing campaigns and researching and analyzing the data to identify target audience. On the creative end, Marketing Executives write and edit copy, manage and operate social media and develop multimedia content. The role’s focus is developing brand awareness and communicating to the target audience effectively. Their growth path in an organization is typically as follows.
- Creating marketing strategies that are unique to specific products or services and get them approved.
- Taking the lead in delivering individual marketing campaigns while adhering to marketing strategy and content plan approved by senior managers.
- Researching target audience by demographics, pinpointing their needs and adapting campaigns accordingly.
- Directing various marketing strategies like social media marketing, online marketing, marketing via content printed and radio marketing, as well as paid advertising.
- Writing and proofreading copy across all digital channels including social media, website, newsletter and press releases.
- Liaising with internal and external teams including design team, sales team and senior management.
- Reporting on campaign performance to senior managers and external stakeholders.
- Conducting research and analysis to evaluate trends, brand awareness and competition ventures.
| Education Pathway | ||
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| Undergraduate | Post-Graduate | Some Colleges |
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Bachelor of Business
Administration BBA Bachelor of Business Administration (Sales & Marketing) Bachelor of Business Administration (Digital Marketing) B.Voc. (Marketing Management & IT) BBA (Retail Management) | MBA (Marketing) |
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