Marketing Manager: Job Profile and Role

Together with a team of marketing experts, a marketing manager is in charge of anything connected to the marketing and promotion of a company’s products and services. Typically, a marketing manager is responsible for planning new marketing campaigns and overseeing these campaigns from start to finish.

What skills and (academic) qualifications you need to become and be a marketing manager are two of the topics we will explore in this blog. To give you as much information as possible, we will also take a look at a marketing manager’s annual salary and the employers. You will also get a look into a day in the life of a marketing manager as well as tips for thriving in this profession.

Short Summary

• As a marketing manager, you are responsible for overseeing, planning and implementing marketing strategies and campaigns for the company you work for.
• As a marketing manager, you are responsible for promoting your company’s products and services in the most successful way possible. This includes using a multi-channel approach.
• As a marketing manager, you are responsible for raising your company’s brand awareness. You need to ensure that your company’s customers a) recognise the brand and b) identify with it.

Job description

A marketing manager oversees and implements innovative marketing campaigns for a company. These campaigns help the company to reach a wider target audience and ideally result in higher sales and revenues. A marketing manager is tasked with adhering to projected budgets. This is achieved by negotiating favourable deals with suppliers and vendors as well as with cost-effective, yet successful marketing strategies. It is a marketing manager’s job to analyse KPIs and monitor the competition. The findings are then reported to the company’s most senior players.

Responsibilities

• Customer Relationship Management
• Marketing Strategy Development
• Analytics/Performance Tracking
• Vendor/Agency Management
• Compliance and Regulation
• Product Management
• Competitive Analysis
• Brand Management
• Campaign Planning
• Public Relations

Different types of Marketing Managers

• Influencer Marketing Manager
• Marketing Analytics Manager
• Content Marketing Manager
• Digital Marketing Manager
• Trade Marketing Manager

Salary

UK-based marketing managers earn between £39,800 and £59,000 per year. Besides the work performance, the employer, the company size, and the location can affect the annual salary of a marketing manager. Note that the location can have the biggest and least beneficial effect on a marketing manager’s salary, especially, when you are looking to work in Wales or Scotland.

Working hours

The typical working hours of a marketing manager are 35 to 40 hours a week. A marketing manager usually works the normal office hours, from 9 a.m. to 5 a.m., Monday through Friday. These average working hours can be affected by overtime and travelling. Both things can be common for the job of a marketing manager. They typically mean an increase in the weekly working hours. Note that this is not a weekly recurrence but only happens during busy times or when meetings with (inter-)national clients are necessary.

Employers

Marketing managers in the UK can find employment in any company that has a marketing department. Before applying, you should define which company size and which sector might be the right fit for you. If you are more comfortable with small companies, startups and small businesses are the right choice for you. You should also make sure that their brand, their company ethos, and their company vision comply with your own views and standards.

Qualifications

There are two most common ways to become a marketing manager: earning an academic degree or completing an apprenticeship. Note that these two approaches are connected to GCSEs and A Levels and the appropriate grades. These certifications are a requirement to enrol in a university course or start an apprenticeship.

A marketing manager should also look into further qualifications and certifications. These are listed with the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

Skills

As a marketing manager, you should have strong leadership skills. After all, you are in charge of a team of marketing experts who rely on your decisions and expertise. As a marketing manager, you should also be very creative so you can come up with innovative and exciting marketing strategies. What other skills a marketing manager ideally should have? You will find out in this section.

Conflict Resolution Skills

As a marketing manager, you work with your team, clients, superiors, and stakeholders. And it is a fact universally proven that emotions can reach a boiling point when at least two people with different opinions clash. This can happen in your team as well as in your dealings with clients, superiors, and stakeholders. As a marketing manager, you need strong conflict resolution skills, coupled with diplomatic skills and emotional intelligence. This way, you find quick ways out of these emotional cul-de-sacs.

Communication Skills

All your conflict resolution skills are pretty much null and void if you do not also have strong communication skills, both verbal and non-verbal. Only by knowing how to express yourself in any given situation will you be able to successfully get through the said situation – this, by the way, also goes for meetings that are not likely to go in the wrong direction. Non-verbal communication skills are equally important. They enable you to read people by closely looking at their facial expressions and gestures.

Negotiation Skills

When you deal with clients, suppliers, and vendors, you should have strong negotiation skills. They help you to secure the most beneficial deals for your company, ideally, at the best possible prices. This consequently means that you will likely always stay within a projected budget for an upcoming marketing campaign and strategy. Naturally, securing the best deals also means a higher cost-efficiency for your company.

Career Path

Since you already work as a marketing manager, your career path only has a few more steps till you reach the top. More senior positions are the job of a marketing director and the Chief Marketing Officer/CMO. Within the job of a marketing director, you have the option to be the Head of Marketing, Director of Media, or Director of Advertising, to name but a few.

Educational Background

You can become a future marketing manager by earning an academic degree, for example, in business, marketing, advertising, or even psychology. You also have the option to complete an apprenticeship. Typically, this is an advanced, a higher, or a degree apprenticeship you do as a marketing assistant, a marketing executive, or a marketing manager.

Both approaches have their benefits. Lots of employers prefer candidates with a Bachelor’s degree or a Master’s degree since it implies that you have an in-depth theoretical knowledge of the marketing field. Also, an academic degree comes with a certain prestige that lots of employers seek for their companies. On the other hand, an apprenticeship gives you the first work experience as a future marketing manager which is maybe even more important than a degree.

Gaining Experience

As a future marketing manager, you have gained your first experience in an entry-level position, for instance, as a junior marketing manager or a marketing assistant. Typically, you can get promoted with five to seven years of prior work experience. Once promoted to the position of marketing manager, you can think about specialising in a marketing-related field, such as digital marketing, a brand manager, or a social media manager.

Continuous Learning

Every step on your career path involves and revolves around continuous learning. Stop learning and your promotion to marketing manager and even more senior positions is unlikely to happen. The field you have chosen is prone to changes, developments, and the rise of new technologies. They need to be explored and taken on board since they will help you thrive as a marketing manager. And how else will you know about these things if you do not continuously learn? Therefore, continuous learning is an important part of your career as a marketing manager.

A Day in the Life of a Marketing Manager

If you are already working in the marketing sector, you may already have an idea of the daily tasks performed by marketing experts. Needless to say, checking your to-do list and your various inboxes is only one part of a marketing-related working day. But does being a marketing manager involve the same things? Or does a day in the life of a marketing manager greatly differ from more junior marketing positions? Let’s find out and take a look at three typical tasks in the day of a marketing manager.

Campaign Planning and Launching

As a marketing manager, you and your team are responsible for successful marketing campaigns and strategies. Ideally, these campaigns and strategies are lightyears ahead of your competition’s campaigns and strategies. Thorough prior planning is, therefore, necessary to make the launch and everything that comes after a success. Campaign planning and launching are two important parts of your day as a marketing manager.

Liaising with Senior Management

After a campaign has been live for a certain time, you can read its performance by analysing the relevant data, such as the KPIs (key performance indicators). Based on your findings, you can adjust these campaigns and take your insight on board when planning your next marketing campaign. But this is not all you need these data for. You will also have to present them to the senior management and possibly even your company’s stakeholders. Therefore, liaising with these people is another part of your day as a marketing manager.

Attending Networking Events

Attending networking events might not be a daily occurrence in a marketing manager’s job, but showing your face at these events will happen from time to time. Let’s assume your day as a marketing manager has just such an event pencilled in. In this case, the event can be at any given time in the day, but most probably in the evening. So, after you have completed your day’s tasks as a marketing manager, it is now time to put on your glad rags and mingle with other important people in the marketing business.

Marketing is one of the Oldest Jobs in the World

Did you know that by being a marketing manager you continue one of the oldest jobs in the world? Yes, that is right! The first successful marketing campaigns date back to the year 2500 BC. The ancient Egyptians launched a first beer campaign. This proved to be such a success, that marketing has been part of our lives ever since.

Tips for Thriving as a Marketing Manager

As a marketing manager, you should continue to learn and improve. Therefore, having vital tips for thriving as a marketing manager is very helpful. Let’s take a look at a few tips that help you thrive as a marketing manager:

• Trend awareness
• Multi-channel approach
• Monitoring the competition

Trend Awareness

Even if you are not already working in marketing, you are probably aware of the fact that new trends appear almost daily. You only need to look on Instagram or TikTok to know what is hot and what is not. As a marketing manager, you need to be even more aware of these trends. After all, they might affect your marketing strategies and, in turn, your customers. A strong trend awareness is therefore mandatory when you want to thrive as a marketing manager.

Multi-Channel Approach

Since we have already mentioned Instagram and TikTok, we will linger with social media platforms a bit longer. Our second tip to thrive as a marketing manager involves the so-called multi-channel approach and includes the most popular social media platforms. When you plan a campaign, it ideally should be launched on multiple channels. Therefore, it should also be developed to fit these channels. Nowadays, it does not suffice to upload an interesting blog about a new product. You need to broadcast it on every channel that is beneficial to your product and pretty much guarantees its success.

Monitoring the Competition

You have adhered to tips numbers 1 and 2? Then, you also need to keep our third tip for thriving as a marketing manager in mind: monitoring the competition. It is all well and good to present your product to a wide audience on multiple channels. However, you should also know what your competition is up to. Has it created something similar? If so, which channels does your competition use to reach as many potential customers as possible? And is there anything you can maybe pinch for your future campaigns and strategies? There is only one way to find out – you need to monitor your competition very closely.

Frequently Asked Questions