This series explores the wide range of marketing career paths available to help you decide your best fit. Let’s kick off by understanding the role of a marketing executive.
What is a Marketing Executive?
A marketing executive (or exec for short) is an all-rounder and supports the marketing manager to help shape and deliver marketing plans. Marketing executives see the entire end-to-end marketing process from understanding and interpreting audience insights, turning data into campaign plans and executing creative content and tactics to reach the desired audience. This is what we call a generalist marketing role and provides a wide range of opportunities for a future career in marketing.
What are the primary responsibilities of a marketing executive?
Marketing executives usually sit within a broader marketing team and are hands-on in gaining practical experience in the world of marketing. This could include anything from helping to shape research and audience insights to planning digital marketing campaigns and creative briefing to produce the content required to facilitate a campaign. Some of the responsibilities of a marketing executive include:
- Generating customer insights to inform marketing planning
- Planning and delivering tactical marketing campaigns against the SMART objectives
- Executing digital marketing plans to reach the desired customer
- Content marketing and creative development
- Event management
- Data analysis
- Measuring the effectiveness of campaigns in-flight and post-campaign
What skills do I require to be a successful marketing exec?
The marketing executive role requires individuals to have a flurry of different skills to succeed in the position, including creativity, analytical thinking and the ability to step back and see the bigger picture. Alongside this, it is essential to develop the following skills that will set a good foundation for marketing:
- Good communication skills (verbal and written)
- Relationship building and stakeholder management
- Organisational skills
- Project management skills
- Proactive
- Curiosity into the world of marketing and innovation
- An understanding of the marketing process and channel mix
What career opportunities are available to me?
The great thing about becoming a marketing executive is that all businesses need this role. So there are endless opportunities for marketing executives across large business-to-consumer (B2C) organisations (think Netflix, Boots, Natwest) or large business-to-business (B2B) companies such as PwC or Salesforce).
If a large company isn’t what you’re looking for, then opt for a smaller company. They can offer great opportunities and provide more hands-on experience across the entire business if you are keen to learn about how different functions contribute to the company’s success.
Where could this role lead in the future?
A typical career path for a marketing executive would be to progress to a senior executive or marketing manager position with a greater focus on marketing strategy and campaign management. However, there could be opportunities at this level for people management experience (company depending). If continuing down a traditional marketing path, this could lead to Head of Marketing roles in the future.
How do I become a marketing executive?
To become a marketing executive, individuals can work their way up from marketing assistant to an executive in a company or study to achieve a qualification. But have you considered enrolling in a marketing apprenticeship to earn while you learn? We’ve recently launched our Level 4 Marketing Executive Apprenticeship, which will equip you with all the skills and knowledge to become a successful marketing executive and learn on the job simultaneously.
