Analysis of the Marketing Manager Profession: Trends and Skills

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the marketing manager profession. It begins with an introduction to the role and its career prospects, emphasizing the growth opportunities within the field. The main body delves into current marketing trends, such as increasing consumer purchase complexity, personalization, and the impact of digital communication. It also outlines the crucial skills, knowledge, and experience needed for success, including communication, analytical, creative, and numerical skills, as well as commercial awareness and product knowledge. The report then evaluates a specific job vacancy for a Social Media Executive at Marks & Spencer, aligning the author's skills and interests with the retail sector. The conclusion summarizes the importance of skill development and its impact on career advancement in the marketing field. The report references various academic sources and provides an appendix with a job vacancy advertisement.

REPORT
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................4
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INTRODUCTION
The chosen profession is the marketing manager. Marketing management is providing a very
great very opportunity to current graduates to build their career and develop accordingly. There
are many job opportunities available under this profession which is even a highly paid one. There
is a very high growth opportunity available for an individual who chooses to build their career in
this profession (Schnaidman, 2020). The advantage of going into this profession as a career
opportunity are diverse career, availability of wide range of opportunities, rewarding career and
strong professional network. In this report, the profession of marketing manager will be
evaluated by analysing the general trends prevailing in the marketing industry which can have an
impact over the required knowledge and skills to perform the job under this profession. Also,
many personal skills and areas of knowledge or expertise required for the role of marketing
management will be discussed in this report.
MAIN BODY
ANALYSIS AND APPLICATION
General trends affecting the profession of marketing manager
 Increasing complexity in purchasing decisions made by consumers: The decision made
by consumer regarding their purchase which indicates their buying behaviour has become
ever changing. Therefore it has become harder for marketing manager to determine
which group of customer will choose which product and accordingly segmentation has
become complex (Kumar and Kumar, 2018). The decision of customers are highly
affected by various digital media which has results in buying behaviour of customers to a
large extent. So, an individual who wants to build their career in this profession must
have the capability to understand the customer’s behaviour and changing marketing tools.
 High level of personalisation: Personalisation can be seen two ways, one is when the
products are produced and the other is when the products are offered to the final
consumers. There is high level of customisation in the product design in the market
depending upon the need of different group of customers. Also, when products are
offered, there is a trend of offering products to customers in a personalised way by
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communicating to them the description of the product in a personalised manner (Bathie,
2019). Such trends can affect the profession of marketing manager in a way that he must
need excellent skills such as communication and presentation skills to persuade
customers in a better way. Then only one can succeed in their marketing career.
 Communication through mobile and other digital devices are becoming more popular due
to technological advancement in the marketing industry.
 Competition among companies in the market has increased very much due to
globalisation of economies and due to which the skills set required for marketing
profession has changed (Vassileva, 2017). There are some additional skills that are
needed for marketing profession in a globalised economy such as information literacy,
research and inquiry, ethical and social understanding, understanding of different
language and cultural aspects and beliefs.
Skills, Knowledge and experience required for marketing management
Skills
Communication skills: A clear communication must be in place to promote brand’s product &
services for marketing successfully and reaping its benefits. Also a marketing manager needs to
communicate on a daily basis with their colleagues and clients which makes it most important to
for an individual to have exceptional and effective communication skills.
Analytical skills: To assess factors such as traffic results, statistics, conversion rates and market
trends which are critical to the success of marketing campaign can only be possible if a
marketing manager possesses good analytical skills (Peñalba-Aguirrezabalaga, Sáenz and Ritala,
2020).
Creative skills: Such skills are needed for creating marketing campaign to address large segment
of audience and influence them towards the company’s brand. For this, marketing professionals
need to have an extraordinary or out-of-the-box ideas to create positive brand image and
accordingly boost the sales of the company.
Ability to influence: A good marketer must have an ability to convince their target audience to
buy the brand’s products (Kaufman, Cartwright and Gore, 2019). Therefore it is crucial to be
succeed in the marketing profession to persuade and accordingly attract customers towards the
company’s brand.
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Numerical skills: To analyse quantitative data of marketing research, statistics of marketing
campaign and trends in the sales of the company, there is need for marketing manager to have an
excellent numeracy skills to appropriately analyse data and can valid conclusions out of it to
make better marketing decisions.
Knowledge
Commercial awareness: Marketing manager need to have an understanding of how competitors
are carrying out their functions to attract their target audience and how it is affecting their
profitability and market share accordingly (Gilmore and et.al., 2020).
Methods of offering products and services: Marketing manager need to have knowledge of
various techniques and tools available in the market towards carrying out the marketing function
of the company. There are various emerging techniques used for marketing such as digital media
and virtual reality tools which helps in marketing products in an easier way and also a result
oriented way.
Experience
Degree courses: To build better career in marketing profession, there are many diplomatic and
bachelor degree course available which can be availed by marketing manager to have better
experience of marketing in different ways such as public relations, management, consumer
behaviour, etc., (Peñalba-Aguirrezabalaga, Sáenz and Ritala, 2020).
Work experience: When an individual completed three to five years in marketing profession,
then it builds their experience of marketing in a great way. They have better knowledge of
consumer’s behaviour and how maintain better public relations to influence their interest towards
the product & services of the brands.
Evaluation
From the analysis it has been identified that there is vacancy of social media executive in
Mark and Spencer, London, United Kingdom. Marks and spencer is an organization operating in
retail sector of UK to delivered products from home-care, personal care to financial services so
that wants of customers can be fulfilled in the best possible manner. Company have started its
operation in 1884 and currently having around 959 stores across UK among them 615 only sell
food products. The job of social media executive marketing manager is of my interests because I
like to connect with range of people through social media platform. As it is one of the easiest
method to connect and build strong relationship with customers that are residing in different
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parts of the world (M&S Marketing, 2021). Moreover, I have good digital and interpersonal
skills that has motivated me to be a part big organization such as marks and Spencer in order to
make optimum use of my existing skills and capabilities. So my interest in social media
marketing is major reason to pursue career or apply for the vacancy to get higher growth and
success in future circumstances.
Furthermore, it can be stated that this job is related to my choice of industry that is retail
because it is one of the growing industry of UK that have contributed in generating lot of
employment opportunities. Likewise, the retail sector has consistently added 5% to Gross value
added in UK, generated around £403 bn retail sales in 2020. Among which ASDA, Sainsbury,
Marks and spencer and Tesco are the largest companies that are performing their different
functions within organization. At the same time it is related to my choice of profession because I
like to market or promote products and services through building strong relationship with
customers. So that they are motivated to be part of specific organization as compared to other
firm working in retail sector. As per my perspective it can be stated that I prefer this job
opportunities needs to be considered by others because with development in technology and
impact of covid-19, companies are making use of digital technology . So, they required
employees or individual that have capabilities to make the best use of social media platform to
inform and connect with range of individual present in society (Grewal and et.al., 2020.).
In addition to this, it can be stated that the role of social media executive is future proofed
because in future circumstances also company will require people that have capabilities to
connect with people through making use of new technology. Such as social media platform or e-
mail marketing in order to growth and expand their business operation to maximum extend.
Therefore, I have decided to pursue my career as marketing manager in Marks and Spencer for
getting higher growth in future circumstances through making optimum use of my existing skills
and capabilities (Hanson and Kalyanam, 2020).
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that skill development is one of the most
important process towards enhancing career development and growth and that the report has
helped in understanding the role of marketing in the firm and how it helps company in creating
its strong brand image in mind and hearts of customers. The report has also highlighted emerging
trends of the marketing profession which is affecting the skills and knowledge to build career in
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this particular profession. Also, the discussion pertaining to skills, knowledge and experience
required to obtain job in marketing profession has been done in this report to get deeper insight
of how career can be built in this profession.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Hanson, W. A. and Kalyanam, K., 2020. Internet marketing and e-commerce.(Student ed.).
Thomson/South-Western.
Grewal, D and et.al., 2020. The future of technology and marketing: A multidisciplinary
perspective.
Schnaidman, M., 2020. Who said you can't change the world?: Building a career with purpose.
Figurati.
Kumar, M. S. and Kumar, M. A., 2018. Analysis of transformation and usability of it
infrastructure in marketing management. International Journal of Advanced
Technology & Engineering Research (IJATER)(NCRTSTM-2018), 1, pp.70-74.
Bathie, D., 2019. Marketing: the limits of professionalism. In Professions at Bay (pp. 183-194).
Routledge.
Vassileva, B., 2017. Marketing 4.0: How technologies transform marketing organization. Óbuda
university e-Bulletin, 7(1), p.47.
Peñalba-Aguirrezabalaga, C., Sáenz, J. and Ritala, P., 2020. Marketing-specific intellectual
capital: conceptualization, scale development and empirical illustration. Journal of
Intellectual Capital.
Kaufman, P., Cartwright, D. K. and Gore, K. W., 2019. The Role of Competency Based
Education in Higher Education: The Process of Tuning the Marketing
Discipline. Business Education Innovation Journal, 11(1).
Gilmore, A., and et.al., 2020. Four questions of entrepreneurial marketing education:
Perspectives of university educators. Journal of Business Research, 113, pp.189-197.
Online
M&S Marketing, 2021, [Online]. Available Through : <https://uk.indeed.com/M&S-Marketing-
jobs>.
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APPENDIX
Vacancy for post of Social media executive in Marks and spencer
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