What About a Career in Marketing?

Find a career in marketing either for a marketing company or within a marketing department for a specific industry.

As a new member of the Chameleon team, I wanted to write something that would have been useful and reassuring for me when I was looking for a career fresh out of university. I came into a career in marketing with no understanding of the technical world. But with an open mind and a willingness to learn. My first few weeks at Chameleon taught me more than I could have imagined about marketing and web design. So, have you thought about a career in marketing?

Where Your Skills Can Take You…

Coming from a background in English Literature and Creative Writing, I was keen to step into an industry that allowed me to use my creativity. I was applying for extremely competitive positions in publishing and editing with very little experience and I had no luck. I never really saw a career in marketing as a possibility, but I knew I already had the skills required for content writing.

What’s great about marketing is the variety of work it can cover. I can spend a morning writing content for a website, advertising an estate agents, then the afternoon I can spend optimising a manufacturer’s website with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). The rest of the day I could be working on the appearance of a food brand’s website. There’s always something interesting to be doing. With a line-up of content writing for a wide range of topics, comes lots of research. If you enjoy reading up on topics and industries, there will be lots of this too!

Why Marketing?

A career in marketing can be very rewarding as you get to see how your input into a client’s website can bring them more business. There is always something to be doing and so you wont be bored or stuck for work. You will learn through trial and error how to make a difference to a business will Google Analytics and all of their insights. This will tell you where you need to focus your efforts and how well an organisation is performing.

If you work in a Marketing company, you will have a wide variety of clients to work with, covering many types of organisations, so the content you produce will be diverse. However, there’s also marketing teams within specific industry sectors, so if you have a passion for a particular charity for example, you could take on a marketing role within this unique charity to work on their specific advertisements. It all depends on the variety you’re looking for.

You’ll be constantly learning. You can bring many transferable skills to a marketing position but you’ll always be learning new ones too. With access across multiple medias and socials, you can develop a varied skills set that will always be beneficial whatever marketing role you take on.

Collaborative and social, marketing is definitely an industry that brings people together. If you’ve got the communication skills, then maybe there’s a place in marketing for you. Interacting with a team as well as your clients means greater outcomes from your work.

Roles in Marketing

Writing alone can’t increase a company’s organic traffic though. With more of an understanding of SEO and the digital marketing world, you could touch base on all areas within a marketing role. There’s often something new to learn as the internet is always growing and introducing new things. Some roles in Marketing include:

• Marketing Consultant
• Web Developer
• Content Writer
• SEO Specialist
• Content Creator
• Digital Designer

You could specialise in one of these roles and also develop a knowledge in all areas of digital marketing.

Skills Required for a Career in Marketing

• Writing

If you’re good with words and can adapt your tone of voice to suit certain brands’ images, then content writing could be the perfect area for you. We always need writers in marketing to advertise and persuade potential customers to stay on a company’s website.

• A Critical Eye

Whether you’re analytical or have a creative eye, you can assess why a website’s design might not be attracting customers and have your input on the way pages read or visually appear. If you have any background in graphic design, illustration etc. then this is always beneficial.

• Knowledge of the Web  

Perhaps you understand the internet inside out and know how to navigate the back ends of the web? These skills are essential in web design and digital marketing but they’re also something that can be learnt on the job. You’d be the perfect candidate for a position on a web design team with these skills already to show. I am learning everything from scratch while I continue writing content so don’t let the internet intimidate you!

• Organisation

If you can prioritise your time and balance multiple projects at once, then a career in marketing should be something to consider. You will be working for multiple clients each month for different reasons. Optimising your time and making sure you give all clients the time they need is important, so having organisation skills is key for a career in marketing.

What Does a Day in Marketing Look Like?

The topics in which I cover as a Content Writer are endless as we work with a huge variety of clients and companies to bring them great websites. The support and collaboration of a marketing team means I can work with other members of the team on a particular job or simply receive help where I am less confident. So even though I started out content writing, I am constantly learning about the building of a website as I go.

My time in the Chameleon office can vary day to day. I could be taking a meeting with a client about their website’s progress, writing some content to upload for another, updating the SEO for one company, and keeping the back ends of websites ‘healthy’ so to optimise clients’ pages.

Digital marketing is necessary for any company’s success and targeting the right audiences. Digital marketing also has all the data and measurements for how well a website and advertisements are doing. How many people hopped onto this website today? How well do we rank on Google compared to others in this industry? Where are these potential customers coming from? All of these questions can be answered with an understanding of the work that goes on behind a company’s website. A day in marketing will cover a range of content, design, planning and collaborating.

The Chameleon Team

Check out the Chameleon team to see the different roles in marketing. If you are interested in working for Chameleon, we’d love to hear from you!