Marketing Manager

1. What is a Marketing Manager?

A marketing manager is someone who manages the marketing of a business or product. They
can be responsible for several services or products, or be in charge of a single product. A
marketing manager needs to have an outgoing, gregarious, and spontaneous nature. In concert
with these traits, they need to be highly focused, detail-oriented, and very conscientious of
meeting budget restraints and timelines.

2. Professional Background:
What qualifications are required to be a marketing manager?
Education
Most companies expect their marketing managers to have at least a bachelor's degree. Many
businesses, however, will make exceptions if candidates have enough relevant experience.
Some companies expect employees in managerial positions to have a master's degree in a
related field as well. Applicants with the following degree fields have the highest likelihood
of receiving an interview for this type of position:
 Marketing
 Communications
 Public relations
 Accounting and finance
 Business management
Most marketing managers have previous job-related training, which means qualified
candidates might originate from other degree fields like Journalism or Graphic Design. Most
marketing managers will also receive on-the-job training to introduce them to different
vendors and software tools for campaign promotion and evaluation.
Experience
While education is certainly an important factor in a marketing manager's qualifications,
experience often outweighs a degree during the hiring process. In fact, 49 percent of
marketing managers have at least 10 years of experience, and 28 percent have more than 20
years of experience within the industry. On the low end, 12 percent of marketing managers
have less than five years of experience, and only 4 percent have less than two years in the
field.
This data indicates that inexperienced candidates will have more success in lower-level
positions, such as a marketing coordinator or specialist role, before they reach the managerial
level. However, small businesses and younger companies are often more flexible with
requirements and promotions than large businesses are.
Skills
What sets a marketing manager apart from a coordinator or assistant is his or her skill set.
With the rise of digital marketing, these skills have changed dramatically in the past decade.
Here are a few of the skills every marketing manager needs to succeed:
Traditional marketing skills
 Writing and communication - Marketing managers need to write press releases,
blogs, and advertising copy.
 Creativity - Many companies value creative thinking to build new campaigns with
unique hooks.
 Negotiation - Media buying requires negotiating with vendors for a better price or
placement.
 Budgeting - Marketing managers must stick to a budget and prioritize allocation
across multiple channels.
 Planning and execution - Long term planning and follow through is crucial to
launching marketing strategies on time.
Digital marketing skills
 Search engine optimization - Marketing managers should know how to optimize the
company's web presence on Google and Bing.
 Analytics certification - Knowledge of Google Analytics and Coremetrics provides
daily and monthly progress reporting.
 Social media - Marketing requires staying up-to-date on social media platforms and
analyzing new trends.
 Paid search platforms - Most companies use Google AdWords and Bing Ads to
promote their brand on a digital platform.
 Website optimization - Identifying website problems can boost company revenue
and increase customer satisfaction.
Office skills
 Time management - With multiple channels to manage, marketing managers need to
decide how much time to spend working on each one.
 Office programs - Familiarization with Microsoft Office and Google Docs will be
important in day-to-day tasks.
  Attention to detail - Marketers communicate with customers. Without attention to
detail the company looks sloppy and unprofessional.
 Calmness under pressure - Marketing can be a high-pressure environment with tight
deadlines, so marketing managers need the ability to perform under pressure.
Training
On-the-job training is complemented by professional marketing qualifications. There are a
number of options available through:

i. The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM)

ii. The Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM)
iii. The Institute of Sales and Marketing Management (ISMM)
iv. The Communication Advertising and Marketing Education Foundation (CAM
Foundation).

These range from introductory certificates to advanced level qualifications. Entry

requirements for the different levels vary depending on business experience and academic
ability.

Marketing managers may be encouraged to work towards the CIM Professional Postgraduate
Diploma in Marketing (DipM), which is recognised internationally. A list of all the CIM
approved colleges and universities, including entry requirements, is published on the CIM
website.

To become a CIM student, candidates need to become a CIM Affiliate Member. This
provides a range of benefits and study support. Qualifications can be studied full time, part
time, by distance learning or through online tutorials. There is also the option to undertake an
intensive study programme.

3. Communication Skills towards Upper and Lower Management:

A good project manager can save time, money, and help keep a project in line and on time.
By comparison, a marketing manager tends to be more of a creative director and client
representative – he or she will oversee campaigns and marketing initiatives while
communicating with clients to ensure the best possible results. Thus, we can see project and
marketing management as being two distinct roles with two distinct skill sets.
If you wish to transform the marketing department into one that is as efficient and effective as
it is creative and communicative, it pays to learn a thing or two from the project management
side of the business. Project managers tend to be disciplined and logical; they are always
thinking in terms of how to more efficiently and effectively complete a task or implement a
project. It’s a set of skills that can be valuable to an organization.

Leveraging Project Management Skills to Your Advantage

On any marketing team, the ideal scenario would be to have both a project and marketing
manager. In fact, we’ve advocated for having a professional project manager on your team
before. But, say you don’t have a project manager or the means to hire one currently. Or,
perhaps you want to incorporate some of the abilities and skills of your project manager into
your management style. These tips can help you better understand and embrace some of the
more unique roles of a traditional project manager – and in the process, become a better
marketing manager.

1. Employee Recruitment
Being able to identify and recruit quality employees is a crucial requirement for any leader.
This is no less true for marketing managers than it is project managers. Whereas a project
manager may need to hire individuals to fill certain gaps in the workforce, marketing
managers should always be mindful of complementing and supplementing their creativity
with outside voices. Left to his or her own devices, a marketing manager can guide a
department in a single direction that is homogenized and static. Fresh talent can inject a
department with the dose of creativity that it needs to implement successful campaigns.

2. Task Delineation
Project managers know that they can’t do it all. A good manager is able to delegate tasks to
other people. If you want to be an effective marketing manager, you need to realize that client
communication and campaign conception cannot be the responsibility of you alone. You need
to assume responsibility for scheduling and assigning employees to projects and roles, while
enforcing the policies and procedures of your business. You may have entered the marketing
profession because of the creativity it affords you, but it’s important to remember that a good
manager does the dull along with the stimulating. Without a team, there is no management
position. If your first instinct is simply to do it yourself, take a step back and think. If you
have people on your team that you oversee, why not have them do it for you?

3. Mentorship and Leadership

As a marketing manager, you must remember that you cannot lose yourself in your
campaigns. A graphic designer may be able to lose him or herself in Adobe Illustrator or
Photoshop, and your developers may be able to dive neck-deep into code all day long, but as
a manager, you must lead your team. They will be looking to you for guidance, answers,
opinions, direction, and mentorship. It may be hard to turn off the side of your brain that
simply wants to focus on the creative side of marketing, but as a manager, your obligations
extend beyond the client. Take a cue out of the project manager’s playbook and ingratiate
yourself with your team.

4. Project Implementation
A project manager will leverage his or her experience in workflow, production, quality
assurance, and scheduling to see projects through to their completion in an efficient manner.
Marketing managers tend to have a less regimented approach to their responsibilities; they
utilize their skills to calculate strategic plans of action and implement them accordingly, but
there is often a heavy focus on idea conception, brainstorming, and back-and-forth
communication. If you want to succeed as a marketing manager, it isn’t enough for you to
conceptualize an idea for a campaign. You must be able to execute that campaign as well.
Use the team you have at your disposal to bring your ideas to fruition – they won’t be able to
accomplish what you’ve set out to accomplish unless you provide them with guidance and
direction. Approach a marketing campaign or client relationship with the same diligence that
a project manager approaches a particular project or goal.

5. Risk Assessment and Management

As a marketing manager, you likely have direct contact with clients (or stakeholders, in the
event you work internally). Though there are definite advantages to forming close
relationships with the decision-makers (it helps foster business, for one), it also presents risks
– if something should go awry, you’re the first line of defense, which means you leave
yourself vulnerable. Clients and executives alike expect campaigns to be executed smoothly
and without mistakes. If a campaign goes unexpectedly fails due to some oversight that you
neglected to take into consideration, it is you who ultimately will be held responsible. You
must be able to assess and manage risks. And this is true not just from a project
implementation standpoint, but on the whole. Risk management in the marketing world starts
at idea conception. If you aren’t factoring in potential risks – which in marketing, can be
legal, cultural, or even logistical in nature – you can’t effectively manage a marketing
campaign.
4. What can you expect from a marketing manager job?
The marketing manager job description varies by company and industry, however, most need
to oversee the multiple communication channels they use to promote the business. When
asked, "what do marketing managers do on a daily basis?" there are a few common
responsibilities that most of these positions share:

i. Creating promotional messages and themes to drive business

ii. Coordinating marketing strategies across multiple channels
iii. Managing budgets for media and marketing campaigns
iv. Testing new marketing messages, channels, and opportunities
v. Building relationships with national and local media outlets
vi. Directing the company's social media strategy
vii. Evaluating the performance of campaigns and troubleshooting those that
underperform
viii. Monitoring and improving the website and digital presence through SEO
ix. Managing third-party vendors and in-house employees
x. Working with the customer service department to address problems
xi. Brainstorming ways to promote new products or initiatives
xii. Educating employees and other departments about industry marketing trends
xiii. Listening to customer feedback from customer service reps and social media
platforms
xiv. Analyzing advertising return and reporting findings to upper management
5. How to Evaluate Your Product Marketing Manager

So how do you evaluate that Product Marketing Manager’s performance? It’s often
measured by the number of leads that person generates. But this system of measurement
can be faulty.
First, if a lead constitutes a response from a marketing e-mail or direct mail campaign,
how much does it say about the performance of the Product Marketing Manager? Second,
generating a large number of leads does not mean that a large number of deals will be
closed. As such, is that a true predictor of your Product Marketing Manager’s impact?
And lastly, even the definition of a lead seems to be inconsistent among sales
professionals.

So, if lead generation is not the best measure of a Product Marketing Manager’s
performance, how else should he/she be evaluated?

The short answer is that Product Marketing Managers should not be evaluated on
individual deals. Too many other factors exist that can better describe their contributions
to the overall success of their products in the market. According to David Daniels of
Pragmatic Marketing, one way to measure performance is to look at outcomes or the
revenues generated from those leads.

In his blog post, Daniels describes some other practical ways to evaluate Product
Marketing Managers’ performance. Here are a few of his suggestions:

Are They Experts on Your Buyers?

Companies often have plenty of employees who are product experts. But what about
buyer experts? One way to evaluate your Product Marketing Managers is to ask them to
fill the role of expert on your buyers. Outcomes are sometimes directly linked to buyer
expertise. Because Product Marketing Managers don’t interact much with real buyers in
the market, encourage them to interact with potential buyers to find out more about them.

To do that, set a quota that requires them to interact with potential buyers and write
reports on what they learn. You can start with eight to 10 interactions per quarter and
gradually increase that number as the Product Marketing Manager becomes more
comfortable with the process. Keep in mind that “interactions” shouldn’t be conducted as
part of sales calls.
Product Marketing Managers who are able to do this well will not only acquire a better
grasp of their buyers’ mindsets, they’ll also learn firsthand those buyers’ purchase
behaviors and what they’re looking for in products.

Can They Identify Correct Bottlenecks?

One great way to evaluate Product Marketing Managers is to judge how well they’re able
to analyze deals. They should be able to pinpoint where they might be struggling and
determine how they can correct any blockages in the sales funnel. Rather than over-
analyzing a single deal, a good Product Marketing Manager can recognize patterns over a
series of deals and draw conclusions from them.

Removing such bottlenecks is critical to improving sales throughout, and increasing the
volume of deals your sales team can deliver. Mastering this quality will have a stronger,
longer-term impact on sales.

Do They Take Ownership of Win/Loss Analysis?

A good Product Marketing Manager is one that can classify win/loss patterns and devise
recommendations that result in dramatic revenue growths. Successfully taking ownership
of this process will require Product Marketing Managers to collaborate with Product
Managers. This relationship will lead to exchanging insight from both perspectives,
which is an important step in any company’s long-term success.

The key is to not to measure your Product Marketing Managers based simply on lead
generation. This evaluation is too simplistic and sometimes unrelated to a person’s real
contribution to the company.

Keep in mind the things you really want your Product Marketing Manager to accomplish
relative to product positioning, and evaluate them on their performances in those
categories. As you better understand your Product Marketing Manager’s performance,
you’ll be able to better direct and organize his/her responsibilities. This will lead to better
product positioning and ultimately a growth strategy based on competitive advantage.

6. Work Management
These creative individuals are responsible for the planned and unplanned images of their
employer. Planned images may include print or video advertisements, public speaking
engagements, endorsements, and printed literature. Unplanned images can occur when
one of the company’s representatives misspeaks in public, thus requiring immediate
damage control, or when the company is attacked by an outside force such as when
someone tampers with the company’s products after they leave production, or a fault in
the product that isn’t recognized until well after the product has been in circulation.

Skilled marketing managers deflect the unauthorized comments and reassure the public
that the company is doing all that it can to investigate and correct the product line.
Through carefully worded statements and advertisements, marketing managers soothe the
publics fear and outrage, ensuring that the company’s reputation survives such mishaps.

Marketing managers work with other team members to create both simple and complex
advertising campaigns. They may also negotiate the contracts for the various forms of
advertising after forming a marketing budget. They will work with team members to
determine the best and most creative ways to advertise the company’s products or
services. They may be required to present these ideas to the company and to the final
client in order to gain approval for implementation.

Marketing managers also determine the marketability of a new product or service. They
test out the level of public interest for a new product or service. They also determine, in
concert with other team members, pricing and product placement. They look for new
markets that may require the company’s products or services. Marketing managers
perform the complex product research, including a thorough knowledge of the product’s
strengths and weaknesses, prior to introducing the product to non-traditional
marketplaces.
6.1 What is the workplace of a Marketing Manager like?
Much of the work in this field can be accomplished in an office setting. Product research,
consumer purchasing trends, and new market analysis require both highly developed
computer skills and strong interpersonal skills in order to determine a product’s viability.

Many marketing managers travel to meet with clients, work with production teams to
fine-tune products, and take informal man-on-the-street polls regarding the clients
product or service. Additionally, marketing managers travel to meet with prospective
media outlets such as video production companies, print production companies, and
public speaking venues, as appropriate.

Because marketing is a cutthroat field, marketing managers who take continuing

education courses, read current white papers, and enhance their digital skills will find
themselves head and shoulders above their competition.