What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about marketing? Is it the hundreds of ads that flood your Instagram feed every week? Or the slick branding on an oat milk carton that convinces you to switch over to plant-based milk? Or the millions of influencers in sparkly pink cowboy boots calling the shots?
Some think of marketing as just another essential piece of running a modern business. Others refer to their recollection of what they’ve seen in hallmark movies; a glamorous, 20-something marketing exec that travels to foreign lands and samples luxurious products like wine or designer clothing. Does anyone watch Emily in Paris?
Well, even the marketers portrayed on television reflect an OG style of marketing. We think flashy billboard advertisements, stern boardroom meetings, guerilla marketing campaigns, and Nike commercials. Emily in Paris is really the first mainstream show that portrayed modern ‘tactics’ of social media marketing (cue her kind of cringe, kind of cute selfies). But even then I keep forgetting what it is she actually markets with her “North American perspective.”
What they’re really discussing in those board meetings will always remain a mystery. Unfortunately, marketing, like journalism, is frankly just another job the female lead tends to be typecast with. To show she is ‘somewhat’ intelligent with a tender, creative side that all females are supposed to have to attract the ultra alpha type male, right?
Lucky for you, being the basic bitch I am, I can shed some insight on both of these career choices, which I’ve partaken in. And I’m going to reveal how I became a marketer without going to school for marketing and having as much marketing experience as Emily has with speaking French. If you’re interested in pursuing a marketing career, this blog post was written for you. I hope, if anything it encourages you to pursue things you’re interested in that you feel are ‘out of your league.’ My experience has taught me there’s always a way ‘in’ even when it’s not obvious or linear. Buckle up!
Why Get into Marketing?
If you’re creative, you hate math unless it involves acquiring a cute pair of shoes, and you sometimes get in trouble for your unorthodox style of thinking, you might want to consider marketing. Marketing, is a liberating type of career because there’s not necessarily a handbook on how to do things. Marketing is all about experimentation and identifying patterns.
The ads you see on Facebook have been run through the algorithm and experimented rigorously through A/B testing before they appear before your eyes. A/B testing simply refers to testing a variation of creatives, copy, and placements on an audience, and whichever combination performs the best gets pushed out by the algorithm to YOU, the consumer. The worst-performing combos simply get eliminated. Sounds easy right? Not quite….
When you’re a media buyer (someone who manages ads on Facebook) you’re in charge of someone’s money and you have to ensure you’re not wasting too much of it before you get great results. This is why advertisers usually make a pretty decent living…starting you might make around $70,000 at a job. The last thing you want is for your client to be handed a bill at the end of the month from Facebook, with no tangible results to back it up.
Marketing is a marriage between creativity and structure. So if you’re not on the far end of being an artist or to the far right of being an accountant – marketing may be a path you want to consider.
Let me give you an example. I can’t paint a tree for the life of me, but I fucking love when beautiful things come together. Whether that’s a graphic design, a perfect photo, a website, or an article; I love seeing different components and skills come together to form something emotionally captivating. You won’t catch me in a museum admiring Picasso, but you can catch me in awe with a beautifully crafted website, or an article in the New York Times.
What Does Marketing Solve?
Your goal in marketing is simple. And don’t get distracted by the fluff. Truly great marketers generate a positive ROI for their customers. Though generating brand awareness is fantastic, you need to find a way to measure this. With the advance of technology, we’re in the unique position to have all the data available to us to make better decisions. You can “follow” someone digitally and put relevant information in front of them based on their unique preferences and past behavior.
Where a lot of junior marketers go wrong is they get too caught up in the superficial stuff. The beautification aspect. Let’s spend all the money in the world making this business “beautiful” instead of cash-positive. The reality is, you should be thinking in terms of how to generate more revenue and optimize the aesthetics as you go.
Example: Don’t start doing PR before you have a substantial amount of returning customers.
What’s the Difference between Marketing and Sales
Isn’t it the sales team’s job to bring in the bucks? Think of it this way: The sales and marketing team have to work as a pair. The sales team is more direct; they’re the ones talking to the actual purchasers of the business. So they’re either going out and getting the sale (outbound) or picking up the phone when someone is interested in buying (inbound). They close out transactions, and sit at the end of the buying process.
Marketers don’t necessarily talk to the customers. They provide the sales team with the necessary assets so that it’s easier to do their job. For example, the marketing team might be in charge of writing website content to educate the customer before they reach out to a sales rep ( 99% of people research before they buy these days). Marketing would be in charge of creating lead magnets and dispersing them to a potential customer through ads to land them on the website. Marketing does online nurturing; through email and social media to establish more trust with the prospect before they make the final decision. If your marketing is effective, sometimes there is no “sales” person to close off the deal. It goes directly from marketing into your bank account, predominantly for eCommerce businesses. This is why marketers are invaluable in any business – they generate the business more consistent cash flow if done correctly.
Types of Marketing
Demand Generation:
- Creating demand (brand awareness and buy-in) in the marketplace for your product.
- Things like ads, high-quality educational content (blogs, whitepapers), email funnels, and social media (ideally, a combo of these).
- Your purpose is to create high-quality leads for your business.
SEO:
- Search engine optimization
- Efforts to organically place your business on the top page of search engines like Google through a range of techniques that are favored by Google’s ranking algorithms.
- Your purpose is to organically increase website traffic and draw in high-quality leads to your business without paying for ads.
PPC:
- Pay-per-click marketing refers to any advertisement (social media/ Google/ Youtube) that charges you by the number of impressions or views of your ads.
- Your purpose is to raise awareness, drive traffic, and increase conversion of your business.
- Most of the time you can set a guaranteed range of impressions and target certain demographics to fit your ideal customer profile (ICP).
Email marketing:
- Efforts to nurture a subscribed audience through educational content or special promotions to help drive more conversions.
- Your purpose is to drive more conversions or upsell your existing audience.
Cold email outreach
- Efforts to bring new prospects to your business by targeting lists of people who are not yet aware of your business.
- Is more difficult, and not highly regarded by most email software tools, unless designed specifically for cold outreach
- Your purpose is to drive more leads to your business.
Social media:
- Efforts to nurture or engage existing and new audiences with content creation.
- Content creation includes graphics, videos (reels), text, and still images.
- Your purpose is to nurture your audience to create more conversions and to drive new leads to your business.
Advertising/ Paid media:
- Having ad placements in high-traffic and reputable media sources: Newspapers, magazines, radio, billboards, movies, television, and podcasts.
- Available in digital print.
- Your purpose is to drive more brand awareness and consideration.
Content marketing:
- Creating, publishing, and distributing content for a target audience.
- A combination of blogs, webinars, whitepapers, social media.
- Your purpose is to build authority, educate your audience, and enable them to consider your product.
Product Marketing:
- A subfield of marketing that covers the entire lifecycle of a product including prototyping/creation, product story, and launch plan, raising awareness, community engagement, and sales enablement.
- More common in technology.
- Your purpose is to ensure the overall success of a product in the marketplace.
Partner Marketing:
- Partnering up with an influential voice or agency (Another brand, influencer, or celebrity) to create demand and awareness for your business.
- This can also mean partnering with a PR firm to craft and disperse a specific brand narrative to the general public.
- Your purpose is to raise more brand awareness and drive more conversions for your business.
How Much Do Marketers Get Paid
There’s not a magical field that pays the most in marketing— generally, your pay grade depends on years of experience. Every niche in marketing is essential to driving more sales. The below numbers are based on my personal experience and statistics from online sources. I rounded up for consistency, so keep in mind the minimum and maximum numbers can be $1000 – $4000 up or down. Everything is in CAD and refers to the base salary before taxes or bonuses.
Entry position (1-2 years of experience):
$50,000 – $60,000/ cad year
Sample roles: Marketing coordinator, marketing specialist, email marketing specialist, social media coordinator.
Mid-senior position (3 – 6 years of experience)
$60,000 – $80,000/ cad year
Sample roles: Content manager, marketing manager, product manager, SEO Manager.
Senior position (8+ years of experience)
$80,000- $120,000/cad year
Sample roles: Director of Marketing, Head of Content, Head of Product.
Executive position (10-20 years of experience)
$130,000 – $200,000/ cad year
Sample role: Chief marketing officer
It’s completely tangible to move up to the six-figure mark, although, with a marketing career, it often takes time to prove your value and credibility.
1// Find a Path
I got into marketing through another primary skill: Writing. I was fanatic about writing quality content – whether that was for my journalism pursuits, blog, or even ‘boring’ SEO content. Because I was hired primarily for my content-creating expertise, my official title was Marketing Content Creator. I want to be very clear when I talk about content creation in this post, it has nothing to do with content creation on Instagram. In fact, social media is not my primary skill set.
My writing skills also helped me get into email marketing. Email marketing requires a bit of technical knowledge to set up, but it’s not so difficult to learn. I eventually became fairly comfortable with this skill set too, as well as prospect generation, and target audience formation. You have to get granular about your audience because, with a good list, you can truly do wonders.
Early on in your career, act like a sponge. Be extremely curious, especially about the things you don’t know. You won’t know what you like or what you’re good at until you’ve tried. For example, I’m so glad I learned the value of email marketing and cold outreach because I can observe in real time the effectiveness of it. And although SEO is not the hottest subject, it’s VERY useful to know for any business. A big chunk of our revenue has historically always come from direct and organic search. As for public relations, if I’m going to be totally honest, I thought I had gotten out of that industry for good! You can read more about my experience with PR here, but recently, I’ve revived this skill set and have seen record results. If I had just stayed in my content creation lane, I wouldn’t have discovered the value of these other disciplines in marketing. As my boss says, marketing is like a forest. The key is to identify which avenues are working the best and/or have the highest potential for ROI, and then work on fine-tuning them.
How to Get Started in Marketing:
Find something you’re already good at. Now you’re going to extend that hard skill into something that applies to marketing.
Writing→ Copywriting, SEO, content marketing
Drawing/art→ Graphic design, advertising
Photography/videography→ Content creation, Social media marketing
Event or project management→ marketing project management, activation/experiential marketing.
Sales→ demand generation, ads, public relations, influencer relations.
Coding→ Web design, technical project management, product management.
2// Get to Work
Now it’s the most important piece of the pie. It’s time to get to work cowboys and girls!
Fortunately, the inner university child never left me so I’m used to learning about a subject by taking courses or studying it. The easiest way to learn something is to put an actionable milestone at the end of the journey. Ta-da, that’s right a test.
If you just sign up for an online course with no sense of accountability – it’s easy to fall off track and get distracted. What I would do if possible, pay for a test beforehand. Then put your energy into studying for it. Deadlines are preferred because they force you to reorganize your priorities.
If you can’t teach someone else what you’ve learned, then your knowledge base is probably not strong enough. If you don’t want to bother a friend or partner, you can try recording yourself pretending to give a webinar or a lesson on some of the topics you’re trying to learn.
Studying is important but application is what makes it stick. When I was learning SEO or Facebook advertisement, the one fatal flaw was that I lacked real businesses to practice on. Therefore, for SEO, I started taking actual companies out there and making entire case studies on where they could improve their SEO. I took my observations and wrote blog posts on the top problems these types of companies faced and offered some solutions. Was it tough work? Yeah, imagine combing through other people’s work for hours and then coming up with your own topics and writing everything, optimizing it for SEO, and then editing. It was a long and painful process, and I even spent my weekends making social media posts to summarize the info.
When I was advised that starting a business would require a lot of free work, I never believed a word of it until I attempted my own. My days were filled with fear, self-doubt, and loneliness; but it forced me to expediate my learning in ways I wouldn’t necessarily have to at a job. This was about survival.
Eventually, I did start to get real interest from real businesses. But that’s a whole other story – the more you advance in this skill set, you realize that every company has its unique challenges based on what stage they’re in, and you HAVE to adapt in the beginning. It forces you to become proactive at identifying problems and finding clear solutions.
At times, will you feel like scratching your hair out? – Yes
Will you feel like giving up? – Yes
Will you feel like nothing you’re doing is working or moving in the right direction? Absolutely.
Even experts have a phase where they were awful at the skill they’re good at now. With consistency, time, and practice, you will begin to improve as a marketer. Will you know everything about marketing? Certainly not, but you’ll have a foundation to build on. That’s essential.
Do you have to be super passionate about marketing? I mean good for you if you are, but I certainly would not call marketing a passion. It’s just a skill that I see value in learning because its importance for any business. I’ll never be out of a job if I get really good, at even one aspect of marketing. So that’s my “why”. It has nothing to do with my warm and fuzzy feelings about marketing.
3// Act the Part
I pursued a career in marketing, starting as an independent consultant, then as a content creator, then moving up into management. I did this within the span of a year. But by no means are you restricted to getting a 9-5 to be a marketer. If you want to get into social media management, you can start your own account, find a niche, and start experimenting with content. If you don’t want to start your own account, you can reach out to your network and see if anyone is looking for an intern. Internships are a great way to get your foot in the door, and most businesses these days are looking for an affordable way to boost their social media presence. Whatever it is you decide to do, whether it’s content writing or graphic design, just start doing it. Regardless of whether there’s a client at the end of the line, start building your portfolio of work. With a solid portfolio, you can start pitching individuals, non-profits, and small companies. You have to be able to show what you’re capable of – hence, my previous point of “free work.” If you’re dedicated enough to the process, you will get better. Taking on those initial smaller clients, even when the money isn’t great, will prove to be an invaluable experience. You need to soak up this experience like a sponge and move quickly.
4// Get Lucky
Everyone is looking for that big break. Whether it’s hitting a certain number of followers, securing a great job, or closing a dream client. I wish I could wave a wand and tell you exactly when this moment would come. But the truth is, hustle as you may, but experience is only gained through time. It’s more important to stay humble and stay hungry. Always seek opportunities to level up your marketing skills. There’s no need to siphon yourself into a specific niche in the beginning. Being flexible is key to finding out what aspect of marketing you enjoy doing more, and which aspects you don’t enjoy. After a year or two, you’ll likely find out whether this path is for you. Again, I am not saying you need to have a deathly passion for marketing. All there needs to be is a slight eagerness to further your knowledge and to grow into a better marketer. As long as you don’t want to cry yourself to sleep every time you have to work on it, I’d say you’re good. Peruse as many articles or free guides on marketing as you can, but like any skill, you only get better when you apply what you learn in real life. And although the thought of not getting your ideal result, or “failing” is frightening, it’s one of those disciplines where it does require some trial and error.
If you’re persistent and intentional, eventually you will catch your first break. But it’s also important that while you’re relishing in your success, you have to keep moving forward. Never let yourself get complacent because stagnation is the death of a marketer’s journey. Regardless of how “good” you think you are, your environment is always changing and the failure to adapt with it will put you into a disadvantaged position. A marketer’s journey should resemble a feedback loop:
Final Words
The other day I was listening to a podcast of a prominent thought leader and debater. His whole life he dreamed of doing a very specific job, and he spent the majority of his life pursuing and doing practically just that. But due to reasons out of his control, that path was stripped from him dry and he had to pivot to his current career – (podcaster, public speaker, NY bestselling author). Although he’s doing quite spectacularly now, I think it’s especially worthwhile to note that sometimes you don’t choose your career, it chooses you.
Coming out of school, I was eager to get a job in politics or IR. I mean, I spent 4 years of my life studying the systems, so I thought it was only natural I pursued a career in the field I dedicated so much time to. Of course, life didn’t really work out for me that way. I applied and applied but never found any success. I ended up becoming a writer, an editor— then, a marketer. And today, I’m grateful I get to share my experience and lessons with you. The less rigidity and limitations you put on yourself, the more expansive the world becomes. Of course, at first this might appear to be the worst possible, overwhelming scenario. But when life offers you unexpected detours, don’t be quick to turn it away. Treat it like an entry way into a world of limitless potential.
Rooting for your success,
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