Career Change Part 2 -- Marketing

I'm in communications but we work with Sales/Marketing a lot.
The market research folks at my company spend a lot of time researching our competitors, compiling reports, following industry analysts, forecasting sales, feeding information to the decision makers who decide if we should bid on a project, stuff like that.

The "other" people in our Marketing area visit potential customers, negotiate deals, bid on the work, go to trade shows, stuff like that.

I see our "Marketing" department as more of a "Sales" department though. Different than most companies.

My area (communications) does a lot more of the stuff people usually think of as "marketing' - decisions on our external presence: web sites, print collateral, photos/videos, presentations, social media, etc.

OH I work in the aircraft manufacturing industry.




Edited by lisac957 2011-02-01 11:06 AM

I think that I generally consider the research and analysis part of it marketing, and it involves a lot of INTERNAL communication, but not creating advertising, for example...but I may be completely mistaken?

hmmm...according to about.com, you do work in marketing lisa...it includes:

• Market Research
• Brand Management
• Advertising
• Promotions
• Public Relations

Edited by meherczeg 2011-02-01 11:15 AM

Sounds like you are looking more at market research then marketing. Marketing usually falls into two categories. Sometimes combined, sometimes separate. Either selling the company (sales) or managing the presence and image of the company (what I would consider marketing). Often sales and marketing are over seen by the same person/management team, but each one requires a very different skill set. For companies that do their own market research, that would typically fall under the marketing group, but isn't generally thought of as "marketing." Lisa's company is a little odd in that the marketing group is doing the research while the corporate communications group is doing the typical "marketing" job. In big companies that I've dealt with/worked for/had experience with corporate communications has usually been it's own group who handled communications within the company. When they have handled things like press releases/announcments they are usually then part of the marketing group.

I have two friends who have done or are in Market Research. One was a sociologist who left academia to go to a market research firm. He's now back to being a University Prof. The other is still doing it. I'll ask her what she things of market research and what it entails, but my understanding is that it's very statistics driven.

ETA: I wasn't clear that I think that market research falls under marketing. But I think that if you went out looking for marketing jobs you would be looking at the more well known marketing jobs (all the other jobs on your list outside of market research). Market research requires it's own special skill set and I think it's generally advertised as a 'market/ing research" position.

Edited by graceful_dave 2011-02-01 11:24 AM

Yup we are definitely different in that regard.
My group (corporate communications) does BOTH internal and external communications, media/PR, etc.
Marketing does do a lot of our brochures and videos (with the help of our creative group) since they use them for the "selling" - but we have heavy input.

I like it cause I get to do a wide variety of things (magazine editor/layout/writing, work with media, special events, write press releases/press kits, develop communication/PR strategies, all of our social media, etc.) without having to do the tedious research stuff, or get tied down in one specialty area. Pretty versatile.
 

Depends on the size of the company you work for. I was in a 3 person marketing department for a national hearing aid company.
1 creative
2 'specialists' - Marketing Assistant? can't remember what our titles actually were there. (They changed)

We did mostly direct mail. The creative person visited our local offices, talked to customers, and talked with our regional managers. She reviewed the performance of past campaigns and read up on trends and ways to reach customers. She met with vendors to see if her ideas were doable withing our budget. She developed campaign ideas, and presented them to upper management with budget figures and why she thought that the campaign would work in our market.

My counterpart and I tracked results of various campaigns (how many responses in each area) tracked estimated vs actual expenses per region and office, sourced vendors, worked out the details of mailing $800K of mail to 10 or so markets each quarter (mailing lists and refreshing them), projected cash needed for various vendors and organizing yellow pages listing, newspaper ads and special publications advertising. Lots of spreadsheet work.

It was fun. We worked directly with the president of the company. With the exception of the actual creative stuff (designing the specific pieces), we all got to work on pretty much every aspect of the marketing campaigns. It was stressful with lots of deadlines, but challenging, fun and interesting. Then we got bought out and the new company already had a marketing team kthanxbai.  

Before that I worked at a marketing reseach company. We had a bank of telephone survey people and my job was to design their question tree (if he says "No" on question 2, go to question 4) for the computer system, take the results and create a report for the client. It was sortof interesting but not nearly as fun as the other one.

If you were in a really large company, it would be much more likely that your whole job would be doing ONE of those things I mentioned up above.  Marketing folks tend toward being the first to be laid off. "Marketing" is difficult to quantify and often a BIG line item in the budget. Finance/accounting types seem to be uncomfortable with it. Medium to small companies use WAY less 'marketing research' than you would think. Like none. Coke, yeah, lots of research. Proctor and Gamble, too. But our national hearing aid chain? None. We bought no research. We read books, looked at general trends, but no actual research unless you count tracking our own campaign results. I have only worked with smaller companies though so my view is probably skewed.

PS if you could please eliminate that sealed plastic packaging that no one can open without a chainsaw, I would appreciate it.

How did you get in to this work? This is just the sort of thing I'd like to transition into, but without the huge hit of a complete do-over (read that "golden handcuffs") What type of degree do you see mostly in your field? What is yours (if any)? I work for a very large company and applied internally for a job in communications. I know I could have done the work well but they wanted someone with direct experience. I did notice that many in that group were women, from the SVP on down. Do you find it to be slanted in gender?

Hahaha...I don't work in THAT kind of packaging....but market trends show that consumers prefer something that they are confident hasn't been tampered with...just sayin

I actually LOVE research, and think that's part of why it is a reasonable transition for me, since it is what I do now (just not market research).  But I also like some of the other stuff that you do.  I'm totally obsessed with Mad Men and advertising and reading about this stuff, but I'm afraid that I'm not creative enough for it--or at least given my engineering degree and work experience I would be viewed as not creative enough.

Edited by meherczeg 2011-02-01 11:57 AM

I majored in Communications/Integrated Marketing - also got my MBA a few years ago - so it was a very natural fit for me.

Degrees typically asked for are in mass communications, journalism/English, public relations, or marketing - all though here the marketing degree won't count for much as we look for people with superb language skills (specifically AP Style), usually learned in English or communications classes. Masters or MBA preferred.

Yeah we are hiring right now and they want someone with 6+ years of experience in both public relations and desktop publishing. LOTS of applicants so yeah they are not even looking at people with no direct experience. In public relations, it's a huge risk to have someone not know what they're doing - and that's a big part of what we do.

My group is mostly women but my direct boss is a male (he came from TV though) - and the person we are replacing was a male. Not to stereotype, but in my experience most people who seek out a career in (corporate) communications are, in fact, women. Not sure why, maybe we are better communicators? Surely not

Edited by lisac957 2011-02-01 12:31 PM

I'll preface this whole response with "I'm an engineer" (going on 25 years now). 

Marketing is about identifying the customer need and whether your company can profitably satisfy that need.  Coming from an engineering world, the business case requires assumption, assumption, assumption, and there may not be a "right answer" to the assumptions (but there certainly can be wrong answers).  Engineers are generally trained to find the right answer and prove mathematically or logically why it is right.  Be prepared to be uncomfortable with the imprecision, vagueness, and squishiness of what your customer tells you and then convincing decision makers (who are equally vague most of the time). 

hijack away, bacon boy.  i'm trying to figure out a new career and the more i know about it, the better.

I work in market research for a large financial services company. I come from a communications background (bachelors in Communication and a masters in Public Relations). During my masters I figured out that I really liked the research and measurement part of PR/advertising so when I graduated I went to do research at a PR firm, then moved into an in-house research role here at my company three and a half years ago.

My larger group is basically a marketing group, I report up through a leader who manages a lot of PR, traditional marketing (direct mail, online, advertising) and I sit in a smaller group within this group that focuses on business strategy, research (my role) and analytics.

I come from a very language heavy academic background but I do a lot of math now on a day-to-day basis. I'm pretty good with statistics which is the focus and luckily we have research vendors who do a lot of the heavy analysis for us. I've found my communication background to actually be an asset because some market researchers aren't great at putting on a business hat and thinking of the business implications of the research findings. It sounds like with your MBA you might be well poised to be able to offer that kind of perspective.

Research is fun (in my kind of role) because we're always doing different types of studies. I might be doing a product test one month, then working on a market analysis, ad testing, etc, etc. I'm also trained as a focus group moderator which I get to do occasionally which is my favorite part of my job.

Not sure I'll be a researcher forever, I'm not a fan of the 9-5 desk job and have always thought I'd go back and get my PhD and be a college professor. I'm still pretty young (29) so who knows. Feel free to PM me if you have any more questions about what market research is like day-to day.

ack!  you are the perfect person to ask!  what is your typical day like?  do you travel a lot?  and you live in my favorite city in the world....wow....this is what i find most interesting!!!

Edited by meherczeg 2011-02-02 7:43 AM

OK another engineer here..

Marketing and engineering are like oil and water.  Each see the other as a necessary evil.  And far too often management takes marketing's opinion over engineering's.

Example: A customer of ours puts a product in a plastic bag that is heat sealed.  We gave them aproposla to automate it (right now a person does a mindless job all day).  It was a no brainier.  Would have paid for itself in less than 9 months.

In steps marketing.  They *think* that the customers would like the product better if it was in a paperboard box.  No proof, just *think*.  So they tank the entire project.

This is a product people want to see.  It has colors and designs.  So what will people do?  They will open the box to see what it looks like (probably ripping it making it unsellable).  Meanwhile the plastic bag is clear and the customer's can see what they are buying.

Fast forward 1.5 years later.  Marketing still has not done a single bit of research.  The company has been paying 3 people (3 shifts) to do a job that a machine could have been doing for the last 1.5 years.  Since the ROI was 9 month they have been losing money for the last 9 months.

All because marketing "had a thought".

That's an issue with management, not marketing vs engineering.

I won't entirely disagree however in my experience management puts way too much emphasis on "touchy-feely" marketing.  And not enough on "hard science" engineering.  Of course I might be biased..

In this case however to even "think" that a box is a better way to display your product than a bag is silly.  You'd have to see the product to fully understand but trust me.

Edited by TriRSquared 2011-02-02 10:56 AM

Another longtime engineer here...


... and coming up with nonsensical descriptive words to sell them the rest of the stuff that they don't need.


x2

Throughout my career I've been much happier at small companies with a higher ratio of engineers, and companies that have promoted engineers to their management.  You're focused on making a better product, not selling a crappy one.

This is not because of marketing, this is because of terrible project management.  Just sayin.  Since although I am an engineer, my job is mostly project management, I am constantly in the middle of engineers thinking they are smarter than everyone and sales promising everything in the universe to everyone.  Hey guess what...you're both right.  Work together instead of bickering.  Everyone gets paid by the same guy.

There is a LOT of that going on where I work.
But it's more that sales/marketing got the work based on information fed to them (our capabilities, workforce, time requirements, etc.), and management -- those "promoted engineers" -- have no idea how to actually manage.

 

 

This is because most managers are from the business side, not the science side. Business is all about relationships and influence. Science is all about proofs.

Neither side is better and each has its strengths in specific situations.

when i was a little baby engineer, an engineer for a boss was great.  because i needed help engineering, and they could help.  now that i (mostly) know what i'm doing, these are the VERY WORST BOSSES because all that they are really good at is...engineering...well...so am i??

In the few instances where I've had an engineer for a manager, this is what I've seen.  The great thing is that they understand that the engineers who work for them ARE actually people and not just a resource to be consumed.

In my experience the engineers who would make bad managers usually don't want the position anyhow.  I agree there are a few companies that actively push those people into management and that creates a problem (ex: Microsoft).