Marketing Manager - As a career option

Look around your room; every single object that you own is a product that been sold and bought. Each of these products has brands. Pick a brand at random and Google it to see its status in the market, and you’ll find that it has any number of competitors nationally and internationally which may be as good as it or even better than it.

Hence, to the brand, the fact that its product is in your room is a kind of victory; you picked it, not its rivals.

Now, stop and remember: why did you choose the brand that you went for? What was the appeal that this brand had that none of the others did? It might have had the right features, it might just have looked right, it might have fit your budget.

It’s also possible that you can’t put your finger on what it was that made you like it, and that’s not surprising, because the people who work ceaselessly to ensure that these products stand out to you are very smart; you were influenced by someone who portrayed the product to you in a light that you found meaningful. This person is a marketing manager.


Marketing managers have one goal – to achieve a given sales target. To do this, they use a wide and often highly intricate combination of tactics. A highly generalized account of it in vague terms would be as follows: they determine how much the product is needed, how much people are willing the pay for it, who exactly are these people (who’ll pay for it), and what’s the quickest way to stand out to these people.

How to Become a Marketing Manager?

There are two ways to get into marketing management as a career – you can either take the direct route and get a Bachelor’s in Business Administration or use your college degree to get a specialization before doing an MBA in marketing management.

The latter option is more popular; it narrows-down your scope but increases your value (for example, someone with a bachelor’s in chemistry and an MBA is not a great match for software companies, but will fit fabulously in a company selling cosmetics, drugs, food, or chemicals).

Eligibility Criteria to Become a Marketing Manager

• +2: No restrictions. Students from all three streams are eligible.
• Bachelor’s Degree: No restrictions. Students from all disciplines are eligible.
• Master’s Degree: A Master’s Degree in Management and Business Administration (MBA), preferably specializing in marketing is favored.

Possibly the largest hurdle in the career of a marketing manager in India comes after they graduate from college – MBA in Marketing Management courses require you to get decent ranks in management entrance exams such as the CAT, the XAT the MAT, and you’ll have to get your act together and study hard!

A Day in the Life of a Marketing Manager

Hello there! I’m Mr Z. I’m a marketing manager for a large telecom company. I’m in a cab, on my way to work. I’m munching on a sandwich and checking messages on my phone as a radio jockey reads out the news into my earphones. This is the way I like it – multi-tasking until my brain is occupied to the brim. It’s no surprise that I was one an easy choice when I applied for my current job at my company last year, then a fresh graduate from a top college in the nation. Being a marketing manager suits me.

9:00 AM: I start the day at my desk, checking up on the barrage of emails that have accumulated in my inbox since yesterday evening. On top of handling the daily influx of paperwork, I also stay on top of the recent trends and developments in marketing – marketing theories and methodologies change rapidly, and you have to make an effort to keep up.

11:00 AM: I set to work on a large upcoming project pertaining to which I am assigned. Like most large firms, my company likes to divide its market into “segments" based on common traits or requirements. The project caters exclusively to the youth segment. This is called Business-to-consumer marketing.

My target market consists of youngsters aged 10 – 25 (of which you likely are a part!), who have limited money and are driven by their emotional needs, trends, and a need to belong. There’s a kick-off meeting due post-lunch, and I am streamlining my slides for the umpteenth time – you see, it’s my job to brief the rest of the team on what’s coming!

1:30 PM: The meeting is on! My department and I are trying to bring about a new and out-of-the-box marketing model that makes us more accessible and favorable in the eyes of the country’s youth. Our team consists of individuals from both marketing and sales.

The presentation goes smoothly, and I have a lot of questions to answer and points to clarify. Each team member is going to be busy for the next 24 hours building up the groundwork for their share of the work.

3:00 PM: I have to attend an online conference call with Ali, a collaborator from our digital marketing team. I works in Data Analytics, and it’s important to keep talking to him sporadically to get a clear idea of how our ongoing and previous marketing ventures are holding up on the regional company website.

I briefs me on the latest numbers and points to an old chunk of code on our website that might be impeding effective analytics. I send a quick email to our team of web developers – they’ll handle the issue by the end of the day.

4:00 PM: The day’s almost done – I’m back at my desk running my eyes through the mailbox. Since my company’s latest innovation drive, junior managers routinely send in new and innovative ideas that they stumble upon, and we respond to them with utmost seriousness. I read into the ones I received today, forward one to my boss and respond to the other two with requests for elucidations.

5:00 PM: The day is done. In marketing, workload varies according to the time of the year and the proximity of deadlines. Things are going to get much more hectic at the office one the new project kicks off, so I’m going to make most of the time I have at hand. I’m learning to code in PHP over the internet with aspirations of delving deeper into my company’s digital marketing segment. I’d better head home and get going!

Did you find Marketing Manager's profession interesting? Are you planning to pursue it? Still confused? We hope that this article proved to be a fruitful one for you. Have your say in the comment box below. Enjoy Reading!