Career Profile: Marketing Manager

Hey iChoosers!
Each week we will be featuring an in-depth look into a specific career within different business fields. This week the field is marketing and the profession is a marketing manager!

It's an extremely involved role with a lot of responsibilities. The marketing manager is in charge of planning, directing, and coordinating marketing policies and programs for a company. They attempt to determine the demand for products and services offered both by their own company and its competitors. They try to identify potential customers and set pricing strategies that aim to maximize the company's profits or market share while maximizing consumer satisfaction.

While all job descriptions contain a degree of variation, the role of a marketing manager is often synonymous with the following job titles: Marketing Director, Marketing Manager, Vice President of Marketing, Business Development Manager, Marketing Coordinator, Account Supervisor, Business Development Director, Commercial Lines Manager, Commercial Marketing Specialist, Market Development Manager.

The Tasks of a marketing manager involve working with advertising and promotion managers to design marketing activities and policies that effectively promote products and services. They use their knowledge of markup and cost factors, establishment objectives, and market characteristics to identify, develop, or evaluate a marketing strategy. Marketing directors manager marketing and sales staff, overseeing the hiring, training, performance evaluations, and daily activities of the department. Marketing Managers even oversee the financial aspects of product development including research and development, expenditures, budgets, return on investment, and profit-loss projections. They craft pricing strategies that keep company objectives and customer satisfaction at a harmonious level. They generate comprehensive lists of product offerings and benefits, launch market research initiatives, and analyze research results.  Forecasting is an important part of the job; strategic planning is used to guarantee the sales and profitability of products, product lines, and services while analyzing business developments and market trends. They plan or participate in trade shows and a variety of other promotional activities, usually in conjunction with advertisers, developers, and production managers to market their products and services. Interaction with buying personnel is essential too; this communication gives them insight into the products and services that are predicted to be in demand.

The tools of the marketing manager are your basic office equipment: laptop, desktop computer, fax machines,  PDA's & Smartphones, Scanners, and Photocopiers. The technology is more interesting! Analytic and scientific software includes programs like Lyris HQ Web-Analytics Solution, Nedstat Sitestat; Online advertising reporting software, and the all too familiar Minitab Software. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs like Oracle Siebel Server Sync, QAD Marketing Automation, Sage SalesLogix, and Salesforce.com Salesforce CRM are used. ClearEDGE software, Fast Track Systems software, Microsoft Access, and Structured query language SQL are all used for data base user interface and query software. Of course e-mail and photo/image editing software are essential and have many software options to choose from such as Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Outlook.

So what is it important for a Marketing Manager to know? Here is a simple list of the essential general fields that these managers are very knowledgeable of and skilled with:

-Sales and Marketing

-Customer and Personal Service

-English Language

-Administration and Management

-Communications and Media

-Computers and Electronics

This next part is important in your career research! Is this a job a good fit for you?

Read this next list of skills and abilities essential to a Marketing Manager profession and assess whether you possess them. If not, and this job seems to align with your passions, make a mental note of the skills and abilities you are lacking so you can focus on developing them specifically!

Skills: Active Listening, Critical Thinking, Persuasion, Social Perceptiveness, Speaking, Judgment and Decision Making, Monitoring, Active Learning, Coordination, and Operations Analysis

Abilities: Oral Comprehension, Oral Expression, Deductive Reasoning, Written Comprehension, Fluency of Ideas, Speech Recognition, Written Expression, Inductive Reasoning, Originality, and Problem Sensitivity

Do the following activities involved in this profession appeal to your passions and skills?

Work Activities: Communicating with Persons Outside the Company, Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, and Subordinates, Gathering Information, Thinking Creatively, Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships, Team Development and Building, Problem Solving, Decision Making,  Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work, Working with Computers, and Developing Objectives/Strategies

Do the work styles of a Marketing Manager seem similar to your own?

Work Styles: Dependability, Attention to Detail, Cooperation, Integrity, Leadership, Initiative, Persistence, Achievement/Effort, Adaptability/Flexibility, and Independence

You're probably interested in the salary information so here it is! As of 2010 median wages were $54.23 hourly and $112, 800 annually. 59, 700 Marketing Manager job openings are predicted between 2008 and 2018.

All information is courtesy of  O*Net , but you can find more at the Bureau of Labor Statistics website.

Check back next week to learn about a profession in the Retail Supply Chain field, but never hesitate to do some research on your own time!