Information in this blog post was obtained from the HubSpot Blog, Social Media Today, and Sprout Social.
As a new graduate with a marketing degree, are you getting lost in the crowd with your job search? Do you feel like every job needs years and years of experience? College graduates with no experience are having difficulty trying to find jobs, especially those that require five or more years of experience. Learning new skills can set you apart from your newly graduated comrades. Look no further. You can learn about different marketing careers and the skills to go with them. Read more about the skills you can learn, or practice, to enhance your personal skills and your resume!
1. Strong Writing
Big essays were always a daunting task in college, were they not? Not knowing where to start and having to organize different thoughts in your head were tough! It is truly a great thing that social media is now all about content that is concise and attention-grabbing. Developing strong writing skills sounds right for you! This skill is helpful if you are looking into a Marketing Copyrighter career. This job needs you to create short and sweet, informative, and attention-grabbing texts and posts for various businesses. You will be the voice behind a company's social media posts. You can start practicing by rewording boring headlines you read in the news, rewriting existing social media headlines and posts from large corporations, and so much more. Working on your writing skills will increase your creativity and will definitely set you apart from the competition. You can read more about what the Marketing Copyrighter job entails and how you can use your new skills here at HubSpot Blog.
2. Email Marketing
If you think that you have no experience with email marketing, you have got it totally wrong. Do you remember ordering that late-night pizza when you were studying and then getting promotional emails every week afterward? Those promotional emails were all part of the pizza company's email marketing strategy! You create a profile and sign up with your email address and then they email you during the same time that you ordered pizza the first time. Were you hungry again at 11 pm and re-ordered pizza? Yes! Did their email marketing strategy work? Yes! Getting experience with email marketing can be helpful if you are looking for a Digital Marketing job. It is an all-encompassing role, but this skill is becoming more common and especially more useful as technology advances. You can read more about the upcoming in-demand social media marketing jobs and marketing trends here at Social Media Today. You will become the voice and strategy behind all of those promotional emails. Working on your email marketing skills before getting to the professional field will set you apart from your entry-level, job-seeking competitors.
3. Problem-Solving Skills
Do you have good decision-making skills or critical-thinking prowess? Working on your problem-solving skills can be helpful if you are looking into a Growth Marketer or a Social Media Consultant job. You can read more about the different roles here at Sprout Social. This role works with a variety of teams and focuses on many responsibilities like content creation, building the brand, and retaining customers. You will enjoy this job if you like helping others and social media. You can practice by analyzing issues and creating solutions in everyday life. Always think of alternatives, do not make assumptions, and analyze the big picture.
4. Graphic Design
We see everything. We look at Instagram photos, we watch videos TikTok videos, and we read blog posts just like this one. There is art behind every advertisement that we see. If you have a knack for creating attractive and enticing images with graphic design, a Graphic Design career might be for you! This job includes creating visuals for marketing campaigns, visually communicating a company's brand, and designing concepts for various applications like advertisements, magazines, and so much more. You can practice this skill by getting hands-on experience with graphic design software programs like Photoshop or InDesign. Even websites like Canva can be a great source of getting experience with design. If you had to create fliers for your social club's meetings or designed websites for your classes, then you may already have experience with graphic design. You can read more about the Graphic Designer job here. Graphic design has become increasingly popular and may be a skill that you have already tried. However, not a lot of marketers have perfected it. With practice, your graphic design skills will set you apart from other contenders.
5. Customer Service
Have you ever had a part-time job at a local coffee shop or a retail store? The good news is that all of your job duties dealt with customer service. Cleaning off a dirty table or folding t-shirts in the back of the store? Yes! All of those tasks deal with customer service. How? You cleaned the tables off so the next customer can sit down and enjoy their coffee and you folded the t-shirts and put them back on the shelf for a nice in-store display for the new customers to shop. Although this type of customer service is not what marketers typically do, customer service is still a great skill to have! Businesses are now looking to social media to sift through product and brand reviews from customers. Having customer service experience will be crucial to respond to customer complaints (and commendations, of course) in a strategic way. If this sounds like something you are interested in, a Social Media Management job could be right for you! You can read more about the position here. With strong communication skills, you will be the voice of the brand and be able to maintain relationships with new and existing customers.
5. Web Design
One niche skill to have is web design. You can get experience with HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, and so much more. There are multiple online resources which you can learn these design skills from and some of them are free! Once you get experience, you can apply these skills to your job. Having web design skills can build you up for a great E-Commerce Marketing Specialist job. Along with developing web design skills, experience with coding and user experience will be significant if you want to explore this role. You will be responsible for maintaining the online stores for businesses and implementing data-based marketing strategies. You can read more about the skills and responsibilities of this role here.
6. Time Management
If you graduated from college, you may already have great time management skills. You had to submit assignments by deadlines, pace yourself reading your textbooks every week, and schedule your study and leisure times separately. Having time management skills is great for any career, but are especially great for freelance jobs like Content Creators. There are nano, micro, and macro influencers. Content Creators can be blog writers, social media influencers, live streamers, podcasters, and so much more. If you want to be your own boss and work on your own time, a freelanced Content Creator may be perfect for you. However, you can also work as a content creator for brands. Content Creators can work as an individual or in teams. You can read more about the different types of content creators and their skills here. Having time management skills and working under self-paced deadlines go hand in hand. You can practice time management by sticking to schedules, avoiding multitasking, and setting time limits. Content Creators succeed by creating content for various channels and analyzing the habits of consumers. You may use different skills like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or promotion for this role.
7. Microsoft Excel
When you think of jobs that require extensive use of Microsoft Excel, do you think only about Accounting? Marketers use it too! Many websites offer practice exercises for free. Many YouTube shorts, TikTok videos, and LinkedIn posts can easily show you tips and tricks for Microsoft Excel. You can even obtain an Excel Associate Certification from Microsoft. There is also a Microsoft Excel Expert Certification from Coursera. These credentials will add a nice touch to your resume when you begin applying for jobs. If this is a skill that you are interested in, a Marketing Analyst career may suit you. You can read more about the job details here. In this role, you will analyze data trends, determine the prices of goods, develop metrics for performance, and so much more. However, if Microsoft Excel is not your cup of tea, other programs like SPSS Statistics or SAS can also be helpful with this role.
Don't Be Afraid to Get Started
Getting experience and learning these new skills will make you stand out during your job search. After you decide on the career that you want to pursue, make sure effectively to market yourself to your future employers. Starting the job search in the "real world" with zero experience can be overwhelming, but learning new skills will set you apart. Best wishes on your career, new marketer!
For even more information about how to stand out as a marketer, go read my colleague Paige's post about them here.
Resources
Decker, A. (2022, September 8). The Best Marketing Jobs and Careers for You to Pursue in 2023. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-jobs.
Gomez, R. (2022, August 11). Social media careers: The skills you need, where to look and jobs to consider. Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-careers/.
Hutchinson, A. (2022, April 7). LinkedIn Shares New Insights into the Most In-Demand Marketing Skills and Roles [Infographic]. Social Media Today.
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