Marketing is a rapidly growing field, with the job market growing 10% within this decade, which is faster than other industries. From fast-growing fields such as digital marketing, to long-standing fields such as advertising, marketing careers are an amazing way to learn a variety of new skills and techniques. However, it can be hard to know what to pursue in order to succeed in the field, especially with different roles requiring different responsibilities and skills.
The best way to discover what you want to do is by working as a marketing assistant. In this role, you’ll work with a variety of marketing managers and executives to develop and launch various campaigns. By providing support to teams across a company, you’re able to look at different fields and see what career path in marketing you will enjoy.
Let’s discuss the most important skills you need to work as a marketing assistant and how you can obtain them.
Project Management
As a marketing assistant, you will be working with different teams, both outside and within the company. Learning how to do tasks such as managing deadlines, distributing tasks, and making sure every team member is on the same page is important to be successful. Even if you aren’t confident in your leadership or organizational skills, don’t worry. Project management can be a career field of its own, so taking basic classes or certification programs on the topic will be sufficient to learn how to manage business tasks.
Graphic Design
You don’t have to be a Picasso on Adobe Photoshop, but knowing how to do basic graphic design will help a lot, considering that you will be wearing many hats in this role. Marketing assistants usually help out with campaigns, such as making flyers or creating media to post on social channels, and having design skills is one of the best ways to sell yourself for these job opportunities
Of course, if you aren’t comfortable using Adobe, there are still other options. For example, Canva offers a free-to-use and easy way to create presentations or posts with their premade templates.
Copywriting
Marketing is a field that needs a lot of writing. From advertisements to sales copy, copywriting is how you can use your writing skills to build awareness for your company. However, it’s not just as simple as writing an Instagram caption or posting a tweet. You would need to incorporate a brand voice, as well as learn what exactly persuades people to choose you over competitors.
Just as with any other type of writing, practice is the best way you can get better. You can take some courses online to gain some experience. However, no one will be able to tell how well you write unless you have something to show for it. Having some samples of long-form articles (around 800 to 1200 words) can serve as your copywriting portfolio, giving employers a chance to see how you incorporate different concepts into your writing.
Research Analytics
After you launch a campaign, it’s important to crunch the numbers and see exactly how well you are doing, which is where analytics comes in. Using tools such as Excel allows you to easily do administrative tasks and organize data into basic spreadsheets. Although most people know how to use the general features of Excel, it can be a bit tough to learn some of the more advanced features, such as VLookup, but it will make you stand out.
Luckily, there are tons of certifications out there for you to learn how to quickly use Excel shortcuts. From LinkedIn courses to free Microsoft videos, it’s super accessible to learn and can only help lessen the time you need to work on a task.
Another widely-used tool for marketing analytics is Google Analytics. From search engine optimization (SEO) keyword performance reports to Google’s machine learning skills that help with business insights, Google Analytics is the one stop shop for all things marketing. It’s almost guaranteed you will be using this for analytics as a marketing assistant just because of how necessary it is in the industry. It may be a bit daunting to get started, just because of all the new concepts, but there are multiple courses dedicated to help job seekers gain Google Analytics certification.
Social Media Management
One of the fastest growing fields in marketing is social media marketing, with more and more companies rapidly joining sites like TikTok and BeReal to market their products. Of course, you probably have experience with sites like these, but using them for business is different from personal use. As a marketing assistant, you would help with things such as campaign planning and keeping your audience engaged through comments or posts. Compared to other skills on this list, social media management is something most students know how to do, but incorporating other concepts like SEO can be where things get a bit complicated. The best way to improve is to use the social media experience you already have and improve on it with new techniques and concepts you learn while working in the industry.
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