How to make money in marketing: the basics of the profession

Now the question of how to make money in marketing is more relevant than ever.

All major universities in recent years, which teach the humanities, have a faculty of marketing or advertising. A new course " How to become a marketer " starts every month on the Internet. Everywhere they talk about the prospects of the profession, rapid career growth and earning opportunities. But is it?

What is marketing

In a general sense, marketing is customer acquisition. The company has a product, money and human resources. She needs buyers who will give her their money. The marketer makes sure that the company has customers.

But this is the general meaning of the profession. If we talk about more specific things, then marketers are engaged in:

• creating advertising;
• analytics;
• optimization.

A marketer is engaged in the promotion of a company, products and services. Tells the consumer about how he can solve his problems.

Advertising and promotion

Advertising and promotion are two concepts that are close to a marketer. In fact, they are synonyms.

Features of the marketing profession

Since 2018, marketing has been gradually moving to the Internet. Many employees go freelancing and help businesses promote themselves and their services on social networks, websites and search engines.

Therefore, the first answer to the question: "How can you make money in marketing" will sound like this: "Study promotion on the Internet." Necessary to find out:

• how to sell on social networks;
• what is required to promote the site to the TOP;
• how to describe and sell services;
• how to draw attention to the company.

There are more opportunities for interaction with the audience in social networks, instant messengers and search engines than in real life. People skip flyers, ads on TV, but continue to watch it in Youtube videos.

When people launch courses, they offer to become an internet marketer. But it is not so. In fact, they teach one of the specialties that are now in demand when promoting on the Internet.

It differs from marketing, which is practiced in the West, by the scale of tasks. lately, a person is responsible for writing posts and banners on sites, and in Europe – for developing a strategy and planning to attract customers.

In this case, the tasks of the marketer are taken over by the head or manager. He works out a general plan for how the company will be promoted on the Internet, and after that forms a block of tasks for performers.

Executors are novice marketers who execute the set plan. They launch companies in offices, create creatives, write texts, contact potential clients.

Speciality

The choice of a specialty should take place at the university or at the courses. The choice is usually offered:

• analytics;
• copywriter;
• advertiser.

These three areas are different from each other and require different practical skills. But the basis is the same: to analyze the needs of the client. Briefly about each of the specialties.

Analyst – works with charts and data arrays. Tasks: analyze reporting and understand which areas work more efficiently than others, and where to invest money. Can manage advertising campaigns and improve them.

Copywriter – writes texts that solve business problems. Posts for social networks, descriptions on the site, scripts for commercials. Works with numbers, but from the point of view of text construction: how to describe the product so that they want to buy it.

Advertiser – launches advertising campaigns in social networks, search engines and in the media. Combines the functions of a copywriter and an analyst. Responsible for ensuring that after viewing ads, people turn into customers.

Where are marketers trained?

Courses and colleges are the two most common answers when it comes to marketing and advertising. There they give a base, theoretical training and give the first direction for an internship. Free courses teach theory and send you on a free voyage.

But before you think about full-fledged training, you need to know two points:

• in all universities in the CIS, marketing is taught superficially;
• the theoretical base is outdated;
• Courses are taught not by marketers, but by bloggers.

Therefore, after graduating, marketers spend 3-4 years to get the first practical skills. Only after that they can start looking for a job, but time has already been lost.

In order not to make this common mistake, you need to learn on your own. In parallel with university or courses.

How to become a marketer yourself

A short plan on how you can become a marketer :

• study books on marketing. 3-5 will be enough;
• work on cold calls;
• work as a marketing assistant;
• learn how to sell your services as a freelancer.

The theoretical basis of marketing is 3-5 books that will help you understand what they do in this profession. If you study more, you will notice that the authors talk about the same thing, but give little practical advice.

Theory does not compare with practice. Especially if you read American and European authors. They have a different market, mentality and tasks. the current business is built with the expectation: “I will make a profit within a year." American: “In 10 years I will pay off, and then I will develop.”

Cold calling is hardening for any marketer. Six months later, a pro in negotiations comes out of such work, who can directly convince a person to buy a product from him. This will help in the interview and further in the profession.

Marketers who have not yet reached the level of agencies are looking for assistants to shift some of the tasks to them. This is a chance for those who want to see what they have to work with and learn how to practice.

Freelancing is a simulation of a business situation, only for one specialist. You need to provide services and attract customers. In freelancing, a person learns to sell himself and his services on the Internet. Together with cold calls and theory, we get a block of practical skills for attracting customers.

How easy it is to make money in marketing for a beginner

Marketers begin their journey after graduating from universities and courses with an attempt to find a job in an advertising agency. Usually they submit resumes to medium-sized or already well-known companies in order to undergo an internship.

What are the advantages of this approach:

• you can look at the work of marketers from the inside;
• see employees who have been in the profession for decades;
• learn something new and learn by doing;
• no need to think about how to make money in marketing for a beginner.

But there is one minus that covers everything. A newcomer to a firm with dozens of managers will not be allowed to work. Routine and typical work is shifted to a student or graduate, such as writing posts for social networks, advertising articles and descriptions for websites.

Someone should also do this, but it is more useful to face real problems. Only on projects that a person will carry out from beginning to end, solving complex business problems, can one grow. To do this, you need to go to novice digital agencies.

There, the marketer is immediately given a project with which he will work from start to finish. If the heads of departments are engaged in management, negotiations and strategy development in well-promoted firms, then here each employee will have his own project. You can communicate directly with the owners, learn about the tasks and come up with solutions.

In a company with dozens of employees, each link has a task assigned by the head of the department. Someone needs to write posts and increase engagement, someone needs to set up ads, someone will process information from the client. The area of ​​responsibility is reduced.

If you write posts for social networks for a year, you can pump up in copywriting, but this has an indirect relation to marketing.

Therefore, it is recommended to choose small firms that do not have a large number of employees. Come and immediately get to work – solve the problems of the client, bring customers to him.

How to make money as a marketer: a step-by-step plan

Development in the field of Internet marketing and advertising is gradual. A graduate of a university or course performs routine tasks, grows, attracts a team, acquires contacts, and then only can count on clients for comprehensive promotion.

An approximate plan of how to make money for a marketer in 5 steps looks like this:

• get a theory at a university, in courses or on your own;
• register on all freelance sites as a marketer;
• find a place for an internship at a digital agency;
• improve professional competencies and build a team;
• open your own agency.

Without the status of a digital agency or a marketing company, it is impossible to receive orders for complex promotion. The official status is important for the client, because only established companies that already have their own clients come for advertising. They need to expand their business and enter new markets.

At the initial stage, the marketer is only a name. If a person does not know how easy it is to make money in marketing, he will not be able to help his client. Therefore, it will perform the same tasks. Only after the first cases appear, we can say that the marketer has passed the beginner level.

What you need to know

To get started in marketing, you need to know:

• theoretical foundations of advertising;
• methods of promotion in social networks;
• how to set up advertising accounts in social networks and search engines;
• basics of negotiation;
• sales techniques.

This is the basis from which it will be possible to build on in the future. It does not hurt to study the specifics of the business with which you will have to work and learn about where the money comes from and why customers buy.

The second block of skills comes as you advance in the profession:

• ability to analyze competitors;
• skills in creating commercials;
• basics of management and coordination within the team;
• ability to analyze the market and opportunities.

Gradually, the marketer moves from practical skills to solving strategic problems. What needs to be done in order to attract customers to the business. What sources will leads come from, how to process them and turn them into sales, what can be offered to increase conversion, etc.

Over time, a marketer turns from a freelancer who knows how to set up an advertising account, knows sales techniques and knows how to write posts, into a person who thinks strategically and squeezes the maximum out of a niche.

Freelance and business

An alternative to being hired for a marketer is freelancing. Offer your services or assemble a team and found an agency. Everyone comes to business only when the base of active clients is accumulated. We need to expand and gain access to state-level projects.

Prior to this, marketers work as freelancers. They offer their services to businesses, bring in clients, collect cases in their portfolio. Most often, these are not promotion tasks, but the development of one of the stages: setting up an advertising account, analytics, attracting customers from social networks.

Complex work is given to agencies or their department. A freelancer can count on part of the responsibilities. But this will allow you to look at the profession from the inside and work together with the team.

Where to look for clients

The main problem of a novice marketer is to find the first 5 customers. Then you can show your results, but without a portfolio in the field of advertising it is difficult. There are three options here:

• look for a businessman who can afford to take risks;
• get an internship at an agency and get a portfolio;
• work for a percentage.

There are more clients who are willing to take risks than everyone thinks. These are start-up entrepreneurs who do not have the money to hire an agency. In this case, you can agree to conduct business for a minimum fee.

The second option is an internship, everything is clear with it.

The third is to work for a percentage. This is a trap for beginner marketers. Businessmen knock on them and offer them a deal: “You give me clients, I give you a percentage of the profits.” This should be abandoned immediately. There is no way to check the number of real customers, and the risk of being deceived is not worth it. It is worth working for% with the business, the owner of which the marketer knows.

The fourth option that few people think of is to try your hand at traffic arbitrage. This is a type of business in which a person attracts customers for banks, mobile applications, stores and receives a fixed fee for this. Each person you bring is 100-1000 🪙.

This method allows you to realize yourself as a marketer and learn how to work with clients from different areas. The main drawback is that you need money to start or a platform through which you can collect traffic.

How easy it is to make money as a marketer on the Internet

To make money on the Internet, a marketer needs to choose a specialty:

• promotion in social networks;
• SEO;
• creation of commercials;
• analytics;
• copywriting.

Having chosen one of these directions, you need to gradually pump in this area. Get practical skills, collect cases, customer reviews. Learn to write texts, analyze an advertising campaign and launch it, shoot videos.

Social media marketing is suitable for beginners. In this area, there is a typical set of actions that need to be done in order to achieve a result. The work is the same type, but it is paid higher if a person has cases.

It is not necessary that the qualification correspond to the price level.

The remaining 4 industries are more dependent on the matching of skills and the cost of work. The ability to sell will not be superfluous, as it allows you to become impudent and raise prices several times, and only then gain practical skills.

How much do marketers earn

If you look at the statistics of job growth in marketing, advertising and PR, you can see three patterns:

• Recently, this area has not been popular;
• in Europe and the US, marketers earn more than the market average;
• there are practically no opportunities for development in the CIS.

Now about specific figures that may be of interest to someone who wants to work in marketing.

recently

Recently, marketing has habitually been given less time. Earnings in the field are not comparable with the manufacturing, financial and IT sectors. The rate of increase in the number of vacancies is lower than in other areas.

If you look at the market average, then all industries for the period from 2013 to 2019 inclusive grew by 168%. Marketing, PR and advertising – only 113%. In Moscow, Moscow Region, St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, the demand for specialists is growing by about 5% per year.

In the regions, on the contrary, the number of open vacancies is decreasing every year. HH.ru reports that in 2019 the number of vacancies in December increased by 89%, and in marketing by 33%.

The average salary in marketing in 2021 is 45,000 🪙 per month. In the Moscow region – 55,000 🪙.

In the world

The average salary for a marketer in the US is $100,000 per year. That's about $8,000 a month before taxes. About 6-7 thousand comes to hand. This is lower than the salary of IT specialists and the financial sector, but 2-4 times higher than low-skilled labor.

In Europe, the situation is similar. Average wages in developed countries are about 80,000 euros per year. The labor market is growing in volumes comparable to Russia, but wages are higher.

Pros and cons of being a marketer

The advantages of the profession include:

• continuous learning;
• different tasks;
• teamwork;
• remote work;
• opportunity to move abroad.

Marketers with case studies can be hunted by European and American companies. If you need to leave and earn more, it is recommended to look at the market of Eastern and Western Europe. The mentality is similar and the requirements for obtaining a work visa for a CIS citizen are lower.

Marketers mostly work remotely. Only companies with a turnover of more than 3-5 million can afford to maintain an advertising department. Individual entrepreneurs and private businesses that have not yet reached these indicators outsource advertising.

Disadvantages of the profession:

• growth rates below the market;
• inefficient education in universities and courses;
• the complexity of career growth;
• not enough opportunities to start.

Getting a job as a marketer in 2021? No. Custom writing, website development, financial analytics and IT from the very beginning have a minimum salary of 15-20% higher.

Will marketing skills come in handy? Yes. When starting a business, finding clients and promoting yourself in another profession. Marketing can be studied in parallel, but it is not worth betting on it.

It will take a beginner 5-8 years to reach the strategic planning stage. This is if he starts as an ordinary employee, and gradually breaks through the career ladder higher. If you work only with advertising, promotion is possible only to the manager.

Marketers Perspective

When a beginner wants to learn how to make money in marketing, he goes to look for information on the Internet and in social network groups. There he is told that millions 🪙 are spinning in advertising, and a beginner without a portfolio and projects behind his back can reach an income of 100 thousand in 2-3 months.

But then everything can go in three ways:

1. Reality hits the newcomer on the nose and shows that he has no chance in the profession.
2. The marketer remains at the level of “copywriter” or “salesperson” and does not enter the stage of attracting customers.
3. There is a person who talks about how difficult it is to break into marketing.

Marketing has been bad lately. Only media personalities who attract clients to companies with their name alone, or specialists from the top 10 in a niche, can earn money. There are no other options for success.

After graduating from the university, a beginner is waiting for a job search within 1-6 months. An internship at an agency, performing routine tasks and no strategic planning. Then a gradual transition to project management and managerial tasks. When a person gets practical skills, he either opens his own agency and engages in strategic marketing, or uses the skills in business.

This does not apply to analysts. In 2021, there is still a shortage of people who can work with numbers. People who can analyze the potential of a niche, business and advertising company can find work anywhere.

Marketing is a complex industry. lately, you can find work in related fields, but it is more difficult to grow to the level of solving strategic problems. The only way to become a marketer for a specific company is to go all the way from an ordinary employee to the advertising department.