Are you good at seeing how to make products and services gain attention? Can you make a product popular in the long term? You may love a career as a marketing director!

Job Overview

Marketing directors develop long-term plans to promote an organization’s products or services. They meet with other directors or managers on contracts, products and advertising matters.

Requirements and Qualifications

Marketing directors work full time in an office, though travel to meet with clients or attend conferences is common. You’ll find it helpful to develop excellent communication, interpersonal and social skills, analytical thinking and decision making, creativity and problem solving skills as well as management abilities.

Typical Education

Marketing directors usually have a bachelor’s degree in business or marketing. Coursework you’ll find helpful includes business law, business management, economics, basic accounting, finance, higher mathematics and classes in statistics. You will also want to pursue an internship while going through your degree program as it will provide both valuable experience and references for your resume before you leave college.

Steps to Become a Marketing Director

After you’ve completed your degree program, you will want to pursue job openings in related fields, such as salespersons, purchasing agent, public relations specialists or in areas such as products, promotions or advertising.

You’ll need to build up several years’ experience in these areas before looking for work as a marketing director. To speed you on this career track, you will want to pursue opportunities that give you additional responsibility or experience, including special projects, new marketing areas and travel or educational opportunities.

Similar Jobs

Maybe you don’t want this much responsibility, or perhaps you’d like to tackle an area that is more specific than the broad overview of a marketing director. That’s okay! Here are some similar career tracks that may interest you:

• Want to help other businesses get their message out? Advertising sales agents sell advertisement space to organizations in a variety of media.
• Can you combine the artistic output of several areas into a single concept? Art directors keep a variety of departments together in vision to unify their output.
• Are you a serious people person? Demonstrators or product promoters give product promotions, monetary savings and details about products at retail locations or specialized expos to increase public awareness.
• Have a knack for grammar and planning? Editors plan, review and edit written work before it is published.
• Have a creative knack with visual concepts? Graphic designers use photos and software to relate ideas and inspiration by using visual approaches.
• Can you figure out what people want? Market research analysts conduct and analyze studies to help companies promote and improve their products.
• Do you see the good side of every event? Public relations specialists serve organizations and public personalities to create and maintain a positive public opinion.
• Can you do administrative tasks and keep a sales department functioning well? Sales managers set sales objectives, examine sales data and equip salespeople for an organization.
• Do you pay attention to all the details? Technical writers provide written content for manuals, product data and other technical knowledge for merchandise and ventures.
• Do words fall trippingly off your tongue? Writers and authors create one of a kind written content for a variety of resources.

Salary

The average yearly salary of a marketing director was $112,800 in May of 2010, well over three times the average of all career paths. The majority of marketing directors work full time, with some overtime opportunities available.

Job Outlook

Marketing directors can expect to see an average growth in career opportunities as compared to the average of all career paths. Experience and knowledge in digital and social media marketing will provide the best opportunities for advancement.