The real money is in marketing. It’s a gateway to various career paths. And, each of them depends on continuing education in marketing skills.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists just a few career targets with their respective annual median salaries:
- Marketing Managers — $132,230
- Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Managers — $129,380
- Advertising, Marketing, Promotions, Public Relations, and Sales Managers — $123,100
- Advertising and Promotions Managers — $106,130
Now, most candidates don’t walk into these income slots. The salaries reflect qualifications and experience. But, they also reflect quality education put into the field. So, if you want to expand your horizon in the job world, you should consider taking marketing courses.
Why a marketing course is an excellent idea
- Market yourself: Taking a quality course in marketing will help you brand yourself. A marketing course is a feather in your cap, but it also teaches you how to shape your self-presentation and brand.
- Wake up: You’ll learn to be aware of everything around you. Marketing careers expect you to be sensitive to everything happening in media, design, and social media. A marketing course will help you see better, evaluate clearly, and prioritize values.
- Make smarter moves: The good news is that marketing is not a static field. The bad news is the same. It is dynamic and demands involvement and continuing education. Marketing courses will introduce you to or develop skills in the latest marketing technology and tools.
- Make better decisions: Marketing careers wrestle with volumes of data and challenges coming from many directions. Good marketing courses help you sort out and interpret what’s out there. Education teaches you to filter out the unimportant and make effective decisions to better serve your internal and external customers.
- Stay flexible: With additional marketing courses under your belt, you become more attractive. Marketing courses do not guarantee success, and they do not assure your talent. But, they do give you the flexibility to expand your horizon in the job world by supporting your personal drive and ambition.
- Stand out: Taking additional marketing courses sets you apart from other job candidates and from competitors for marketing possibilities at your current employer. It marks you as committed, energetic, and ambitious. Making your name in the field can be your biggest marketing effort.
- Multiply your choices: “Marketing” itself doesn’t have a clear meaning. A marketing course will present the multiple choices open to you. You might move towards promotion, presentation, research, analysis, management, and more. As Eric Siu wrote in Forbes, “They learn how to analyze a potential market, segment customers, write marketing plans, develop budgets, and analyze data.”
- Deliver value: Assuming you apply what, you learn in your work, you add value to your employer’s goals. Bringing your schooling to work improves the work. And, as you improve your input and outputs, you improve your image.
Expand your horizon in the job world.
Marketing, in one form or another, is at the center of your current and future career. It is the means to succeed at work and to make the work better. With a credible marketing course behind you, you are better prepared to sell yourself!