If you are contemplating a career in marketing communications, count on the opportunity to flex the muscles of your strong writing skills. Engaging marketing savvy and drawing from relevant social sciences are imminently needed talents. And the capability to orchestrate and infuse creativity is an essential tool of the trade.
So in summary, "What is the vocational imperative of a marketing communications career?" As a veteran of the industry, my response is short and passionate: To engineer informative and evocative communication solutions, which educate, enlighten and energize the marketplace!
Exactly What Does a Marketing Communications Professional Do?
Actually, marketing communications professionals do a great deal! They conduct in-depth research and develop communications programs that resolve marketplace challenges facing businesses and consumers. Performing accurate project costs analysis and running quality control are also crucial responsibilities.
A frequently asked query by career seekers is, "When and how does creativity figure into the job equation?" Because the premier goal of marketing communications is to command the attention of market place audiences, creativity and inventiveness are vital components of project development. Infusing the ingenuity and artistry of writers and creative professionals into marketplace strategies is paramount to higher visibility in the marketplace. However, the creative process cannot engage without adequate market research and accurate budget analysis. And certainly not without the clearest understanding of what the client has envisioned.
Further insight into what marketing communications do may be gained from the descriptive titles that professionals assign themselves. A couple of handles penned by two of my associates were "Extraordinarily Creative Problem Solver" and Persuasive Pen Guru." Even after two decades, there is still plenty of excitement in being a "Market Visibility Expert."
Who's Hiring Marketing Communications Professionals?
The demand for market communicators is expansive (as in the ever growing and expanding global marketplace). Within advertising, public relations and marketing sectors, there is always a substantial demand for marketing communications professionals. An "A" list would include advertising agencies, public relations firms, design and marketing companies. Internships and positions vary depending upon degree specialty and experiential background. Applicants with undergraduate degrees in marketing communications and PR may be offered entry level or assistant positions in media buying and planning, account management, market research or creative conceptualization.
Large corporations from every sector of the marketplace that house their own marketing divisions have a demand for marketing communications services. Magazines, newspaper and publishers routinely recruit qualified candidates. Other potential employers are printing, sign-age, billboard, directory, exhibition, catalog and direct mailing companies.
Take Your Marketing Services Directly to Businesses
Working as an independent contractor may be a career option for professionals with an arsenal of related marketing communications experience. Become your own best client by implementing marketing strategies that promote you! Small to mid-size companies which consistently purchase marketing services are a viable target market for your marketing savvy. Offering substantially lower prices than larger agencies with higher overhead allows you to put more bang in clients' bucks. Include graphic design and other creative firms as potential clients, since smaller firms often partner with marketing communications professionals to qualify for major project awards and large contracts.
And of course, the explosive growth of the Wide World Web represents a prime source of internet marketing communications opportunities for independent contractors.
The Challenge of Measuring Consumer Responses
Today if you don your marketing communicator's jacket, you will become a part of the industry's struggle to accurately measure consumer responses to digital and on-line marketing communications. Without standardized industry metrics, marketers are finding it confusing and costly to construct and analyze digital media budgets. In a recent "Everything Google Forum," Al Gore, Nobelist and chairman of Current TV, said, "The measurement of who is receiving messages has still not caught up with the new era." Responding to the measurement urgency, a unified initiative, "Making Measurement Make Sense," was launched in early 2011 by major ad and media organizations. The quest to discover a universal measurement methodology trumpets a major challenge battle for the industry. It could very well flag an exciting entry point for zealous individuals to begin their marketing communication careers.
Mounting Federal Regulation of On-Line Marketing Practices
For individuals planning to specialize in Internet marketing, mounting regulation of online marketing practices by the Federal Trade Commission is an area of urgent concern. In its expanding mission to protect the rights of marketers to effectively communicate to consumers, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) tracks and responds to public policy issues and Federal court cases. Reflecting the industry's consensus of self-regulation, a collaborative effort led by the ANA established a self-regulatory internet marketing program. The program's behavioral guidelines, "Self Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising," have been available to marketing professionals since 2009.
Evoking Consumer Response
Sunrise to sunrise, billions of consumers make quality of life decisions based on their scrutiny of marketplace communications. By the longevity of print or the clarity of digital technology, consumers discover and investigate an ever expanding array of lifestyle options. From hilarious TV ads that entertain, to ones that win awards and elicit applause; from the familiarity of product packaging, to blazing billboards that turn heads; from vivid websites that motivate shopping, to campaign speeches that inspire patriotism; marketing communications excite the senses and evoke responses.
But an unmeasured consumer response is tantamount to no response at all to a marketing communicator. Clients must be given measurable evidence of the effectiveness of marketing communications. Although the more measurable consumer response is the buying and selling activity that vitalizes trade, marketers must also measure and create communication channels for responses beyond money spent. When harvested opinions, experiences and needs of consumers are measured and communicated in the marketplace, they ultimately reflect and affect all facets of society.
Premier Objective: Illuminate the Marketplace
Whenever my marketing communications firm was asked by clients to state our major objective, we responded, "To develop measurable marketplace communications that are illuminated by immeasurable ingenuity and integrity." Not so dissimilar is the major objective for today's advertising, public relations and media industries: To communicate effectively and efficiently in a marketplace, which has been super-sized by an immense on-line economy. However, in the advent of brilliant technology that surpasses the imagination of most, marketing communications have the potential to light up the marketplace like never before.
Throughout my career, I declared my profession to be the wind beneath the sails of trade. My 21st century endorsement to career seekers is much more igniting: Marketing communicators are the high performance oil that make the engines of trade purr – and roar!
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