A popular myth among people nowadays is that if they will go for MBA with marketing as specialization, they will end up doing only a sales job. Every day I find some other person posting a query in various educational forums whether he should take finance or any other course  as he do not want to make sales as their career.

What is marketing? According to Mr Philip Kotler,

“Marketing activities, are those activities which makes the work of sales force redundant”.

Well the definition makes it clear that sale is just a part of marketing and it has many other components also. The question is what are the relevant jobs available for the rest of the components of marketing? Let us see these options one by one:

Advertising

In marketing advertising refers to any paid form of non personal presentation & promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.

Account Manager – An Account Executive maintains relationships and favorable contacts with current and potential advertising accounts. They spend time developing relationships in order to acquire new accounts.

Advertising Manager – An Advertising Manager develops, implements, and manages the company’s advertising strategy, both from a business, sales and technical perspective. It is their job to Initiate and manage discussion and sales with sponsor and agencies.. They are generally responsible for managing a group of advertising sales representatives.

Media Buyer – A Media Buyer is responsible for purchasing media space or time.

Brand Management

Brand Management is a communication function that includes analysis and planning on how that brand is positioned in the market, which target public the brand is targeted at, and maintaining a desired reputation of the brand. The various jobs in this field are

Brand Manager – A brand manager monitors market trends and oversees advertising and marketing activities to ensure the right message is delivered for their product or service.

They work closely with many teams, including product developers, researchers, marketing personnel and creative agencies to make sure their company brand values and image are followed. They work both for consultancies and in-house marketing departments.

Product Manager – Product managers plan, develop, and direct the marketing efforts for a particular brand or product.

Product Development Manager – A Product Development Manager specializes in the development and planning. They are responsible for finding opportunities in the marketing of consumer products

Market Research

Market research, which includes social and opinion research, is the systematic gathering and interpretation of information about individuals or organizations using statistical and analytical methods and techniques of the applied social sciences to gain insight or support decision making.

Research Analyst – A Market Analyst collects and analyzes data to evaluate existing and potential product and service markets. It is their responsibility to identify and monitor competitors and research market conditions or changes in the industry that may affect sales.

Business Analyst – BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, proposes the following definition of a business analyst: “An internal consultancy role that has responsibility for investigating business systems, identifying options for improving business systems and bridging the needs of the business with the use of IT.

Public Relation

The role of people working in this field is to often write press releases to promote new products or to keep the investment community informed of business partnerships, financial results, or other company news. If they are based out of media relations they will spend their time responding to information requests from journalist or pitch stories to the media. The various jobs in this field are.

Corporate Communication Manager – A Corporate Communications Manager creates, implement and oversee communications programs that effectively describe and promote the organization and its products. They often assist in the preparation of presentations and/or speeches geared toward employees and consumers.

Public Relation Specialist – A Public Relation Specialist prepares and disseminates information regarding an organization through newspapers, periodicals, television and radio and other forms of media

Retail Management

Managing the activities that involve selling goods and services to consumers for their Personal, Family or Household use. The profile which we can get in this field is

Store Manager – He is the person ultimately responsible for the day-to-day operations (or management) of a retail store. All employees working in the store report to the store manager.

Event Management

Event management involves studying the intricacies of the brand, identifying the target audience, devising the event concept, planning the logistics and coordinating the technical aspects before actually launching the event. Post-event analysis and ensuring a return on investment have become significant drivers for the event industry.

Event Management – Event management involves studying the intricacies of the brand, identifying the target audience, devising the event concept, planning the logistics and coordinating the technical aspects of an event.

Event Manager – The event manager is the person who plans and executes the event. Event managers and their teams are often behind-the-scenes running the event.

Online Marketing

This type of marketing uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. The jobs involves

Digital Marketing Manager – Develop and implement digital marketing strategies & campaigns with focus on revenue growth and ROI. Manage key marketing channels.

Social Media Manager – Manages the content on Social media and also run campaigns with a focus on revenue growth and ROI.

This is only a small list of job opportunities that one can get after doing MBA in marketing. This is such a huge field that if I start writing about each and every profile, it will become a book instead of an article. So next time when you are confused whether to take marketing or not as you do not want to stick in a sales job, just read this article, it might help you a little bit.

Contributed by Prachi Tewari (Batch 2013, IBS Hyderabad)