What a marketing manager really does
You decide where the marketing money and the team's time go, then answer for the results every week.
FieldBusiness
Preparation (O*NET Job Zone)Considerable preparation needed
What the work involves
What fills a typical week for marketing managers, built from O*NET occupation data.
- Review campaign and sales numbers and move budget toward what is working
- Plan and forecast launches so products sell at a profit
- Set prices and offers with finance and product teams
- Lead and coach a team of marketers and check their work
- Read market research and turn it into strategy
- Review and edit ads, emails and pages before they go out
- Spend much of the day on calls and in email with sales, product, agencies and leadership
What the days are like
What people in the job know
- Long weeks are almost universal. Duration of Typical Work Week: 84% more than 40 hours (O*NET Work Context)
- Phone and email fill every day, so much of your work happens in conversation, not in documents. Telephone Conversations: 90% every day; E-Mail: 100% every day (O*NET Work Context)
- Your calls move company results, and people notice. Impact of Decisions on Co-workers or Company Results: 70% very important results (O*NET Work Context)
- Deadlines hit every week. Time Pressure: 36% every day, 59% once a week or more (O*NET Work Context)
- You set your own priorities, which means you also own the tradeoffs. Determine Tasks, Priorities and Goals: 88% a lot of freedom (O*NET Work Context)
How people get into it
Job Zone 4: 80% of new hires have a bachelor's degree, often in marketing, business or communications; a small share have a master's or MBA. This is a management role, so most people first spend several years as a marketing specialist, coordinator or analyst and get promoted.
The Firstday trial, easy to hard
Three simulated tasks at Kibblewise, a fictional company, with AI coworkers who message you, react to your work and coach with questions. Nobody scores you.
What the trial can't show: The trial cannot show months of results playing out, real relationships with a team you manage, or the politics of a large company. You will not run live ad accounts or real marketing software. Coaching a team member is shown in one short conversation, not the ongoing work of managing people.
Reading about it is one thing.
Find out how the work feels to you before you spend on a degree, course or job change. Your first trial is free.
Other careers you can try
Job details on this page are built from O*NET OnLine, 11-2021.00. This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.