What People Wish They Knew About Marketing

It’s harder than it seems to get a job

Marketing is a popular industry that many people of different backgrounds go into. However, hearing back from a company or landing an interview is harder than it seems.

“I thought it would've been easier to find a job. I’m lucky that I did find a job in the end— I think everyone will if they keep looking. It’s just not easy. I thought I had a substantial amount of experience under my belt, and I still wasn't getting responses from so many companies, so that was a harsh awakening.”

– Marketing Assistant on the Innovation Team, The Boston Beer Company ‘21

Independence

“For the job experience, I didn't expect I would have this much independence, maybe that's atypical just because of the role. The sales stuff is a bit more structured, but with marketing they're open to us doing anything on campus and just running it by them; it really works like that, which is cool. It's cool to see that other people around me have been doing some super cool stuff too.”

– Student Marketeer at Redbull ‘22

Soft skills

“I didn't expect to pick up so many soft skills. I learned a lot about marketing, growth, and the technical side of things, but a lot of my work also has to do with managing clients and expectations and working with people and different departments and people who have different skill sets than me. I think I really developed a lot of soft skills that I imagine would be useful in any future career in business that I might choose.”

– Marketing Associate at Launch Pop ‘24

Commitment is more important than you might think

While it is one thing to get the position, it is easy to differentiate someone who puts effort into the work from another who merely gets things done. Make sure to put as much into the work as you expect to get out of it.

“The entire quality of the work depended on how committed I was to doing it. The range of marketing products that were put out was insane. Some had zero research done behind them; others were incredibly researched and performed better. I didn’t really realize that you could go into one of these marketing internships and it was pretty much entirely based on your own initiative.”

– Marketing Intern at Students for Justice ‘24

Is Marketing Right for Me?

Why you should go into marketing:

“The big thing was I knew I wanted to go into some form of business, but I really wasn't sure what that meant because business is so broad. I'm a pretty creative person and I’ve always had this artsy side, so I felt that marketing was a cross between creativity and also my analytical side.”

– Marketing Associate at Launch Pop ‘24

“One of the main things was I wanted to be able to work really closely with people because I've always been interested in why people want the things that we want and relationships and how they form, and I feel like a lot of these skills I’ve been able to pick up in marketing.” – Marketing Associate at Launch Pop ‘24

“I found that I liked applying psychology to consumer behavior and thinking about the market in terms of the psychological means of understanding it. My major turned me onto that professional track. I also do visual arts, so thinking creatively was something I was looking for in a job. I really just wanted to have a track that is pretty loose, and not like finance where it's super cut throat, and you get to think out of the box and you get to work on really cool projects as well”

– Marketing Assistant on the Innovation Team, The Boston Beer Company ‘21

Who makes a good fit?

Creative thinkers

“Being a creative thinker is obviously really helpful when it comes to marketing. If you’re working on a campaign or project that is trying to elevate a brand or do a rebrand, you need to attack it in a type of way that people would not. Being able to think outside the box is definitely something”

– Marketing Assistant on the Innovation Team, The Boston Beer Company ‘21

Good research skills

"There’s an analytics part with surveys and data that need to be broken down so u can establish a cause and effect. And there’s research, and that’s a full half of it – you just do research about things people are interested in and what effects things have. For that, you have to be interested in quantitative and qualitative research. If you're really interested in figuring out how things work and why they have an effect on people, it’s a good fit. If you’re good at math, you can do the data part. If you’re good at social science research, you can dive into the qualitative stuff.”

– Marketing Intern at Students for Justice ‘24

You can understand a variety of perspectives

When organizing a marketing push, many factors come into play: the wording, the design, the conducted research. For each of these facets, understanding your target audience is key. With the ability to step into the consumer’s shoes, you can develop pathways for your marketing campaign that will lead to the successful launch of your product.

“Sometimes I’ll be thinking, ‘How do I market better to this one audience?’ and you really have to put yourself in their shoes and then you have to see yourself as the consumer and then try to think of what the consumer would want. It's pretty personal, and having a good instinct for what consumers want is pretty helpful.”

– Marketing Associate at Launch Pop ‘24

Succeeding in Marketing

Cater your resume & cover letter

OCS has great resources for creating resumes and cover letters for different industries. However, going one step further and tailoring your application materials for the specific company you are applying to can go a long way.

"Catering resume and cover letter to the specific job you’re applying for even though it’s kind of a lot of work and grueling. It’s kind of important because what I did find was that the jobs where I sent in my standard cover letter, which was kind of general, and my resume, those were the jobs I didn’t really hear back from."

- Marketing Assistant on the Innovation Team, The Boston Beer Company ‘21

Take initiative

“I think part of it is having a take-initiative attitude toward marketing. You can get away with not doing the research and just building something that looks cool and you can put it out and nobody’s going to notice– especially the people looking at the ads– but if you actually care about doing your best and if you're an action-taking kind of person, then you can improve the quality of your work.”

– Marketing Intern at Students for Justice ‘24

“On the sales side, a lot of follow-up is involved. That’s been a lot of what I've been doing— really trying to build relationships with different restaurant owners— and thinking creatively about how to pitch something based on their needs.”

-- Student Marketeer at RedBull '22

Get experience on campus

Although prior experience is not always necessary, there are many organizations on campus that can help you get experience in marketing and business in general before going into the professional world.

“Through my experience on campus, I knew how to use all the software, like photoshop. The hard skills. Spending time in marketing and thinking about the things makes you much faster at recognizing exactly when a trend is important and how to frame certain things so that they can be actionable. If we’re thinking about how to create ads for a specific population, I've already got an intuition built around that where I know how to look at different groups and see how you can frame things differently.”

– Marketing Intern at Students for Justice ‘24

Networking

As with many industries, networking is a one of the best ways to learn more about and get involved in marketing. Whether you are looking to conduct informational interviews or fill a vacant position, taking the time to talk to someone who has been in your shoes is a great way to spend any free time you have.

Cold emailing

Cold emailing is a great way to get more of a feel for what marketers do or whether or not it is the right job for you. Taking a chance and emailing someone about your excitement regarding the work they do can go a long way.

“I would definitely recommend reaching out to Harvard alumni and even having some connection— like oh, I was a student athlete as well. If u reach out to someone from the same house or something like that, i think they’re even more likely [to respond]. In the past I've just reached out to Harvard people and they’ve responded.”

– Student Marketeer at Redbull ‘22

Use LinkedIn

LinkedIn is home to many professionals in a variety of industries including marketing. In addition to being a great place to start looking for people to network with, LinkedIn also has posts with job opportunities that you can take advantage of.

Stay open minded

“You never know who you're going to meet and how they're gonna come back into your life, so even if this person isn't necessarily in a field that you think you're interested in or if you take a look at their background and you don't really know, just go for it because you don't know what you might learn. I talked to so many people in a bunch of different fields. Staying open to that has been a great learning experience. Don't close yourself off to things that might not seem like your cup of tea at first.”

– Marketing Associate at Launch Pop ‘24