A day in the life of a marketing executive

The best time to be a consumer is now. Ample choices, competitive rates, ingenious product tie-ins, and user-centric models of providing services. Given the thousands of options to choose from for most products, any consumer will select the brand which has developed its identity in the market and is equally identifiable to the consumer.

“Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.” — Milan Kundera

This principle in mind, businesses invest heavily in marketing and advertising. Every product purchased is the result of a marketing strategy, which may be in the form of out-and-out advertisements to the mere strategic placement of goods at local grocery stores and large departmental stores.

“It’s not what you sell that matters as much as how you sell it!” — Brian Halligan

This leads us to a few obvious questions regarding the brains behind this entire scheme. Who are the marketing executives deciding the policies? What does a marketing executive do daily?

We bring in for you here, a small snippet about marketing executives and a peep into what happens in a day in the life of a marketing executive.

Who Are Marketing Executives?

The marketing team of any organization is a multi-member team, working in highly collaborative and high-pressure environments. It consists mainly of marketing director/s, marketing executives, marketing managers, and marketing coordinators.

“Instead of interrupting, work on attracting.” — Dharmesh Shah

These represent the various hierarchical positions in the marketing department of the organization. The marketing executive vs marketing manager refers to two distinct hierarchies in the organizational marketing ecosystem.

Unlike the marketing manager, a marketing executive is an entry-level position. A marketing executive means the executive is responsible mainly for implementing marketing campaign ideas and managing their execution.

The role of marketing executives is specialized and requires due training and certifications. Besides, technical skills, soft-skills and communications skills for marketing executives include creativity, collaboration-skills, time-management, persuasiveness, among a host of other interpersonal skills.

Freelancing has seen a rise like never before. However, core marketing is one of the sectors where many professionals, especially those vying for entry-level roles ordinarily prefer entering the workforce by joining in-house marketing departments of businesses or marketing-consulting agencies as opposed to marketing freelancers. The job description of marketing executives depends majorly on the type of organizations and also the product/ services.

Despite the role specifics, certain commonalities are seen in a day in the life of a marketing executive. Though the marketing-executive has a ‘new-workday-everyday’ some of the major tasks a marketing executive performs daily is as follows:

Managing The Mailbox – 8:45 AM

Oftentimes, system reports are generated and sent after the earlier working day ends. It is almost always waiting for marketing executives in their inbox. Similarly, project updates, heads-up on development of new products etc. is also mostly communicated via emails.

In case of international conglomerates or where global freelancers are involved, the time-zone differences mean that some important mail has landed in the inbox overnight.

Social Media Trend Lookout – 9:30 AM

Marketing is no longer constrained to television screens and billboards. It has moved much closer, on to our mobile phones. Digital marketing by itself is an independent component of the marketing world.

Even if the marketing executive is involved in the traditional modes of marketing, social media posts, reactions to their own organization’s and competitors’ social media posts provide valuable insight into the consumer needs and consumer behaviour.

Analytics Tools Overview – 11:AM

Alongside being on top of social media trends, marketing executives also check out the various analytics tools to be updated among other aspects such as the online marketing, most-searched topics and trends in search engine optimization.

…. LUNCH BREAK …. – 12:45 PM

Creating Tools For Data Collection – 1 PM

If marketing were a living organism, data would be the brain. Marketing thrives on a collection of data from users and also non-users of any product or service. To this effect, it is crucial to create the right set of methodologies and tools which would help bring data under the organization’s domain.

For this, marketing executives are often tasked with duties such as sampling, creating feedback/ questionnaires on set parameters, conducting or organizing surveys etc.

Report Generation – 2:30 PM

Analytics tools mostly give out automated reports. That is not the case where in-person surveys and other human-based modes of data collection are involved.

An essential part of the day in the life of a marketing executive involves collating factual data from feeling-centric data-collection.

Data Analysis – 3:30 PM

The data as is reflected through automated and human-generated reports needs to be broken down on several related factors and demographics. This is central to developing the marketing tactics for products existing or in the pipeline.

Analyzing data and reporting the findings or making presentations about it to superiors and colleagues is also among the common responsibilities listed in the job description of a marketing executive.

Cross-Departmental Collaboration – 4:30 PM

Marketing is just as much of a creative process as it is one of data dynamics. A sound marketing strategy needs the marketing executive to work in collaboration with customer-departments, sales-department, finance-segment, designers and production department of the organization.

The marketing executive may have to engage with members from these departments regularly to keep them in the loop about the marketing-strategy and also work with their inputs, wherever possible.

Assist In Creating Marketing Strategy – 5:30 PM

Marketing managers develop strategies building on the groundwork established by marketing executives. Besides the reporting-work stated above and other administrative tasks, marketing executives also have to provide inputs at the brainstorming sessions for the formulation of marketing strategy.

Implementing And Supervising Projects – 6:30 PM

The marketing executives have to observe the stages of on-going marketing projects. They are also expected to keep a tab on the outcomes at specified intervals, even during the life of the campaign. On a typical day in the life of a marketing executive, s/he may be tasked with its on-ground observation and supervision of implementation.

The day in the life of a marketing executive is filled with data-crunching, analysis and creating consumer-centric marketing policies. What’s next? It’s time to go home!

This was a day in the life of a marketing executive. The highly competitive yet mentally stimulating world of marketing is sure to keep marketing-executives on their toes learning, developing class-apart marketing strategies to strengthen brand image and contribute meaningfully and monetarily to organizational-profits.