What Should Students Know Before Entering Marketing & Advertising?

Over the course of the last few years, I've interviewed dozens of fresh graduates for full-time and internship positions in marketing and advertising.

These students differed by age and by country, by University and degree, by gender and height. But one area in which they did not differ was their shared misunderstanding of the requirements and functioning of the world marketing and advertising.

It's not surprising, and it's not their fault. This isn't something we can blame on ignorance, or worse, on simply "being a millennial".

Marketing and advertising has drastically changed over the course of the last few years, so much in fact that Adobe's Digital Distress study claims that marketing has changed more in the last two years than in the 50 years before it.

It's telling when less than half of digital marketers feel less than proficient in their own role.

To be fair, there's a lot of internal debate in the industry as to what a marketer should be doing today. Of course, a lot of the debate originates from the deeply seeded concern that once "traditional" marketers accept the expanded role of today's marketer, they will need to educate, train and rewire themselves.

So what should a student entering marketing and advertising know today? What are the requirements and expectations? Here are some of my top-line thoughts, based on what I've seen in the industry.

1. Self-Education is Absolutely Key

Sure, most companies will tell you about their training programmes and seminars, tell you about how they'll send you for bootcamps and third-party led initiatives to keep you up to speed with the industry. If you're going to rely on quarterly or bi-annual events to keep up to speed with marketing, you're going to be a dinosaur and outdated at the age of 23.

There are a plethora of blogs and marketing news sites solely dedicated to breaking news about Google's changes to the search algorithm, a new Facebook ad format type, data that proves that print doesn't work as well as radio, or that footfall in a specific store dropped because of an operational change they made.

If you want to stay ahead of the curve, on the ball and be a true partner to your clients or to your own brand - you need to spend a minimum of an hour catching up on marketing trends and news.

2. Data is an Integral Part of Marketing

No, you will not spend your time locked up in a room with a glass of whiskey thinking up of new creative ways to sell a product or to connect with the consumer, or think up a new logo. 

A large part of your job will involve you spending time with a spreadsheet, or with various tools that provide you with the data to make smarter marketing decisions. The ability to work with numbers is an extremely crucial requirement in marketing today. 

You need to be aware of what a good conversion rate is, how to calculate click-throughs to sales, how to attribute sales to specific channels, conduct an analysis of which channels worked better than the others in driving awareness and engagement and use all of that to make better budgeting decisions for future campaigns. Learn to love data and Excel.

3. Understand Terminology - it Saves Time

This is potentially more important if you're working in an agency and are looking to form a strong connection with your client. If you don't understand the basic terms that are used in the industry - such as CTR, CPC, Inbound Marketing, Conversion Rate, A/B Testing, Bounce Rate, CMS, LTV - so on and so forth - you're going to form an immediate disconnect in meetings and with clients.

There's a difference between bullshit terms and between those that are actually useful, so don't pay heed to anyone that says that any of the above is "marketing jargon" and you should learn to look past it.

When a client asks you in the meeting to carefully monitor the CPL of the next campaign because they can't afford to go above $3.5, you should know what they're talking about without looking around at the others in the room hoping they'll make sense of it for you. 

4. Business Understanding is Critical

This is important for both agency-side and client-side marketers. Let's say you work for Adidas, and are a fantastic marketer that can measure absolutely everything, even the intent to buy down to an actual believable figure, but you don't understand the sporting goods industry - you're not going to be worth very much to Adidas.

Similarly, if you're working on the agency side and have a client in the insurance market, and you don't quickly learn about the ins and outs of the insurance market, in addition to the marketing function of the insurance market and companies - you're going to always keep falling short.

Being a good marketer is one thing, but you'll never be a great marketer unless you understand the industry you're trying to market in as well.

5. This is a Communications Industry

Everything we do in this industry has to do with communication at the end of the day. From verbal to written, your communication has to be absolutely on point. If you got a "B" in school for communication skills, that qualifies as an "F" in the marketing industry.

From text messages to e-mails, from elevator pitches to presentations, from a casual chat over coffee to a work dinner, the strongest communicators almost always end up being the best marketers.

People shouldn't think of it as a chore to open and interpret your e-mail. Instead, they should look forward to your e-mails. They should commend you for the clarity in your thought and speech, your ability to put down a trove of thoughts and musings into a linear e-mail or a presentation.

Practice makes perfect, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't obsess over it in your early days.

There are a number of other things that marketing students should know about before entering the industry, no list can be exhaustive. I felt the above are the more important ones, so I'll put a few more in bullet points to help you better prepare for a foray into marketing.

• Be prepared to make mistakes, and ensure that you're working for a boss that is prepared to have you make mistakes too.
• Feeling lost comes with the territory. Focus on how you're going to ensure you don't feel lost the same way ever again.
• Get used to long hours. If you don't enjoy spending time doing what your job is, you're in the wrong industry.
• Talk to people. Conversations with people in the office lead to ideas, lead to a better understanding of how things work.
• Be critical. Learn to break down a problem into multiple parts, and learn to solve each of those parts to gain a better understanding of the big problem.
• Avoid people that are "jaded" by marketing. You'll find plenty of these people around, the negative pessimists that call it all a sham. They're not worth the industry's time, they probably won't be around for long, so don't bother hanging around with them either.

Are you new to the marketing industry? Have you worked with a lot of graduates in marketing? What else have I missed out on? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!