What You Need to Know About Working in Advertising

Oct. 02, 2022

From the outside, the field of marketing and advertising is exciting. If you live in a big city like New York, you get work on Park Avenue in a swanky office space. Or, you could find yourself on the Lower East Side working alongside hipsters. The careers within the industry are multi-faceted and unique. They require both creativity and tech skills, which come together to build a brand’s awareness, improve customer retention and boost engagement.

Advertising also focuses on creating campaigns that help businesses meet their goals, whether that is encouraging customer to play online casino games or especially around the holidays or when they launch a new product. If you’re interested in finding a position that’s fast-paced, interesting, and allows you to be creative, advertising might be right for you. In this guide, we’ll review the different positions you can apply for and what you can expect throughout your career.

• Careers is Marketing and Advertising

Working in this field opens the door to a variety of positions, all of which are meant to pique the general public’s interest and help companies sell their products. Those who choose this career path usually work on cross-functional teams or are able to perform more than one task to get the job done. You may find yourself creating a written strategy one day and using Photoshop to create visuals the next.

Working in advertising requires specific skills. While some people are self-taught, others who work in upper management typically hold a degree. Creative directors typically have a BA whereas social marketing managers might have learned everything on their own. If your goal is to work in management or as a creative director, the step is getting your degree. Taking out an Earnest private student loan can help you achieve your goals by covering the cost of tuition. Depending on how much you’re approved for, you can cover the cost of attending for several terms or even your entire degree program.

• Stay in the Know

In addition to getting a degree, you also need to stay current with the latest trends. This means staying up-to-date with all the latest marketing trends as well as knowing how to use social media effectively. Marketing agencies look for candidates who understand the best ways to reach their target audience, have excellent communication skills and are not afraid to take on new tasks.

• Skills You Need to Have

In addition to being a people person, you also need to be a problem-solver. Since you’ll most likely work with other team members, you also need to be outgoing and open to constructive criticism.

• Communication: Excellent communication skills are a must. Both written and orally, communication is at the heart of advertising. You’ll be working with brands who may or may not give detailed instructions about what they really want. You need to be able to create strategy and campaign initiatives that help them reach their objectives. Collaboration about different parts of a campaign is also a requirement.
• Time Management Skills: Campaigns run on a timeline. There are deadlines for the completed strategy, another deadline for when the initiatives to be complete and even specific deadlines for each phase of the campaign after it's launched. As such, you need to have sharp time-management skills and be organized. Since each segment relies on the other, it's important not to fall behind schedule. This is even more true if you're working with other people. They're relying on you to complete your portion of the project on time.
• Analytical Skills: Even if you don't work with analytics every day, you should still have fundamental knowledge of how they work and how they influence marketing strategy. As a social media or community manager, you need to understand Instagram or TikTok analytics. These include overall reach and engagement with your community. These two analytics are even more important if you're running ads on social. You need to know that you’re reaching your target audience at the lowest price point possible.

• Career Paths

This field has come a long way since the day of print ads. There are now a variety of roles you can apply for, all of which allow you to use your passion for the field to its fullest advantage. Let's look at them.

• Social Media Manager: As a SMM, you're responsible for creating and managing social media strategy. Your days will be filled with monitoring social media channels, creating visuals or videos, and reporting to the creative director about how a brand's presence is doing online.
• Graphic and Web Design: Most people think about graphic and web design as separate careers. While they do work independently, they also work in tandem with social media managers, ad executives and creative directors. They build and maintain websites, create logos, and different ad elements.
• Marketing Coordinator: If you like connecting all the dots, then this job is for you. As a marketing coordinator, you'll develop strategies and implement them across different teams. You'll make sure they're carried out according to the brand's or client's specifications. You'll also be responsible for tracking results from ads and determine if they're performing as expected.
• Copywriter: Agencies also hire copywriters to write the copy on the ads. It's these words that attract and retain their ideal customer. They may also want blog posts written, which are readers view as entertaining or educational. To be successful, you need to understand how SEO works and create copy that makes the reader want to stay on the page or click the ad.
• Account Executive: In this role, you're the liaison between customer and company. You may help a client create a winning strategy, which is then passed on to the production team. You'll report back to the client on a regular basis and let them know how things are going. It's not uncommon to manage several clients at a time, so if you don't work well under pressure, you may want to look for a less stressful position.
• Creative Director: As the head honcho, you're responsible for organizing, implementing and making sure that all marketing efforts go according to plan. You might also be involved in the creating the layouts for photoshoots and any other type of creative processes.