Marketing and communications

The jobs it covers

18 occupations sit in this profession, on the government’s own classification. Each one is a page: what the work involves, what you decide, and how you are measured.

How you get into it

The usual way in is through doing one channel well enough that somebody hands you a second. Social, content, events and email are the common first jobs, and none of them requires a marketing degree.

It is a portfolio profession before it is a qualified one: what you have actually shipped counts for more than what you have studied, and the qualification is what steadies that later.

Journalism, design and agency account work all feed into it sideways, and people arrive from all three.

The regulated sales and marketing courses, and who awards them

Who employs it

The dividing line is agency or in-house, and it changes the work more than the sector does. An agency gives you many clients and fast variety; in-house gives you one product and the chance to see a decision through.

Small organisations want a generalist who can do a bit of everything. Large ones split into brand, performance, content and product marketing, and the specialisms diverge quickly.

Charities, universities and the public sector run substantial communications functions where the measure is understanding rather than revenue.

What to expect

The clearest split in this family is between the measurable half and the persuasive half, and they reward different people. Performance marketing is analytical work; brand and communications are judgement work.

It is one of the families most changed by the tools in the last two years, and the durable part is knowing what is worth saying rather than producing more of it faster.

Moving up usually means owning a budget and then owning a team, and plenty of good practitioners stop deliberately at the first.

The professional body

Other professions