5 tips to advance your career to Marketing Manager

As a Marketing Executive or Senior Marketing Executive, the chances are that you want to get ahead in your career and become a Manager in the near future. However, it’s not always obvious what you need to do in order to progress. 

With the average Marketing Executive / Senior Executive spending just 2-3 years in their role before being promoted to Manager, here are 5 top tips on what can you do to get ahead of the competition and get one step closer to that next promotion.

Evolve your role from supportive to strategic

As an Executive, one of the most common challenges you may face is being able to demonstrate your strategic thinking rather than simply working reactively to support the team and senior stakeholders.

One way to set yourself apart from your peers is to provide consultative advice to your stakeholders. So, for example, if you are given a presentation to work on, don’t simply do what is asked of you.

Instead, ask questions about who the target audience is, the purpose of the presentation and how this fits into the company’s overall strategy. Then, offer your stakeholders suggestions on how to improve it. This demonstrates strategic thinking which is essential when you get to Management level.

Take the lead on projects and initiatives

A common frustration some Executives find when working on a project or campaigns is that the more senior members of the team can sometimes take credit for its overall success, leaving the Executive feeling that their efforts and contribution have not been recognised.

It’s important to take ownership of your own contributions to tasks and to speak up to ensure that senior stakeholders are aware of the part you have played in the success of the project. Keep a record of your key achievements and bring these up at your next appraisal to ensure you get the recognition you deserve.

Training and Development

In the field of marketing, learning never stops! It is important to keep your skills up to date in line with the latest trends and technologies. If your firm isn’t offering you regular training and development, then make sure you ask for it!

Alternatively, if your firm isn’t in a position to offer you formal training, there are plenty of online learning platforms you can benefit from to ensure you keep on track and your skills refreshed. 

Learning new skills is always going to benefit your CV when it comes to looking for your next move or when requesting that next promotion.

Make it clear to your manager that you want to progress

Managers are busy people and your career progression might not always be at the top of their list of priorities. So when you’re assigned a project to work on, let your manager know what you want to gain from this and make it clear to them that you want to progress. It may be worth asking them for a meeting to discuss your career plans and ask them to set you objectives to work towards. Don’t forget that if you don’t ask you don’t get – so there’s no harm in having the conversation early on.

Be commercial

A key skill of any marketing manager is the ability to be commercial and prove the return on investment of key projects and campaigns. As an Executive, when given a project or campaign to work on, ask what the key success metrics will be and see if you can get involved in tracking and reporting on these. This will help you to become more commercial and think about how your marketing is affecting the bottom line – something that will always be of interest to your senior stakeholders!

So there you have it, 5 action points to get you one step closer to that promotion. Good luck!