Marketing Communications Director Job Description

How I Got Into Marketing

I've been in marketing probably about 15, 20 years. And I always knew I wanted to go into marketing and advertising. I'd seen a show that had a woman who was a successful ad exec. And I just thought it was so cool how she was able to come up with these campaigns and these creative ideas. And there's always something new that she was working on. So that was kind of I guess, my initial inspiration. And because I knew I always wanted to go into marketing at a young age, I chose a college that had a good program for that. So I majored in communications and I minored in marketing.

Tips for Getting Started in Marketing

One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give you is as soon as you start college—I mean, if you can do it while you're taking classes, great. If not, load up on internships during the summer. That's just the best way to get kind of real-world experience and figure out which area in marketing or which topic of whatever you're looking at, you want to go in further.

I had an internship in sports marketing, which I thought would be really cool. Then I realized, hey, that's not really what I want to do. But yeah, had multiple internships and learned a ton that way. Also started to create my network, and creating your network in marketing or sales or a lot of different professions is really important as soon as you start. And so people you meet, even in early parts of your career, can still be ones that stay with you for a long time, either just people that you can bounce ideas off of or you can ask when you're looking for a new job, that kind of stuff.

Working at an Agency

One of my internships turned into a full-time job when I graduated, and it was at an ad agency. If you can, working in an agency where you can, whether it's a consulting agency, an advertising agency, anything like that, where you have access to a lot of different markets and types of customers and companies is really valuable at a young age. You typically work really hard at agencies when it's time for, you're launching a campaign or about to launch a new project or something. I mean, the hours get pretty grueling, can work on weekends and late into the nights to get things done, but it's also pretty glamorous. You get to do some cool stuff.

So I got to work with spirits and beverages, consumer goods, technology, nonprofits, when I was there for about six years, and that was really cool.

Working In House

I realized that I really liked technology. So when I was ready to make a change, I went in-house, meaning I went to work for a marketing team that was inside the company. And while that marketing team will still use different agencies or partners for certain things, you're the one, really the expert on the company, the product, the business, to build some things on your own as well.

What Marketing is Like

Typically it's a 40, maybe 50-hour week, it's Monday through Friday most of the time, but when you're in marketing, you also get to go see the customers sometimes. And especially if you're in events marketing or communications or products, you often support trade shows and conferences and things like that. So I've been pretty lucky. I mean, those can be long nights. I mean, super fun stuff. You get to go travel different places and typically fun events you're putting on, things you might not have access to on your own budget, but you do to get in front of customers, to build relationships and that kind of stuff.

So I've gotten to go to several different countries, lots of different states, and yeah, I've really had some fun times, but you put in the work and that's important. And if you want to move up, you've got to keep learning, keep doing what needs to get done. People aren't gonna just see that you clocked in and clocked out. They want to see that you've got the job done. So you do what it takes to get the job done.

Key Marketing Skills

In marketing, it's changing a lot. I mean, everybody hears about AI, generative AI. And so there's some roles and some things that are gonna change and get a lot easier to turn things around and create content, but you want to make sure that we're creating good content. And in marketing, you have to be really passionate about the customer and always thinking about from the customer's point of view.

So whether you're doing customer marketing and trying to cross-sell or upsell to other products or capabilities, or you're doing events marketing or product marketing or whatever, you really need to understand what is that customer thinking throughout that process. And so getting that information from your peers, working with your team to create that customer point of view and understanding how they feel across the customer journey is really key part.

And then figuring out how to use the latest tools, whether that's AI or different data that you can get and triangulate, that's kind of one of the key things in marketing, understanding your customer and knowing how to use data and using that data to track back and kind of inform what you're gonna do next and validate what you've been doing is actually working. So you can't be successful in marketing unless you know how to use data to validate for sure.

There's a lot of paths you can take when you're in one type of department within marketing. Doesn't mean you have to stay there. You can always go into other parts. So be curious, ask questions, work your network, and you'll have a fun, long career.