Marketing career - right fit ?

Thanks for your thoughts, Jerz. It helps. YES, i have given serious thoughts about pursuing an MBA to break into marketing. Infact, i have a plan and have taken the first step by finishing GMAT . Before putting serious money and time, i want to be reasonably sure that the transition is worth.

In my current IT job, i deal with technology and the impact of my work is at a technical level such as reduction of CPU cycles & efficient design of database and applications. Though challenging and financially rewarding, it doesnt excite me. On the other hand, heading a marketing campaign for festivals fired up my soul and i was thrilled to see people discussing about events i promoted & responding to shows in large numbers.

Having said that I assume that my work in a marketing role will be very close to real life things and that my work (or teams work) will have direct impact on business and people. Is this assumption correct?

One thing to keep in mind is that unlike a lot of other business functions and industries, the biggest difference you'll find in terms of the group dynamics and culture in marketing (especially consumer products marketing) is a far greater presence of women at all levels.

In short, if you've spent most of your professional life (and school life) working mostly with guys, an additional learning curve for you will be how effective you will be working with women. For some people, this isn't a trivial adjustment. Men behave differently if the group is mostly men. Likewise, women behave differently in a group that is mostly women compared to a more mixed group and/or if they are a minority in a sea of men. And that gender mix does have an impact on how you (whether you're a guy or gal) are able to be effective and how you behave and how you communicate in such an environment.

Thanks Alex. That's an interesting insight. Fortunately, i have worked in teams with near equal men-women ratio. Most of my bosses have been women.Most importantly, i have a girl friend and an elder sister who have been my friend-mentor-well wisher-partner since high school days. I am very comfortable working with women and that's not a deal breaker for me.

Would also appreciate your inputs to my previous question. Is there a good chance for a marketing MBA guy to get roles that will directly impact business and people? In theory, it should, but practically, does it happen ?

Yes, but as with any job/career your first few jobs will have pretty small responsibilities as you learn the ropes and the company decides how much responsibility you can handle. So while people in marketing have a tremendous impact on people (both the employees you'll work with and ultimately supervise, and consumers) and on the business (marketing is ultimately about growing profits), don't expect that your first marketing job will give you sole P&L responsibility for the company's most important product with an army of analysts under your command. Rather, your first job would likely have you be responsible for a small slice of a larger product (eg develop consumer focused digital marketing strategy for Product X) or you may have slightly more responsibility (eg all consumer focused marketing strategies for Product Y) for a small product where if you fail it won't sink the business.

After some research, B2C Tech marketing has piqued me. This segment of tech industry caters to consumer needs through home use software ( Microsoft, symantec) or through portals on the web (Amazon, facebook).

What are the most common roles taken up by MBAs in this industry segment ? Given my brief profile: https://gmatclub.com/forum/plz-evaluate-indian-it-male-gmat-760-6-yrs-we-gud-ec-116737.html, is it realistic to target such roles post MBA ?

Jerz / AlexMBAappy, your thoughts would be of immense help

There are different types of marketing roles - product marketing of a tech company, PR/advertising, P/L responsibility at a big consumer packaged goods company. I think the roles vary a lot and you should think about what environment you want to be in (big company, small, what tye of product etc...)

Thanks Hoogets25. Appreciate your inputs . I am looking for high level information on different type of roles in Hi-Tech marketing. Given my engineering-IT background, which of these roles can i realistically target ? I would be using this information to finalize my post-MBA goal which in-turn would help me identify a list of B Schools.

I see that "Product Management" is one such role.

Now in a days to build a good career in marketing is very successful part in life.

If you really enjoy marketing, as you say, then moving in that direction sounds like a great choice. I think it's definitely worth it. You won't start off making six figures, but depending on what market you're in, you can come out of school making more than your age!

Typically the post-MBA roles for tech companies are along the lines of
-product marketing management
-product management (if you have EE/CS background)
-sales & operations management
-various typical corporate finance/HR roles

For example for a company like Microsoft you might join one the home entertainment group and work as a product marketing manager for Zune.
Or for Amazon you might own the cosmetics product line and be in charge of growing Amazon's sales in for that product category.

I think you are apt in Marketing.

Marketing is a broad term...
If you have an interest in any industry like high tech, medical, whatever. I would recommend that you get your undergrad degree related to that. After you complete the MBA it will give you an advantage that only have the business credentials. You will also bring to the table skills specific to the industry.

Hi JayKay,

The thing about marketing it that it's one of the broadest discipline, many things fall under marketing, even your job as an IT professional has marketing elements to it - for example, building a search feature on a site to increase site usability. Everyone in every level of an organisation does marketing to a certain extent, from the company's courier who delivers stuff, to the customer service officer who attends to customers, all the way up to the managing director who plans on which global marketing to enter next.

If you want to move on into a marketing career, your IT background will be immensely useful - many of the most successful entreprenuers out there are able to build their product from scratch and then promote it to their target audience - your combination of skillsets make you very independent and self reliant. A great example of someone who possesses adept IT knowledge and sharp business acumen is Sean Parker, co-founder of the file-sharing computer service Napster and the first president of the social networking Web site Facebook.

Having a formal education in business marketing will be beneficial to you in the following ways:

1) It concretizes your knowledge of marketing
Whereas at first you might have just been 'feeling around' and using your instincts to do marketing, you now have knowledge and insights of the strategies and processes you're implementing, how and why they work, and a clear and actionable concepts and theories that you can apply with a higher level of proficiency.
For example - salespeople may know how to make people buy stuff, but if they knew about the 5 stages of consumer decision making, they'd be able to move customers much more quickly into a purchase decision.

2) It expands your knowledge
People who don't have formal marketing knowledge might not feel the need to study business marketing because they think they know all there is to know - this is a very myopic perspective and it only hinders their true potential and growth as a business person. Marketing is a very broad subject, it's very easy to have a shallow understanding of many different marketing related topics like economics, accountancy, finance, business strategy, etc, but having a good comprehension on each of these topics and bringing them altogether for critical decision making is another thing altogether.

I'll stop here first, do let me know your thoughts on my comments

I think it can be make a good fit for marketing jobs. In future to build a good career in marketing will be very successful part in life.

Your sentence doesn't make any sense.

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