Do You Need a University Marketing Degree to be Successful in Marketing?

How many people do you know working in the area they studied at university?

When I started my career in marketing, tertiary qualifications were essential, but my degrees did not fully prepare me for working in marketing. Sadly, not much has changed since then.

I chatted with my friend Marcus Dunn about marketing education and the essential skills up-and-coming marketers need on the Got Marketing? podcast. Here are some key takeaways from our discussion.

Do you need a marketing degree to become a successful marketer?

No. You need real-world experience.

Is a university degree valuable?

Yes. Here's why.

Why university marketing degrees are valuable:

• A university education teaches you many other relevant skills, such as research and analysis.
• A degree looks good on paper, which may help you get some jobs.

However - I'm an employer, and I could care less whether you have an official marketing degree. If you have demonstrated that you know how to think like a marketer, I will give you a job!

• A marketing degree provides you with some great foundational strategic knowledge.

My degree taught me strategic foundations, and I'm grateful for that because I can then apply those strategic foundations to almost anything.

Even though I'm not a social media marketer, I do pretty well on my social media. That's because I approach my social media like every marketing channel - from strategic-first principles rather than tactics-first.

The problems with current marketing degrees:

• Digital marketing is a fast-changing industry.

The digital marketing world has changed dramatically in the last three years and isn't slowing down.

"The curriculum you started with is what you have finished with and it's probably three years out of date." - Marcus Dunn

• Degrees are associated with a high risk of burnout.

How many people do you know working in the area they studied at university?

"No one is doing what they actually have studied because I think they are probably burned out during the process."

"You come out of it three years later with a really big debt and not a lot of real-world experience." - Marcus Dunn

• University degrees lack real-world experience.

We learn by doing.

"It's comfortable learning things. It's very comforting that you've always got something extra to follow, but you've got to get to a point where you've actually got to start doing it and putting it in practice as well."  - Marcus Dunn

What are the essential marketing skills all marketers should have?

All marketers should have an understanding of the fundamentals

"You need to have an understanding of the fundamentals. This is what you can learn at university. You can also learn it in a course." - Marcus Dunn

You need to have an understanding of the "why" of everything you're doing.

Let's get specific...

You need to understand the anatomy of a marketing funnel. What is a marketing funnel? This speaks to how customers make decisions. Whether you sell Ugg boots or life insurance, customers follow a similar decision-making process. We need to understand what that looks like.

Then, we need to understand basic brand strategy. Who are we targeting? What do we want to be known for? How will we achieve this?

This is the fundamental marketing knowledge that all marketers need.

All marketers should have these basic technical skills:

Some things are a one-off that we can outsource – like an entire visual brand identity. We can outsource big projects like logo development and the visual branding suite. We can also outsource little tasks like someone doing hashtag research for Instagram. But if there is something that you are going to be doing week in and week out, then I think it is an essential skill that you need to learn.

As a minimum, you need to be able to update your website.

Being able to make content updates on your website is essential. We must take back control of our business and not constantly rely on third-party suppliers and staff members to do the simple recurrent tasks.

When I say content updates, I mean adding videos, adding links, cloning landing pages, updating all the content, and creating a simple web form or opt-in form.

Being able to update your website is absolutely essential because the next essential skill is that you can create and trigger email sequences. You need to know how to create the web form to trigger an email sequence.

Email marketing has delivered the best results for marketers for ten years. Whether you are in e-commerce or a service-based business – like Campaign Del Mar – email marketing is your best bet, particularly for small businesses.

Creating and triggering email sequences is essential because this is something you will do week in, week out, month in, and month out.

You should also be able to make a simple video and edit it using a basic video-editing app. Video marketing is an essential skill. You should also be able to take a decent photo on your smartphone.

Want to become a successful marketer? Focus on a particular area of marketing.

Focus and play to your strengths and interests.

"I think you need to identify what you're good at and not spread yourself over every single topic. Work out what works for you. Find a couple of skills that synergise with it." - Marcus Dunn

Know enough to be dangerous across the marketing landscape but then choose to double down on a niche in a particular area and get known for that.

You can be highly successful if you specialise in a particular area and do that exceptionally well. Neil Patel became famous because of SEO and blogs. The way that he marketed his business was with these incredible high-value blog posts. Everyone has read a Neil Patel blog post.

He started introducing offers in amongst his blogs and then had this great search engine optimisation. He could focus less on social media and email marketing. His blogs were his marketing engine. We see people that are Instagram coaches. All they do is Instagram. They do it exceptionally well. They are very successful, and it's all they do.

I love campaigns. There are not a lot of people focusing on integrated marketing campaigns. It's what I'm known for. It's what I love. I can become a specialist in campaign marketing even though I am a generalist marketer. I know all the things. It's that I choose to play in this particular area.

Want more? Listen to the full episode here, or via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Want to join a community of fellow marketers as we share marketing highs and lows, and answer your questions? Come join us over on Facebook in our free For the Love of Marketing group.