Business Reality
Marketing is not the advertisement at the end of it
Students see campaigns and assume that is the job. A marketing manager describes the part before — the customer research, the positioning decision, the channel argument — and the part after, where somebody asks what the spend actually returned.
The visible output is the smallest part of the work.
A campaign is what a student sees. What produced it was a decision about who the customer is, what the business is claiming, which channel could reach them and what the company could afford to spend finding out.
And afterwards somebody has to say whether it worked — which is where most of the interesting argument in marketing actually happens.
What a marketing manager actually does
23 topics across 4 areas. Five parts of the job.
Understanding the CustomerEverything else depends on getting this right.6
- Market research
- Customer research
- Segmentation
- Understanding what customers actually want
- Competitor analysis
- Where the current view is wrong
PositioningWhat the business claims, and against whom.5
- Positioning the business
- Building a brand
- What makes a claim credible
- Building trust before selling
- Differentiation that survives contact with a competitor
Generating DemandHow a marketing team works.7
- Digital marketing
- Content marketing
- Social media
- Local SEO and discovery
- Lead generation
- Choosing the right channel
- Working with the sales team
Proving It WorkedThe uncomfortable part.5
- Measuring marketing ROI
- Marketing budget decisions
- What to do when spend rises but sales do not
- Attribution, and why it is contested
- What leadership asks for
Questions students get to ask
- How do you decide where to spend?
- How do you know a campaign worked?
- What is the relationship with sales like?
- What was your most expensive mistake?
- How much of the job is creative?
- What do marketing graduates get wrong?
- What would you learn first if you started today?
How the session runs
A marketing manager takes one real campaign from customer insight through positioning, channel choice and spend, to what it returned — including what they would now do differently. Students then argue a channel decision on a scenario, and put questions to the practitioner.
What your students leave with
- A realistic picture of a marketing manager's work
- How positioning decisions get made and defended
- How demand is generated and handed to sales
- How marketing spend is justified, and to whom
- Whether this is a career worth preparing for
Scheduled sessions
Nothing scheduled yet
Sessions are arranged with a college once a date is agreed. Ask us and we will find the right person for it.
A student rather than a college? See what is coming up, or ask your placement team to host this.
The campaign is the output. The decisions before it are the job.
Tell us who your students are and what stage they are at. Sessions are free for participants.