The marketing field in Australia
Today, professional marketers are represented throughout Australia in all industries, in public and private enterprise, business, not-for-profit organisations and the education sector. Marketing professionals are the custodians of the most important assets in any organisation: customer relationships, brands and information. Never before has development of the marketing profession been more important.
Definition of marketing
Employment market
Marketing salaries
What makes a professional marketer?
Find out more
Definition of marketing
Marketing is an organisational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers, and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organisation and its stakeholders*.
Employment market
Factors that can influence a graduate on which organisation to join include the level of investment by the organisation on marketing spend to align their brand with high-profile events, and a demonstration of an innovative approach towards their brand position in the market.
Some organisations seek graduate marketers either informally or through structured graduate recruitment programs, and graduates can typically expect their first role to be as a marketing coordinator or assistant, providing excellent training for more senior roles. Banks, law firms, some fast-moving consumer goods organisations and larger blue-chip companies are strong supporters of formal graduate programs.
According to the Hudson Employment Expectations report (October–December 2007) employment prospects in the advertising/marketing/media industry are increasing strongly, with 40.5% of employers planning to increase permanent staff. In particular, demand for marketing professionals in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry is particularly strong as FMCG companies rapidly increase investment in branding.
Marketing salaries
Salaries for marketing professionals are highly competitive and have been increasing steadily in recent years. According to leading recruitment specialists approximate average salaries for marketing professionals are as follows:
- marketing graduate $40000
- marketing coordinator $50,500
- marketing analyst $70,000
- brand manager $90,000+
- communications manager $100,000
- marketing manager $120,000+
- marketing director $180,000+.
What makes a professional marketer?
There is no doubt that there has been a great deal of misunderstanding about the true role of marketing. In the same way, outside our profession there is also a lack of understanding about the defining characteristics of a professional marketer.
A professional marketer will be skilled and knowledgeable about a range of disciplines and techniques, including market research, advertising, direct marketing, public relations, pricing, supply chain management and sales, but may use these skills in one area, or many.
A professional marketer is not:
- a technical specialist
- a generalist strategic manager.
A professional marketer is able to embrace the best thinking from both technology and general management.
A professional marketer is not:
- a short-term thinker
- a quick-results person.
A professional marketer thinks long term and strategically, yet is able to respond with speed and agility to seize an opportunity today.
A professional marketer is not:
- someone who would rather work only with those who use familiar, private definitions and cherish the jargon of insiders
- a person who thinks that the language of finance is only for accountants and finance managers.
The professional marketer has embraced the reality of marketing as a value-adding discipline, measured and expressed partly in the language of finance, but rooted in the behavioural sciences that address the way real people feel, think, and behave.
A professional marketer is not:
- an objective analyst, totally founded in the power of logic
- a creative enthusiast, driven by the excitement of a novel approach, of thinking laterally.
A professional marketer blends the discipline of rigorous, analytical thinking with the excitement and spontaneity of novel ideas—for new products, for new communications and new ways of understanding the critical interface between a business and its customers, since it is marketing that is able to develop, test, refine and prove new products and new ideas that truly connect with people.
* definition of the American Marketing Association
FIND OUT MORE
Australian Marketing Institute (AMI), www.ami.org.au , 1800 240 264
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Mark Crowe is the CEO of the Australian Marketing Institute — the professional body for marketing. |