Are you interested in earning a degree-or heading back to school? If you're having trouble deciding which program to enroll in, consider earning a business degree with a marketing concentration. These programs combine the fundamental management, finance, and project management skills taught in a general business degree with the specialized research and communication skills necessary for effective performance in marketing.
Strong business administration competencies can be applied to job opportunities in a broad range of different organizations. This versatility makes business degrees popular-so popular, in fact, that the majority of bachelor's degree graduates in 2006-2007 were business majors, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. At the master's degree level during the same year, business was second only to education in terms of degrees awarded.i
Adding a career-focused concentration program to your business degree could help you stand out from the crowd of other business degree holders.
Why Marketing Matters To Businesses
People often conflate marketing with advertising. While it's true that marketing and advertising are very closely aligned, they're not the same thing. Advertising involves the creative and organizational process of putting together ad campaigns and launching them. Marketing is the process of researching your business's potential consumer base.
Market research helps businesses understand who their potential consumers are, what they want, and how best to meet their wants. With solid marketing analysis, businesses can create better products and services, and advertisers can create compelling campaigns aimed at the right audiences. Marketing is therefore a major component of business management.
Undergraduate Business Degrees - Marketing Concentration
An associate or bachelor degree in business administration can prepare you to compete for entry-level positions in business or marketing. You'll learn the fundamentals of business administration: finance, accounting, statistics, organizational management, and the basics of business law.
Additionally, your marketing concentration should aim to teach you how to:
- Understand how marketing can be deployed to support organizational goals
- Perform marketing research, including analysis, creating a marketing strategy, and delivering results or findings
- Understand how new developments in communication affect marketing, including Internet marketing, viral marketing, etc.
- Take regulatory, economic, social, technological, and other factors into consideration when planning marketing activities
An MBA with a Marketing Concentration
Advanced Analysis: MBA - Marketing Concentration
Experienced professionals with a bachelor's degree may find that after several years in the field, their skills need refreshing. Or, they may be in a non-business-related field and decide to pursue a new career path. Anyone seeking higher-level, specialized training in marketing that's also industry-current should consider an MBA with a marketing concentration.
MBA programs that concentrate in marketing should prepare graduates to gain mastery of research techniques and statistical analysis. As most MBA students aspire to upper-level career paths, a master's degree program will emphasize management-level decision making with respect to marketing. Graduate programs also focus on marketing at the global level, and usually undertake a more intense examination of new technology and media for marketing.
Projected Job Growth For Marketing Occupations
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes yearly projections of job prospects for different occupations. These projections estimate how many new positions an occupation will add over the next ten years at the national level (local markets will vary). The BLS estimates that between 2008 - 2018, the national workforce should grow by 7-10%.
Business positions related to marketing are expected to experience slightly higher than average growth. For example, if you are interested in pursuing a career path that leads to a sales management or marketing management job, those positions are expected to grow at a rate of 13% nationally.ii
This article is presented by BusinessDegrees.com, your online resource for information about business degree programs.
BusinessDegrees.com does not guarantee employment or salary.
References:
ihttp://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=37
iihttp://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos020.htm
