Jobs Kenya – What Qualifications do I need To Pursue a Marketing Career

To begin with, you need to understand that a Marketing Career is not in and of itself an independent profession. Usually, if you are going to go for a marketing career, at least in Kenya and I think this is true in most of the world, it is an offshoot of another training program.

That means you are unlikely to get a degree in Marketing. The most comprehensive academic training you will get for a Marketing Career will be in a Business training program. This may be a Business Administration Degree or Diploma. Even the most enlightened training institutions will speak of a Business Administration Degree with Marketing. You can also enter into Marketing from most professional programs by doing certificate courses in Marketing.

You must differentiate between a Marketing Career and a Sales Career. In fact, there are people who would lynch me for even daring to put sales and career in the same sentence. Marketing is a far higher professional course as it entails the entire process of developing a product,
understanding its possible markets, determining the language and communication outlets that will work best for it, arranging the documentation be it communication through media, Public Relations campaigns, all the way to how the actual sales will be handled. It is a sophisticated package, which is why it cannot stand alone.

A sales job on the other hand, as you may note from the information above, is simply moving the product from the warehouse to the consumer. How the product came to be, why its packaging is green and not yellow, why the adverts are in Kiswahili, why it is sold in small retail shops and not in supermarkets, and all other details are the work of the Marketing expert.

Good! Now to answer your question; assuming what you had in mind was a Marketing Career, what do you need to pursue it?

First, a diploma or a degree in Business Administration that specifically has a Marketing component to it. You can also gather a significant amount of information from Marketing Certificate Programs, but you need to really be alert to what you are learning so that you do not duplicate Marketing course 'A' in Marketing course 'B'.

Secondly, you need to love all things logic, planning, and strategy. Marketers are very logical thinkers. You need to appreciate the ability to think through a product or service from an idea to a tangible commodity always keeping the larger corporate values in mind.

Marketers also tend to be very people oriented persons. You must understand people, behavior, motivations, appreciations and a whole lot of things that make people choose certain things to be a successful Marketer.

The most exciting thing about a Marketing Career though is that you can bend and mold it to suit whatever other interest you have. For example, a person who underwent professional training in accounts is likely to Market Accounting Solutions and Products with a lot more intelligence and conviction to consumers while helping the organization they represent achieve their goals.