Getting into marketing without a degree

[longneckgiraffes]

Is this possible? I am a qualified accountant and am so so bored of it all. Thinking of taking chartered institute of marketing exams then trying to get myself in a low down role and work my way up.
Any advice greatly appreciated as I really don’t want to be in finance forever and I’m finding the salaries aren’t doing so well so want to plan for the future as well.
I’m 33 but I look a lot younger if that makes any difference.

I'd recommend doing the CIM courses. Have you looked at the CIM website to find a study centre?

I haven’t found one. My friend did CIM then went on to do a degree anyway. I’m assuming I can attend classes in London? Thanks

Why would it make a difference that you look younger?

What makes you want to think of moving into marketing?

I accidentally fell into marketing with no relevant qualifications and now love it.

I did my cim qualification a few years back, all done online apart from one exam - these are held all over, I did mine in Manchester.

Most of the marketing team I work in don't have specific marketing qualifications but have relevant experience in other areas that can be applicable.

Accounting could be turned into working with stats and data which are vital for the marketing where I work.

Good luck

@Obviouspretzel it helped me get the more junior accountancy roles as ageism existed in finance so I mentioned it. I couldn’t give a monkeys how I look
I want to go into marketing because I am so lovely and full of life and I hate that I have never found these qualities to be that helpful in my financial roles. I do like finance but it can be draining sometimes when it’s so so serious and it is serious and I act serious but sometimes I want something that’s a bit different.

I think but haven’t asked yet that the company I work with which is small would allow me some work experience if I expressed a wish to get some experience within marketing so I’m hoping they’ll support me but I have to tread a careful line not to threaten them with losing their finance person as well!! I didn’t realise you could do CIM online this is all sounding quite positive.

Lively not lovely

Be an accountant in an advertising agency first and see how you like it. If you do it's easy to move into other roles. None of the people I know jn the industry have specific qualifications for it.

Marketing is also very serious at times. It’s not all ideas sessions. See if you can find a department that will let you shadow or do a weeks work experience before going any further and get a real feel for the daily grind as well as the exciting parts of the roles you may be able to move in to.

I'd definitely recommend doing a CIM qualification - I look for this now when I'm hiring. There are too many people who just fall into marketing and have none of the actual knowledge required! I think your background in accountancy would be extremely valuable. Go for it.

And marketing is so varied, lots of different roles, different types, in-house Vs agency. CIM might be useful to get a foundation understanding but I don’t think qualifications are super essential, I haven’t, and I think only 1 out of the 30 of us where I work have done it? Difficulty you might find say if you were going for an Account Manager role at an Agency is that people might think you’ve misread the job if you’re background is management accounts for example

Do you have a marketing/business development team at your firm? Perhaps request a secondment to see what it is like?

Another one that accidentally fell into it - background was in web and user experience. Digital marketing was a natural progression so I don’t do classical marketing. It’s very data driven - everything I do is about testing, researching, and more testing. We don’t make any decisions on a whim or because it looks cool or whatever, as much as our sales team would love us to

I work in a very niche fintech. What we do is in its infancy so search volumes are low. As such, we have to make each site visit as valuable as we can. My current projects are centred around a website refresh based on user behaviour we’ve gleaned from google analytics, heat maps, eye tracking studies, anonymous prospects data through our CRM and completion of our call to actions. This has meant watching over 2k recordings of actions on our site 🙈🤷🏻‍♀️

Another project I’m doing is building a chat bot to relieve pressure on our sales team answering the same commons questions over and over. This involved knowledge gathering of common questions and answers, then building the thing. Very interesting work but VERY data led.

Marketing isn’t a catch all, you have to decide what area of marketing (and what kind of marketing) you want to work in before figuring out any qualifications. A lot of agencies are far more interested in experience rather than qualifications (especially if you’re interested in the creative side rather than technical, which it sounds like you are if you want to use your personality), but you can’t build up that experience without knowing which section of marketing you want to work in. I’m a senior writer at a digital marketing agency, I do have a degree in English literature but my freelance writing portfolio got me the job - others on my team don’t have degrees.

Interesting that you can do most of the CIM online.

@longneckgiraffes cim.co.uk/study-centres/ I don't know If this will reset itself, but I just typed London in and quite a list came up. I know there are fewer places offering it now than when I used to teach on it, but still plenty around.

You can definitely do CIM online - I did all of mine that way.

I was head hunted from a sales position to work in the marketing department of one of our suppliers. I enjoyed it so much that I did a CIM qualification. I would have gone on to do further CIM qualifications, but I became pregnant with a high needs baby and had to leave work to be her main carer. It didn't stop me from being head hunted back to the same company when she was older.

I did 2 x 3 hour evening classes a week, plus extra study on top of that. It was very stressful as we were very busy at work.

I’m back! Thanks for all this information. Wow it does look like I need to do my research. Any direction as to what u should go into? Ideally I’d get paid fairly well at some point if I choose the right niche?

I’ve spoken to another friend who said I should sit the google analytics tests online. Is this any good?

Sorry, I know no one replied but feeling keener than ever as I open up the long list of wonderful spreadsheets I’ve been working on recently for my accounts and would quite like to see something different in the not do distant future.

I tend to think these days that all marketers should be digitally savvy. So that would mean a broad understanding of social media marketing - constructing posts, awareness of marketing on different platforms, SEO - broad understanding of analytics and data, organic SEO and content marketing and broad understanding of email marketing.

But it depends. Do you want to be a digital marketer or a standard marketer? It would be good to understand marketing concepts and how to apply things - 7 P’s, product marketing, placement, segmenting etc. These aren’t essential for digital marketing but it’s good to have an overview.

Also consider that B2C and B2B marketing are very different skill sets. So in terms of what industries you might want to aim for, charitable and corporate are more thought leadership and awareness marketing whereas consumer marketing is very different. Thinking these kinds of things through might help you decide how/where to focus your training efforts.

Thanks for the reply. I am imaging it would be digital assuming this is a good grounding for future roles. Not sure where standard marketing is nowadays. In accountancy the shift has been massive to get onto more digital platforms so I’m assuming this would be similar for marketing (although maybe I’m incorrect on this point).

Actually a lot of what you mention crosses over to commercial accountancy. I currently work in a retail business which provides both b2b and b2c and there are differences I have to deal with. I have never gone near charity accounts either really as they’re quite different and normally request specific experience, is this the same for marketing? If so I’d probably have to go into a commercial business so I can keep more pathways open in future.

The CIM Diploma in Digital Marketing has a lot of good background/ foundational learning in traditional marketing, which I think is imperative to know and understand. Usually a dm will work with the overall marketing manager / director - who will write the marketing plan and then DM’s work supports those objectives along with others in the marketing team. Traditional marketing is still fundamental and DM is part of a whole.