How to Become a Marketing Specialist

As a marketing specialist, you can focus on one particular marketing area as part of a larger team, where people work on different projects in which they have a level of expertise. For example, you could specialize in search engine optimization, influencer marketing, or content marketing. A marketing specialist position typically requires you to gain experience in more general roles before moving into an area of specialization, which can help you decide which aspects of marketing interest you. The increase and evolution of digital marketing strategies have led to more possible areas of marketing specialty, such as social media, artificial intelligence, and analytics-based roles.

In this article, you can explore different areas of specialization within marketing and learn more about how to begin a career as a marketing specialist. 

What does a marketing specialist do?

Ultimately, marketing teams implement strategies with goals such as increasing brand awareness, enhancing audience awareness, improving website traffic, finding new leads, and increasing revenue. However, considering the number of different avenues for implementing marketing strategies, the work you perform as a marketing specialist will vary considerably based on your specialization. 

Roles and responsibilities in a marketing team

The company's size and the marketing campaign's goals can dictate the specialties and positions needed on a marketing team. Discover some of the areas of marketing you can specialize in and the role each plays:

Search engine marketing

As a search engine marketing specialist, you may be responsible for improving your client’s web page ranking in online searches. For example, if you represent a health and fitness company, you may want potential customers to find your product or webpage online. You can accomplish this with several SEO tools, such as using keywords on your webpage that match the keywords potential customers are searching for. 

Social media marketing

Social media marketers can increase brand awareness and website traffic by creating a large and engaging social media presence. Your responsibilities can include growing your company’s presence on popular platforms, such as X, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.

Product marketing

When bringing a new product to market, it's the product marketing specialist’s job to develop a strategy for its pricing and promotion. This requires you to gain insights through researching your market or target demographic, such as how the product compares to competitors and whether or not it appeals to your target audience.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is another way for companies to grow brand recognition on social media. With this specialization, you will hire widespread public or online figures to promote your product on their social platforms. It can be especially effective because influencers tend to have an established level of trust with their audience. That parasocial relationship can encourage viewers to try the influencer-recommended products. 

Read more: Influencer Marketing: A Guide to Developing Your Strategy

Email marketing

Email marketing specialists develop emails to send to current and potential customers to inform them of marketing strategies, such as special events and new releases, newsletters, and reminders of items in online shopping carts. It’s a cost-effective way for companies to increase revenue, and you can learn from the data you gain in each campaign to adjust your strategy and find what works best.

Read more: What Is Email Marketing? And How to Do It

What tools do marketing specialists use?

Marketing specialties benefit from using analytics tools, customer relationship management (CRM) software, and content management systems (CMS), among other tools. Implementing analytics tools allows companies to learn what strategies and campaigns successfully improve brand awareness and optimize return on investment. CRM software enables you to connect with potential and current customers and manage marketing campaigns, while a CMS can help simplify content creation and website management functions.

How to become a marketing specialist

You may need to meet education and experience requirements on your journey to becoming a marketing specialist. Once you gain some experience, you can narrow your focus and explore what specific areas of marketing you would like to further your career. Take a closer look at the steps involved in becoming a marketing specialist. 

Step 1: Earn a bachelor’s degree. 

To qualify for a marketing specialist role, you must complete a bachelor’s degree relevant to your field. Applicable bachelor’s degrees include business, marketing, advertising, or a similarly related degree. Although not always required, earning a master’s degree can increase your earning potential and opportunities for landing a leadership role. 

Step 2: Gain experience.

It can take up to two to five years of experience in a marketing role before qualifying for a specialist position. During your time in a more generalized position, the exposure you gain to the different areas of marketing allows you to learn more about marketing specialties before committing to one specialization in particular. However, some specialist positions, such as social media coordinator, are in high demand and potentially achievable for entry-level applicants who have freelancing, internship, or other previous experience. 

Step 3: Improve your skills. 

Although many marketing specializations exist, many skills have value across marketing fields and are worth including on your marketing specialist resume. Additionally, having a solid foundation of skills can give you more options as you progress in your career. Beneficial marketing skills worth developing include: 

• Analytics tools: Marketing analytics tools such as Tableau or Google Analytics can help you gain insight into how users engage with your website or social media presence.

• Project management: Marketing professionals are often involved in multiple projects simultaneously, and project management skills can help you stay focused and organized. 

• Market research: Marketing specialists need to understand why customers act the way they do and to have a big-picture view of the overall market they’re in. Developing your market research skills can help you understand your market positioning. 

• Communication skills: As a marketing specialist, you may need to communicate brand messaging to potential customers and effectively within your team. 

• Content creation: No matter your specialty, marketing is about telling stories, often through creative, engaging, or helpful content. You may use content to communicate your brand message and values to potential customers. 

• Budgeting: Every marketing campaign has a budget, and your ability to spend funds precisely and strategically can help you stay on track.

• Creativity: Potential customers tire of the same marketing strategies in a saturated market. With so many competing products, you may need to think creatively to capture their attention. 

Salary and job outlook

According to data from Glassdoor, marketing specialists earn an average yearly salary of $59,812 [1]. The industry you work in contributes to marketing specialist salary averages, with technology, health care, finance, and telecommunication as some of the top-paying industries. Marketing specialists have a positive career outlook, with growth projections from 2022 to 2032 coming in at 13 percent, much higher than the national average for other positions [2].

Similar roles to a marketing specialist

With marketing encompassing many different roles, you can find numerous job titles on your career path. Some marketing roles among possible variations include:

• Brand strategist

• Content specialist

• Digital strategist

• Internet marketing specialist

• E-commerce content specialist

• Marketing communications specialist

• Social media strategist

• Email marketing strategist

• Web marketing specialist

Get started today

As a marketing specialist, you can choose from many different areas to focus on, including search engine optimization, email marketing, influencer marketing, product marketing, and more. To start a career as a marketing specialist, you can begin by earning your bachelor’s degree and developing skills or gaining experience in a marketing generalist role. 

On Coursera, you can find highly-rated courses to help you take the next step in becoming a marketing specialist. Earn a Meta Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate, where you can learn job-ready skills to establish an online presence and build effective campaigns. Digital Marketing Specialization from the University of Illinois is a popular option that covers relevant topics from search engine optimization to digital marketing analytics.