Telecommunications Marketing Manager Careers
The role of a telecommunications marketing manager can vary enormously, depending on the size of a company, which business sector it operates in and how big it’s budgets are.
Typically, a telecommunications marketing manager is a senior position, often with staff reporting in, and in many SME’s a marketing manager may well report in to a managing director and be fully responsible for the marketing function.
Telecoms marketing is a very competitive profession, as increasingly heads of companies are selected from this profession. Often this is the case if the company is ‘marketing centric’, meaning that marketing is put at the heart of what the company invests in, as the marketing philosophy is to put customer wants and needs first. Secondly, marketers are often responsible for a P&L, so they have good financial knowledge combined with what is required to strategically develop the company and a good understanding of the stakeholders in the business. In addition, many of the key elements within a business that propel it’s growth fall under the responsibility of marketing. This would include expanding into new geographic territories, identifying market trends and their relative attractiveness compared to the strategic capabilities of the company; product development, launching new products and services to meet existing customers needs or to focus on new customers.
Other key aspects of telecommunication jobs include identifying routes to market, i.e. channel development and go-to market strategies. These elements would be fused together to create an integrated marketing plan over 1,2 or 3 years which would include how to raise awareness for the company's particular solution to a problem or market need. This could involve advertising, promotions, pricing, PR, exhibitions and online marketing to mention a few of the weapons at the disposal of a telecoms marketing manager with a big budget.
That’s a lot for one person to handle – especially in a fast paced wireless and mobile sector. As a result, larger companies have created specialist positions within their organisations such as Product Managers, New Product Development, Channel Management, Marketing Communications, PR, Internal Communications, Brand Management, Market Research and Propositions Development.
If starting out as a graduate (you will need a degree), entry level is often as a marketing assistant, reporting to a product manager or channel manager in large companies. In smaller companies, where they are not able to employ specialist staff, you are likely to report in to a marketing manager who has responsibility for many, if not all of these things.
The trend is towards specialisation, so you need to work out what area you want to focus on and then work in that niche. This also applies to market sector so, for example, if you take a more traditional route of working in consumer marketing try to stick with that rather than moving over to other sectors like government or enterprise.
In terms of a telecommunications marketing manager's career development, a typical route in consumer marketing would be move through from marketing assistant to assistant product manager, product or possibly brand manager, then on to marketing manager. The next step is director level, though again, it is possible to take on a bigger marketing manager role, perhaps one with EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) responsibilities, before moving up.
Check out the range of telecoms jobs we currently have to offer and take the next step in your telecommunications marketing manager career.
Alternatively, have you considered other career paths? Browse through these examples of careers for more ideas: Wireless And Mobile Sales Management, Wireless And Mobile Software Engineering, Telecoms Hardware Engineering and Telecoms Systems Engineering.
