chief marketing officer Career Path | See the Career Paths People Really Take

vice president of marketing

marketing director

general manager

chief executive officer

advisor

chief marketing officer

senior vice president marketing

president

ceo and president

The Advisor helps students to develop realistic educational career plans through schedule planning.  Their role is to examine long range academic program schedules, assist students in planning a program consistent with their abilities and interests, and monitor student progress toward educational and career goals.  Their responsibilities are to meet with the advisee during orientation, discuss and provide the rationale for institutional policies, procedures and requirements, reinforce linkages and relationships between instructional programs and careers, follow up with the advisee on any report of unsatisfactory work, and approve all designated educational transactions.

The roles of a CEO and President are both executive positions that require strong leadership, strategic vision, and the ability to effectively manage teams. The CEO is typically responsible for setting the overall direction of an organization while the President carries out that direction in order to achieve organizational goals. A CEO is usually focused on developing strategy and long-term planning, while a President oversees day-to-day operations. Both leaders must be able to communicate their vision clearly to employees throughout all levels of the organization in order to execute it successfully. They must also have excellent problem solving skills as well as knowledge in areas such as financial management, human resources management, marketing tactics, etc., depending on the type of business or industry they operate within.

The Chief Executive Officer makes the decisions for a company in how to manage operations and resources.  Their role is to maintain a deep knowledge of the markets and industry of the company, analyze problematic situations and occurrences, and provide solutions to ensure company survival and growth.  Their responsibilities are to build trust relations with key partners and stakeholders, act as a point of contact for important shareholders, review financial and non-financial reports to devise solutions or improvements, enforce adherence to legal guidelines and in-house policies, make high quality investing decisions to advance the business and increase profits, and lead and motivate subordinates to improve employee engagement.

The CMO monitors and approves marketing strategies applied by an organization in order to ensure their efficiency and effectiveness.  Their role is to oversee all activities in the marketing department, and create innovative marketing strategies that build the business’s brand.  Their responsibilities are to develop marketing strategies and plans, achieve sales goals, and work to increase revenue, awareness, respect and relevance among the business’s target audience.

A General Manager is tasked with supervising regular business projects and developing the overall business functions.  Their role is training heads of departments, managing resources, developing strategic programs, creating policies, and communicating business goals.  Their responsibilities are overseeing daily business operations, developing and implementing growth strategies, training low-level managers and staff, creating and managing budgets, improving revenue, hiring employees, evaluating performance and productivity, examining accounting and economic data, researching and identifying growth opportunities, generating reports, and giving presentations.

This GM was inspired after visiting California wine country and moved out to Sonoma County to learn all he could about the wine industry. Learn tips for becoming a GM and getting into the wine industry.

<h2>How I Got Into This Role</h2><p>I'm the general manager of small family winery in Sonoma County. I chose this job after a birthday trip to Northern California and a passion for wine. I decided that I wanted to move out here and learn the wine industry.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>General Manager Requirements</h2><p>So here at a small winery, the requirements weren't many. It was just the ability to wear many hats and work hard and learn as much as you could. General managers at larger wineries, however, would likely have gone to maybe a management program. They would have to have leadership skills to run a team in a tasting room as well as production at larger establishments.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>Winery General Manager Average Day</h2><p>The average day here for me revolves around a lot of customer outreach and answering emails from customers, usually club members. Then it kind of morphs into handling any guests that come into the tasting room and also helping the wine maker with anything that they might need, and reporting all things up to the owner.</p><p><br></p><h2>General Manager Pros and Cons</h2><p>Pros to this job is working in a beautiful place, being connected to nature with agriculture, and then serving up delicious wine to lots of interesting people that visit from all over the country. Any cons to this job would likely just be that you do have to wear a lot of hats, which is fun and interesting, but a lot of times that can be stressful, especially in busier times of the season.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>Tips for Getting Started</h2><p>If you wanted to get into winery and running a small winery or even a large winery, the best thing to do is just to get the experience, always starting out in a tasting room, shadowing a tasting room manager, and then getting yourself into that position and then trying to really shadow a general manager of the winery. Really the important thing is to get your foot in the door just by being extroverted, willing to work with people, and again, really willing to learn.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><h2>Career Tip From My Experience</h2><p>What I would have done slightly differently is probably educated myself a little bit better, whether that would have been with some of the local junior college classes having to do with more of the business side of wine. I was familiar with wine and I can work with people easily, but running the business side, I would say really get yourself familiar with running a business.</p><p><br></p>

A Director of Marketing is responsible for providing direction, guidance and leadership to a marketing department. They typically manage marketing of a business, organization, particular product or group of products.

Discover what it's like to build a rewarding career in marketing. From internships to agency work and in-house roles, learn valuable tips on networking, evolving with industry trends, and staying customer-focused for long-term success.

<h2>How I Got Into Marketing</h2><p>I've been in marketing probably about 15, 20 years. And I always knew I wanted to go into marketing and advertising. I'd seen a show that had a woman who was a successful ad exec. And I just thought it was so cool how she was able to come up with these campaigns and these creative ideas. And there's always something new that she was working on. So that was kind of I guess, my initial inspiration. And because I knew I always wanted to go into marketing at a young age, I chose a college that had a good program for that. So I majored in communications and I minored in marketing.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Tips for Getting Started in Marketing</h2><p>One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give you is as soon as you start college—I mean, if you can do it while you're taking classes, great. If not, load up on internships during the summer. That's just the best way to get kind of real-world experience and figure out which area in marketing or which topic of whatever you're looking at, you want to go in further.</p><p>I had an internship in sports marketing, which I thought would be really cool. Then I realized, hey, that's not really what I want to do. But yeah, had multiple internships and learned a ton that way. Also started to create my network, and creating your network in marketing or sales or a lot of different professions is really important as soon as you start. And so people you meet, even in early parts of your career, can still be ones that stay with you for a long time, either just people that you can bounce ideas off of or you can ask when you're looking for a new job, that kind of stuff.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Working at an Agency</h2><p>One of my internships turned into a full-time job when I graduated, and it was at an ad agency. If you can, working in an agency where you can, whether it's a consulting agency, an advertising agency, anything like that, where you have access to a lot of different markets and types of customers and companies is really valuable at a young age. You typically work really hard at agencies when it's time for, you're launching a campaign or about to launch a new project or something. I mean, the hours get pretty grueling, can work on weekends and late into the nights to get things done, but it's also pretty glamorous. You get to do some cool stuff.</p><p>So I got to work with spirits and beverages, consumer goods, technology, nonprofits, when I was there for about six years, and that was really cool.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Working In House</h2><p>I realized that I really liked technology. So when I was ready to make a change, I went in-house, meaning I went to work for a marketing team that was inside the company. And while that marketing team will still use different agencies or partners for certain things, you're the one, really the expert on the company, the product, the business, to build some things on your own as well.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>What Marketing is Like</h2><p>Typically it's a 40, maybe 50-hour week, it's Monday through Friday most of the time, but when you're in marketing, you also get to go see the customers sometimes. And especially if you're in events marketing or communications or products, you often support trade shows and conferences and things like that. So I've been pretty lucky. I mean, those can be long nights. I mean, super fun stuff. You get to go travel different places and typically fun events you're putting on, things you might not have access to on your own budget, but you do to get in front of customers, to build relationships and that kind of stuff.</p><p>So I've gotten to go to several different countries, lots of different states, and yeah, I've really had some fun times, but you put in the work and that's important. And if you want to move up, you've got to keep learning, keep doing what needs to get done. People aren't gonna just see that you clocked in and clocked out. They want to see that you've got the job done. So you do what it takes to get the job done.</p><h2><br></h2><h2>Key Marketing Skills</h2><p>In marketing, it's changing a lot. I mean, everybody hears about AI, generative AI. And so there's some roles and some things that are gonna change and get a lot easier to turn things around and create content, but you want to make sure that we're creating good content. And in marketing, you have to be really passionate about the customer and always thinking about from the customer's point of view.</p><p>So whether you're doing customer marketing and trying to cross-sell or upsell to other products or capabilities, or you're doing events marketing or product marketing or whatever, you really need to understand what is that customer thinking throughout that process. And so getting that information from your peers, working with your team to create that customer point of view and understanding how they feel across the customer journey is really key part.</p><p>And then figuring out how to use the latest tools, whether that's AI or different data that you can get and triangulate, that's kind of one of the key things in marketing, understanding your customer and knowing how to use data and using that data to track back and kind of inform what you're gonna do next and validate what you've been doing is actually working. So you can't be successful in marketing unless you know how to use data to validate for sure.</p><p>There's a lot of paths you can take when you're in one type of department within marketing. Doesn't mean you have to stay there. You can always go into other parts. So be curious, ask questions, work your network, and you'll have a fun, long career.</p><p><br></p>

The President is the head of a company who collaborates with a board of executives to provide strong leadership.  Their role is to establish short and long-term goals and plans, and oversee the complete operation of the company.  Their responsibilities are maintaining awareness and knowledge of the company's daily finances, analyzing financial reports and budgets, encouraging business investments, looking for alliances, mergers, partnerships and investment opportunities, creating and maintaining relationships with community and industry leaders, reviewing and advising on contracts, and updating and revising plans to increase the company's profitability and progress.

Vice President of marketing oversees strategies and efforts when it comes to marketing to strengthen the position of the company in the market and achieve their desired business goals. They are responsible for identifying and planning annual marketing plans and strategies. A vice president of marketing manages, builds, and coaches a marketing team where they implement marketing campaigns that meet the business objectives working closely with the sales department. They also direct and support market research collection, analysis, and interpret market data for both short and long term forecasts.

The Vice President of Marketing is responsible for leading the development and execution of a comprehensive marketing strategy that drives customer acquisition, engagement, retention, and revenue growth. This role requires an individual with strong creative vision and analytical skills who can develop data-driven marketing plans to increase brand awareness, generate leads and drive sales. Specific responsibilities include: developing strategies for customer segmentation; creating campaigns for product launches; managing digital advertising budgets; overseeing market research efforts to analyze consumer trends and preferences; optimizing website design to maximize conversions from visitor traffic; collaborating closely with other departments on content creation initiatives such as podcasts or webinars; evaluating performance metrics across all channels including email, social media, SEO/SEM, display ads etc.; staying current on industry trends in order to anticipate changes in user behavior or demands.

Chief Marketing Officer Career Path