How to Break Into A Career in Marketing

Want to break into a career in marketing?

But maybe you’re wondering, “Where would I even start?”

Great question. ‍ Because the field of marketing is so broad, it can be easy to feel lost or intimidated by all the different options.

And also, because it’s so broad, if you type “marketing” into almost any jobs board, you’ll see just how many different titles and types of work exist.

Study the Greats

But before you get overwhelmed, take a deep breath. And read on to learn about great opportunities to land entry-level marketing jobs without a marketing degree. ‍ If you want to get into marketing, a good place to start is by studying the greats and running some experiments of your own. By “greats”, we suggest you read books like Ogilvy on Advertising, Claude Hopkins’s Scientific Advertising, Perry Marshall’s 80/20 Rule, or Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm.

Start Your Own Projects

By experiments, we suggest you start your own blog or social media accounts–write about stuff that interests you, and see how many other people you can get to read it. ‍ Where you start matters less than just getting started. You want to break into a job in marketing.

Tell a Story

And that getting-started process can be a lot like trying on a new pair of shoes–sometimes you’ve gotta walk around in two to three different sizes before you know which one fits best. ‍ Regardless of where you choose to start, just focus on picking a topic–or industry, or product, or business–that interests you. Come up with a story, and experiment with ways to get people to engage with that story. ‍ At its core, marketing is about telling stories that get people’s attention. That’s it. The rest is in the details. ‍ And if getting paid to tell stories interests you, we created this resource page just for you to highlight different tools, skills, and tips for how to break into a job in marketing.

– Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

Featured Resources to Break Into a Career in Marketing

Want to learn more about marketing at a startup? Here are some of our favorite articles from around the web. 💻
- A Side Project Helped Jumpstart My Career from Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift
-  🤔 What is Marketing? by HubSpot
- 🚗 The Marketing Career Path: From Entry-Level to CMO by Setup
- 🏢 How to get a job in a digital marketing agency by Imaginaire

Learn More

This post is an excerpt from our Guide to Marketing. Check out the full guide to dive deeper!