About Marketing in a world of Marketers

A bachelor degree in marketing is probably one of the oddest degrees you’re going to earn. Marketing is one of those things that takes quite a few skills and yet doesn’t really fall into any one category. You really have to be able to do quite a few things very well. That’s why the curriculum for a marketing degree is quite diverse.

In order to get your bachelor degree in marketing you have to take your main marketing courses, which in most colleges are simply called marketing 1 through marketing 4. Each course usually takes two semesters. The marketing courses themselves usually teach the principals of advertising. They’ll walk you through developing a product and then developing an advertising campaign for that product. This usually comes in year four, where you will also have to do a major research paper on an established company and how they market their products. The analysis gets pretty in depth.

But there is more to a bachelor degree in marketing than just taking marketing courses. As I said, many skills are needed to be a good marketer. You also need to be in possession of some pretty good writing skills. So a bachelor degree in marketing will usually require you to take quite a few English related courses including creative writing. This is absolutely critical if you’re going to be a good marketer.

Marketing also requires that a person have a pretty good business background as marketing is a good part of business. So, a bachelor degree in marketing will usually also require you to take several basic courses in business such as economics and finance. You might even take some business management courses.

As most students take 32 courses in the course of their four years in college, the above alone only takes up a small fraction of the curriculum. You have to figure four marketing 8 marketing courses, 4 business courses and 4 English courses. This still leaves the average marketing major with 16 courses left to take in his four-year program. How does he fill these in?

Well, as with most bachelor programs, there are a number of “elective” courses that you can take. In the case of getting your bachelor degree in marketing, you’d probably want to take a course or two in psychology. Why? It’s probably a good idea to get a basic understanding of how people behave if you’re going to try to come up with a marketing plan or advertising campaign that is going to appeal to most people.

It may not be a bad idea also to take some courses in basic math. Why? Well, you’re going to have to figure out advertising budgets and may need to be able to do some simple percentages. If you’ve forgotten this stuff from high school, you may want at least to take a refresher course. A marketer who can’t add is not a good thing to be.

After you finally do get your bachelor degree in marketing, there are a world of opportunities open to the creative mind. Get ready for a very exciting life.