What Skills Do I Need To Become An Advertising Manager?
"I hold an advertising degree and just got employed as a sales representative for an advertising firm. It’s not exactly the job I wanted but since it is with a relatively known ad agency in the city, I decided to go for it. I eventually want to become an advertising manager. What do I need to do now to ensure that I will be able to reach this goal? What skills do I need to develop?"
asked by Jennifer K. from New York, NY
Aspiring advertising managers need to gain related experience before they can ascend to this position and as a sales representative for the advertising firm you are now in a valuable place to deepen your knowledge about the advertising industry.
Your bachelor’s degree in advertising is definitely a major factor in you getting this job. Now that you are already employed, the real challenge begins. You’ll have to consistently prove your worth to your superiors so that when an advertising manager position opens up in the future, your name will be at the top of the list.
You need to develop while on the job is your interpersonal skills. This will be important when making sales pitches to different clients in your current position. However, you also need to get to know and establish good relationships with the people you work with. Knowing how to deal with various individuals is a skill that advertising managers handle with ease.
Together with your interpersonal skills, you also need to develop your communication skills. You should prove that you can sway a group to listen to what you have to say. Being persuasive plays a great role in your work in sales but if you want to become an advertising manager, you need to show that you are able to convince people that your ideas have merit.
In your current position, you need to prove that you are creative and analytical. Your ideas have to be fresh and new in order to get people to buy or patronize the product you are selling. Remember that in advertising, your primary role is to get consumers to get people interested in the product or service you are promoting. This will be difficult if the ideas you have are rehashed or taken from previous concepts.
The advertising industry is a fast-paced field. Because of the rise of digital media and social networking, you have to demonstrate that you are ahead of the pack and can get your concepts trending in just a matter of minutes or hours. If you are gunning for the role of an advertising manager, you will need to show that your strategy is going to work based on evaluation you make about the current trends and happenings. This will be difficult if you are not in touch with these modern methods of getting and sharing information.
Advertising managers have to be decisive. As early as now, you need to start developing your decision-making skills. An advertising manager position puts you in charge of people who are very creative and imaginative. They will be sharing their ideas for various projects. The challenge is going to be for you to decide which idea is going to most likely succeed. As a sales representative, you need to start generating various strategies in your head to convince a client to buy what you are offering and choose the one which you think will work best. This helps you fine-tune your decision-making skills.
It’s also very crucial to develop your time and money management skills. Advertising managers are tasked with making sure that a project is completed on time and within the stipulated budget. Developing your organization and money management skills should begin as early as now.
Show that you are genuinely passionate in the work you do. Strive to learn new things and stay up to date with the happenings in your profession. By doing all these, you’ll be ready when an opening for an advertising manager position comes up.
Career Spotlight: Advertising Manager
If you are creative, imaginative and love generating new ideas for advertisements, a career as an advertising manager could be right up your alley. You conceptualize advertising and promotional campai[...]
