Job description

As a Marketing Assistant your role is to assist other members of the marketing department in planning and running successful marketing campaigns. It's a varied role and you'll be involved in the whole marketing process, from conception to completion.

An example of a typical marketing project you could get involved in is an email campaign for a certain product or even the company as a whole. You'd be expected to help identify the target market for the product, source relevant databases of email addresses within that target market, help produce copy and graphics for the email content, organise efficient delivery of the emails to the target audience and then help co-ordinate and measure the response from the campaign. This simple example highlights just how extensive a marketing assistant's job can be.

As well as general administrative duties, a marketing assistant's day will often be comprised of a selection of the following duties:

• Helping to write and issue press releases
• Liaison with clients and suppliers
• Helping to conceive new marketing ideas and their presentation to key decision makers
• Co-ordinating the production of marketing material eg fliers and brochures
• Identifying databases of contacts for marketing purposes eg email lists, names and addresses of potential customers
• Organising promotional events and shows
• Providing general admin support to the marketing executives and managers
• Helping with the evaluation of marketing campaigns including the use of key indicators

This is typically an office based role though there will almost certainly be travel involved, to photo shoots, events or shows. As a result, expect to be flexible in your working hours, though aside from external events, this is essentially an 8/9 to 5/6 job. Obviously this may differ between the types of business you work for.

You'll be required to have a good level of education to land a marketing assistant job. More often than not, employers will look for a degree, preferably in a marketing or business-related subject. If you're not degree-educated, it would be beneficial if you held a decent qualification such as the Certificate in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). You'll need at least 5 GCSEs to get on this course though. If you're degree-educated but not in a relevant subject, you can opt to study for the Advanced Certificate in Marketing (from the same organisation, the CIM), which can only enhance your career prospects. Whatever your level of qualifications, once you're in the job many employers encourage you to study further and some candidates may even go on to complete the Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing (CIM). The nature of the job means that you'll gain significant experience from those people you are supporting which will, after a few years' experience, help you to advance your career within the same or a different company.

At an interview for a marketing assistant job, you should highlight the skills an employer is looking for, these include:

• Fantastic organisational skills
• Product/market/competitor awareness of the relevant industry
• Sound knowledge of the usual MS software packages
• A good head for business
• An analytical mind
• Creativity
• Well presented and articulate
• A good eye for detail, especially in proof reading etc
• The ability to deal with people face to face and on the phone
• Calm under pressure

Once you've landed the marketing assistant job, you learn a tremendous amount just doing the job and this can frequently lead to promotion within the same company. The next step up is Marketing Executive or Marketing Manager where the role becomes much more marketing-specific and less admin-orientated.

Salary Information

Based on the evidence of jobs recently posted on this site, the starting salary can be anything from £14-21k, but this, as usual, depends on who you work for and where they're based. Londoners will be the best paid, which is the norm for almost any admin/sec/PA role. If you are in London and you've got a few years' decent experience with a well known company, you could demand a salary of up to £30k per annum plus the benefits.