Do you need a marketing degree to get a job? 

Good marketing skills are a must for any business-related job. If you want to become an entrepreneur, you must have a basic knowledge of marketing. And if you want to land a marketing job, you got to have fairly advanced marketing skills. 

But, do you need a marketing degree to get a marketing job? Technically speaking, you don’t necessarily need one. What matters is your experience and practical knowledge. But, a degree does help you get your foot in the door. A degree will make it easier for you to get interview invites. But it doesn’t necessarily guarantee you a job

Your skills, knowledge, communication skills, and practical experience with different kinds of marketing matter the most when it comes to bagging your dream marketing job. 

Is Marketing a hard degree?

A  graduate degree in Marketing is generally a 4-year program that’s quite rigorous and demanding. Marketing touches many study areas like communications, advertising, finance, sales, consumer behavior, public relations, and market research and strategy. So the degree gives you a holistic grounding in the core elements of marketing. 

Whether you find the degree hard or easy depends on your interest level. If you are passionate about marketing, it can be fun and exciting. It also depends on your personality. Some people learn more by doing while others by studying. Some find it hard to cope with the routine of reading textbooks, memorizing stuff, and appearing for exams. So they might find a marketing degree challenging. 

Should you pursue a marketing degree? Pros & Cons 

Is a marketing degree worth it in 2024? 

Well, it all depends on your goals and preferences. 

Before making any decision, you must remember that completing a 4-year full-fledged degree program requires an enormous investment of both time and money. If you are struggling with your finances, it’s better to embark on a self-learning spree and gain as much practical experience as you can by applying your marketing skills in the real world. 

Let’s look at the pros and cons of a marketing degree.

Check out our article on How Long Does it Take to Get a Business Degree.

Pros

1. Career Growth

A marketing degree can be handy for climbing up the career ladder. Many senior or manager-level marketing jobs will require a bachelor’s degree.

It depends from company to company. Some companies might prioritize your work experience, and others might give more preference to academic qualifications. 

A degree always improves your prospects of career growth. 

2. Good Internships

A marketing degree can help you land good internships, which in turn will boost your employment prospects. 

Many marketing degree programs will have in-built internship opportunities for students. You would be interning with prestigious companies, something that looks good on your CV and boosts your chances of getting a job. 

It’s important to emphasize that a marketing degree can only take you so far. Eventually, it’s about how much you know and what you can apply. 

3. Flexible skill-set

A marketing degree doesn’t only teach you about marketing. It touches upon many other areas like business administration, public relations, communications, and content production. 

A marketing degree might help you get a job in related fields like advertising and public relations. If you enjoy the content side of marketing, you can become a content creator. 

4. Useful for Entrepreneurship

While a marketing degree is not necessary for entrepreneurship, it can be useful. Most marketing degrees give you a broad-based knowledge of many areas of a business, including finance and accounts. 

Equipped with a marketing degree, you will be more confident and organized in kickstarting your start-up. 

Cons

1. The curriculum gets old and outdated quickly

The field of marketing is developing at a super rapid pace.  New techniques and skills are coming up every couple of months. But the conventional degree curriculum cannot keep pace with that. 

It takes years to publish textbooks. So there will be some new additions, but most of the stuff you study in your marketing textbooks will be pretty outdated and redundant. 

So while it’s good for developing a theoretical base, it might not be that useful to learn new practical skills. 

That is the reason many people prefer online certification courses in marketing instead. They are tailored to the needs of the market and help you pick up practical new-age skills in areas like digital marketing. 

2. Online education is getting more popular

A conventional marketing degree requires a lot of time commitment. Not everyone has that kind of time to spare. 

That’s why online marketing courses are getting more popular. They are more up-to-date with the latest trends in marketing and cost-effective. There are so many marketing training and mentorship programs available online these days. 

People who want to start their own business prefer taking these short-term online marketing courses to a full-fledged degree. They can contribute more time to setting up their business and learning on the go. 

3. A marketing degree is not necessary for entrepreneurship 

Many successful entrepreneurs don’t have a conventional MBA or marketing degree. 

They are clear in their mind about what they want to achieve and would rather start working towards that right away than spend four years in an academic degree program. 

Marketing is a hands-on discipline; you never know how it exactly works until you get into the waters. That’s why a degree is no guarantee for success as an entrepreneur. 

4. It’s expensive

 The tuition fee for the best marketing graduate degrees in the US would be somewhere between $40k-60k. 

Taking loans for that kind of amount is not worth it because the degree won’t guarantee you a heavyweight pay package in your first job. Entry-level jobs mostly pay low everywhere, whether you have a degree or not. So you got to keep in mind that you won’t be able to magically repay the loan amount once you start earning. 

Check out our article on What Is a Freelance Copywriter.

Do you need a marketing degree to get into a digital marketing job? 

You don’t need a formal degree to get into a digital marketing job. 

The field of digital marketing is fairly new. And it’s evolving at a fast pace. Most degree programs can’t quite catch up with the fast-changing digital marketing landscape. Digital marketing degree programs are still in the nascent stage. 

The best way to get into a digital marketing job is by getting some practical experience. You could take an online course in digital marketing and then start a digital marketing blog. 

Running a digital marketing blog will give you practical experience in digital marketing skills. It will also give you a base for interviews. You will have an edge over other candidates who have just a degree. You have practical experience in running a digital marketing blog, and that will count. 

Many digital marketing certification programs like the Google Digital Marketing Certification are free. Going for industry-recognized digital marketing certifications would increase your employability. 

Digital marketing has many components – search engine marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, online advertising, etc. Most of the online courses give you a fairly good grounding in all of these digital marketing skills. 

Bottom Line

Getting a marketing degree never hurts. It would help you get well versed in the basics of business and marketing. But the discipline of marketing is more about skills that can be developed and tested better in a practical work environment. A marketing degree can supplement your solid work experience but never become a substitute for it.