Marketing lies at the heart of every successful business. By engaging with and understanding the customer’s needs, marketing managers influence the development of products and services, providing advice on the best point of sale and recommending the most competitive price. They identify and make sure the target market knows what’s on offer – in increasingly more creative and dynamic ways.

You can also boost your employability by gaining additional qualifications with the Institute of Data and Marketing (IDM) and/or the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) – our status as a CIM Graduate Gateway institution entitles you apply for exemptions from modules on its professional qualifications, while you can gain IDM’s Award in Digital Marketing during the Digital Marketing Essentials module.

Since our marketing degrees share a common first year, you get to experience all the main areas in marketing  whilst retaining the flexibility to change course at the start of your second year.

Incorporating the latest marketing strategy, tools and techniques, the modules you study will develop your understanding of the theoretical and practical aspects of all areas of marketing. You will gain awareness of the global, cultural, social, economic and ethical professional environment within which marketers now operate. Acknowledging the importance of digital techniques and social media marketing, you’ll have access to our new digital marketing lab, Switch 23, which is set up to mimic a creative agency with a large touch screen that students can connect to using laptops and mobile phones. 

Marketers, perhaps more than in any other area of business, need to be able to work effectively in teams, solve problems, think critically and creatively, and present their ideas persuasively. Developing these transferable skills and more, you’ll also discover the connections between marketing teams and other functional business areas.

You’ll gain hands-on experience working on live client briefs from external marketers, analysing performance and customer research, as well as using relevant internet-based technologies for marketing, such as Google Analytics. As part of the Marketing and Planning module, for example, students previously developed marketing solutions for an international brand, presenting their recommendations online to the International Marketing Director, who was based in Milan.

As a professional marketer, you will graduate with the skills and knowledge to work in-house for an organisation or a creative agency or become a freelance consultant.

Placements/ Year abroad

Between Years 2 and 3 you can undertake a one-year business placement. Past students have completed placements in a variety of SMEs and prestigious organisations including British Airways, Disney UK and Heinz. Alternatively you can study abroad at one of our partner institutions. You can also choose to split your year abroad into a first semester exchange and a second semester work placement, both conducted overseas, or undertake a placement year overseas.

Career

The course will prepare you for a wide variety of roles in business. Examples of these from our recent graduates are:

• Advertising executive
• Brand manager
• Management trainee 
• Market researcher
• Marketing associate/manager
• Marketing strategist
• Product development officer
• PR officer
• Social media executive/manager