How to Start a Сareer in Marketing Without Experience 

Marketing is not just about social media or advertising. It’s a combination of creativity, analytics, and a desire to grow your business. Many people mistakenly believe that it requires a degree or years of practice. In fact, you can get into marketing faster now if you approach your skills development correctly and create real-world experience even on your own.

Why Marketing is an Interesting Career

Marketing is both creative and logical. Professionals analyze people’s behavior every day and figure out how to best communicate ideas, products, or services to their audience.

• Creativity: creating content, concepts, and promotional ideas.
  
• Analytics: understanding statistics, campaign optimization, performance metrics.
  
• Continuous learning: Marketing is very dynamic, especially in the digital environment.
  

All that aspects make the profession interesting for people who like to try new things, analyze data, and learn every day.

I also want to note that I personally tend to believe that it is better to build branding without aggressive marketing, although I observe that even large companies like Apple resort to it. However, this is the moment when it seems that they can afford it, while smaller businesses, due to excessive product hype, may encounter the creation of a negative image in the eyes of potential and existing customers.  

When I am asked how I started working in marketing, whether I have a marketing education, what I need to do to get into marketing in IT, I tell everything as it is. I do not have a specialized education in marketing, although my specialty, International Information, partially covers this area – we had courses in advertising, PR, information wars and information influence. Therefore, there is a certain connection, but not a direct one.

But besides that, I didn’t take any additional courses at that time, and immediately tried to get a job in an IT project. It should be understood that if you have no experience, then most often this is the way to agree to a low salary. That’s exactly what I did, because it gave me the opportunity to try a new profession right on the spot, communicate with people who also work with you, gain new experience indirectly on the spot, plus receive a certain salary for it.

While working in a small company on a Saas IT project, where I had the freedom to choose and try different marketing areas, I managed to work and master skills in various areas, such as content marketing, SEO, Brand marketing, Email marketing, Facebook advertising, etc.

However, in addition to my experience, I suggest considering options for how to get a job in marketing without experience. Alternative ways, what options exist?  

How to get into marketing step by step

1. Determine your specialization

In my case, I had a chance to test different areas of marketing. After all, Marketing is a broad field. There are many areas, for example, according to the V-shaped and T-shaped model of skills and competencies in marketing, so at the beginning, it is important to understand what exactly interests you the most. For example:

• SEO and content marketing;
  
• SMM (social media);
  
• paid advertising, performance marketing (PPC);
  
• email marketing;
  
• analytics and Automation;
  
• PR and branding.
  

Start with what interests you, and over time, narrow your focus and broaden your horizons.

2. Learn constantly (but count economy, don’t spend too much)

Marketing in IT, like other areas, does not stand still. New tools and approaches emerge, and the differences between different niches become clear. Therefore, working in marketing is a constant learning process. It is not necessary to buy the most expensive courses. You can start with:

• free YouTube lessons;
  
• blogs and articles about marketing;
  
• official free courses (Google Analytics, Meta Blueprint);
  
• practical materials.
  

When there is a clear gap in knowledge, then it is worth investing in specialized paid courses.
Alternatively, some people start with courses, and after completing them, they start looking for clients or vacancies in accordance with the specialization in which the course was taken. 

3. Create Your Own Project

Найкращий спосіб здобути практичні навички — зробити щось самому. Це може бути блог, інтернет-магазин, сторінка в соцмережах або невеликий бренд. На цьому ти навчишся:

• launch campaigns;
  
• work with traffic;
  
• test ideas and analyze the result.
  

Even if your projects don’t become successful, you may include them as your first real experience in your portfolio. Of course, this approach requires some personal investment, investing both your own time and possibly money, for example, payment for a domain, advertising budget, etc.  

A separate bonus here is that if you do want to search for work as an employee, then your own project can already be used as a portfolio, if everything went more or less successfully with it. And if it was unsuccessful, then don’t be shy about mentioning it either, especially in conversations with HR, because they value it as experience. Also, when hiring, there is often a question – Tell me about your failures and how you dealt with them. Your answer shows certain characteristics of you. And if you are wary, just check for information from HR about what you should not say at an interview, I’m sure there are articles about that in Internet.

Companies value people who take initiative and create projects themselves. Don’t be afraid to add even small projects of your own to your resume – it shows that you’re actually doing marketing, not just learning.

4. Start with an Internship

Especially when you have no experience, an internship is a great start. Many IT companies recruit interns for a six-month internship. It gives you a chance to master real tasks in the company and get to know the processes from the inside, even if it is an unpaid position at first. Also, interesting connections are already being built there with people from the IT industry. Human capital should be valued because it also plays a huge role.  

5. Gain Experience at an Agency

Working in a marketing agency is a fast track to learning how to do many things at once. There, you work with different clients, formats, and tools, and quickly start to understand what works and what doesn’t. Of course, without experience, you can try taking assistant or junior positions, observe, and learn.  

6. In-house position

After several marketing roles or agency experience, many professionals move to work for design companies. This allows them to focus more deeply on a single brand strategy and grow professionally.

That’s exactly what I did, even without agency experience or previous roles.
It’s a good idea to start with small companies, because it’s easier to integrate into the team, and it’s also easier for your work to be noticed and receive feedback in time (the main thing is that this feedback should be adequate). 

Is marketing education necessary?

Not necessarily. Many successful marketers don’t have a specific degree — your actual experience and skills are more important. But taking courses can help, especially for larger companies or more technical areas, as certification is often required in these cases.

Tips that work

• Constantly analyze your results.
• Be ready to learn every day, because flexibility of thinking and adaptation play an important role.
• Experiment with formats and platforms.
• If possible, create a portfolio of your cases. To create cases, you must ask permission from the founder or CEO whether this case can be added to the portfolio and what information can be used. This will be especially useful for PPC specialists, and not only.