As industries change, so does the makeup of each company’s marketing team. With so many positions available within the scope of marketing, it can sometimes be hard to know which you’re actually suited for.

The following are five of the most popular marketing jobs you could consider, including information on what would be expected of you in these roles, and how you might start going down these paths. Check back in tomorrow for even more recommendations.

1. Content marketing and copywriting

Brands these days generate content the way publishers or media companies do, and the writers and designers they hire to create all this content are aptly called content marketers.

To get into content marketing, you clearly need to be able to write. You need to prove you are passionate about the written word, which means you’ll need to flex your muscles writing social media copy, video scripts, blog entries, investigative articles, zines, brochures, flyers, or other materials.

Obviously you would need a strong command of the language you’d be writing in. A marketing degree can look appropriate if you’re applying for this job, but you might be even more attractive as a candidate if you have a literature or creative writing degree.

2. Social media marketing

When a brand makes an off-colour joke on a social media platform, it’s common for people to attribute it to “the intern running the Twitter account”. But no responsible company would hand over the keys to a brand’s Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram feeds to someone inexperienced – in fact, the larger the brand, the larger its social media team likely is, with more senior-level marketers overseeing its strategy.

A social media marketer posts content informed by a brand’s style guide. They engage with a brand’s audience in real time, preparing analyses of engagement data, planning future campaigns and approaches based on each analysis, and collaborating with other marketers to determine how a social strategy can support a brand’s other work. And they often have ambitious key performance indicators (KPIs) to reach.

If you’re interested in being a social media marketer, the first thing you could do is develop a robust professional online presence for yourself. You could also try working on a project basis for brands or small businesses, and build a portfolio of social copy and multimedia elements.

If these aren’t yet feasible, you could develop a sample social media strategy for a brand you admire and use this to get your foot in the door.

3. Brand management

A brand manager oversees every aspect of communication, both internal and external, and brings a company or product line’s brand persona to life. Brand persona is a collection of messaging and customer experiences, and it carries a company’s narrative – the sort of thing you would see in the “About” section of websites – across all platforms.

Breaking into brand management is near impossible without any marketing experience, but if you’re already a marketer looking to move up, volunteer for corporate strategy projects at your office.

When you’re interviewing for a brand manager position, you’ll want to be able to point to multiple scenarios in which you put out a fire for a company (not literally), reworked a brand’s messaging to appease a specific audience, or developed a project with multiple team members.

4. Email marketing

Because of social media algorithms, only a small portion of an account’s audience will see their social media content. So companies look for additional ways to reach the majority of their target audience.

Email is still a precious commodity in the marketing industry as a newsletter’s subscriber base opts into a brand’s messaging. As such, email marketers who know how to leverage the opportunity to connect with users in their inboxes can do very well for themselves.

To work in email marketing is to toe the line between data analysis and editorial strategy. You’re often curating blog posts and links to include in newsletters or promotions for subscribers; using email to build and launch campaigns; keeping an eye on open and click-through rates, and subscriber numbers; and running tests and experiments to boost performance.

5. Product marketing

Product marketers act as a liaison between the marketing team and their colleagues in product management, engineering, sales, accounts management, customer service, and other departments. They spend a lot of time learning about their target audience, understanding what they want and need, and “translating” information about customer experience to those tasked with creating and promoting a company’s offerings.

If you’re interested in product marketing, study the corporate success stories of brands that have rallied behind a single eye-catching product: the Apples, Amazons, and Googles of the world.

Read about how products are created and promoted. Talk to product marketers at your own company or find folks to reach out to through your network. Make sure you’re keeping your writing skills sharp. And if you can’t find preliminary experience in developing product marketing work for brands, try creating your own materials on spec.

This article first appeared in jobstore.com, an online job site that specialises in providing jobseekers with the latest job opportunities by matching talented individuals with reputable companies in Malaysia. Find your dream job with over 40,000 job vacancies in Malaysia.