In this article let’s take a look at pros and cons of doing MBA in marketing specialisation to understand whether it is good and worth it or not.
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So without further ado let’s dive right in.
Table of Contents
Is MBA in marketing a good specialisation and worth it?
Yes, marketing specialisation in MBA is definitely worth it and a good career option because marketing professionals are in high demand and they also enjoy high salaries because marketing and sales are closely related to revenue and growth of the company,
You can have lots of job opportunities and work in various companies, You can also start your own business on the side, and more importantly marketing is a creative job, your creative ideas and thoughts can add significant impact in the growth of the company and you can impact millions of lives around the world by your creative ideas and marketing campaigns.
There are many disadvantages of marketing like there is growing competition and expensive degree to get.
Now let’s take a look at all the advantages and disadvantages of doing MBA in marketing field to understand whether it is worth it and good specialisation for you or not.
Pros and cons of MBA in marketing
Pros of MBA in marketing
High demand of the skills
One of the main advantages of choosing marketing specialisation in MBA is that it is in high demand.
If you take a look at any business of any sector whether it is finance banking education insurance SaaS fitness media detail health real estate e-commerce or any other sector marketing plays a huge role in the business, marketing is very important because it will increase the brand awareness, It will make customers engage with the brand and business, there will be a good relationship between business and customer,
marketing will get you sales, more importantly loyalty of the customers and get you some important data of customers, their pain points and without solid marketing strategy, majority of the businesses do not succeed at present because the competition is growing for the attention of people.
For example there is something called as rule of seven in marketing which means that a person must see your product at least seven times on social media or in TV ads before that individual can get converted into a customer of the product, so you can clearly see here that the more you show your product and
message to the people, the higher the chance is for them to buy the product, It is all about grabbing the attention and retention of the customer so just creating any product is not enough, sales of the product is key and you only get those sales, revenue and profit through solid marketing strategy.
To prove my argument true LinkedIn released a report saying that there is a huge demand for marketers especially after pandemic then ever before.
And by choosing marketing specialisation in MBA you learn things like marketing management operation management human resource management advertisement management international marketing customer behaviour market research salesforce management business research strategic management accounting digital marketing and many more things which are important part of marketing.
And after learning all these important skills like customer research you can find out the pain points and problems of people before creating a product and this will help you create the right product that the customer wants because people buy products to fulfil their necessity, and by getting all this important skills like digital marketing, learning customer behaviour international marketing salesforce and others which I mentioned earlier you can also start your own business on the side or start your own agency and offer services to different companies.
Most importantly in MBA you get paid internships and you get to learn things by doing them practically not just learning about them in class in theory, and You can also have a strong network by doing MBA and grow your interpersonal skills.
So overall as a person you will be in high demand for many companies because for many companies in various sectors marketing of the product is related to the revenue to the company so marketing jobs are always in demand no matter what the situations are.
High salary & promotions
And because of the fact that marketing jobs are so in demand, You can also have high salaries and lots of promotions in job as well.
Because demand and salaries go hand to hand, if there is a high demand for the skill then there will be high salaries and vice versa.
If you take a look at the average salary of marketing professionals in India and it is around 9 lakh rupees per annum whereas it is around 140000 dollars per annum for the same in America, keep in mind the salary depends upon your job position, sector, experience and also the company you are working for.
The reason for so high salaries of marketing professionals is because of the simple fact that marketing people are closing related to sales of the company and without sales they will be no profit and revenue so marketing guys are extremely important for revenue of the business and because of this they are highly paid.
And there are many companies you can work for like Tata consultancy services Wipro Google Microsoft Amazon PepsiCo American express Starbucks Reliance cognisant Flipkart and many more and depending upon your performance you will also get promotions quite frequently in your job.
Creative job & future proof career
Another advantage of choosing marketing in MBA is that it is going to be a creative profession.
Marketing is largely about capturing the attention of the user in order to do that marketing professionals try to create something unique and original that grabs people’s attention and communicate their message of the business properly whether it is in TV ad or magazine ad, billboards, social media campaigns etc.
Marketing is a social game, as a marketing professional you will be working in a team of different specialists in creating any strategy for the product, You will be brainstorming the ideas along with the team members and it will be fun and exciting and sometimes challenging as well.
So marketing is actually a very creative job, You can use your creativity and unique ideas, there are many creative and innovative campaigns that blew up the company sales by just incorporating creative and innovative ideas in the campaigns.
As a marketing professional you will incorporate your creativity in various aspects like designing a social media ad, YouTube video or any article you write on your website, a TV ad or magazine ad, billboards etc.
And because marketing is a creative job, It requires emotional intelligence, marketing cannot get replaced by artificial intelligence in future as well so it is future proof career option for you.
And because it is a creative job, no day is same in marketing, everyday can be new and exciting for you so you can have high job satisfaction and happiness, and you can learn something new everyday through marketing.
Various jobs in different sectors & countries
Another advantage of choosing MBA in marketing is that you will have various job opportunities in different sectors and countries, for example you can become,
- SEO specialist
- Social media manager
- Marketing manager
- Sales manager
- Research analyst
- brand manager
- E-commerce manager
- customer experience manager
- Content marketer
- Web developer
- Public relation manager
- Product marketing manager
- Product developer
And the list goes on and on, and you can also work in various sectors like banking health insurance education retail SaaS food fitness e-commerce entertainment law real estate and any other sector you can think of needs marketing people.
You can also work as a freelancer for companies if you don’t want to become an employee or you can also start your own agency on the side.
And obviously you can get a job of marketing in any company and country you can work in like India America Europe etc.
And because of this You get a lot of flexibility to choose your career and you can easily switch back between different career options if you don’t like your current one.
These are all the advantages of choosing marketing in MBA now let’s take a look at the disadvantages.
Cons of MBA in marketing
Long hours & stress
One of the main disadvantages is that you will have to work long hours and you can have a lot of jobs stress in marketing career.
For example according to a report digital marketing professionals work around 8 to 10 hours everyday and more than 45 hours every week so you can clearly see that they work long hours and they can have a lot of work stress.
And there are many marketing professionals who will regularly feel burnout, many people are even in depression and get anxious, This will not only hurt their personal life but the relationship with their family and friends.
One of the main reasons for such a high stress and workload for marketing professionals is because as a marketing professional your job is to persuade people to buy the product at the end of the day and
because there is a lot of competition for people’s attention in any industry, companies spend large amount of money in marketing and advertising campaigns and they cannot afford any mistakes in the campaigns as it can hurt their brand reputation and sales very badly for example there are many companies which went bankrupt and stopped working due to their crazy marketing
campaigns so marketing professionals also need to be very careful with their campaigns which increase stress, marketing professionals have to think out of the box come up with amazing ideas for campaigns and they will have constant pressure from their CEO and head of the company to get some sales and growth moving.
Marketing is also not easy job because it involves you to have interaction with various numbers statistics data and user behaviour of customers, more importantly marketing is one search field which is constantly changing for example there was not a huge demand for digital marketing professionals a couple of decades earlier but
now since more people are using their mobile phone and shopping online digital marketing professionals are in more demand and slowly billboard ads are getting least effective, and marketing is constantly changing field with new trends and technology so the people also have to keep themselves updated which can increase their working hours and stress.
Competition is growing
Other disadvantages is that just like other career options even the competition is also going around in MBA and especially in marketing specialisation as it is growing as to be one of the most popular ones for MBA grads.
According to a report of times of India India is the second largest country for producing MBA grads, and more people are graduating with MBAs every year then ever before, majority of them are engineers because many engineers who don’t get employment after their undergraduate education pursue MBA hoping to get some employment opportunities so as you can see more people are getting MBA degrees and competition is also growing a lot.
And there are more marketing professionals working in companies as many companies have understood the importance of marketing especially digital marketing and they are hiring more marketing professionals and this has increased competition a lot.
And the only way you can succeed in such a tough competition is by constantly updating your skills, use your creativity and innovation and being one of the best in your specific niche, sector and skill.
Expensive course
Another disadvantage of choosing MBA in general is that it is very expensive course to take.
If you want to study MBA in India it will cost you around 15 to 20 lakh rupees for 2 years course whereas it will cost you approximately $70000 to get your MBA degree from top business schools in America.
And many top business schools also want you to have some work experience before you get admission so it can be a little difficult, if you take a look at the case of India for example,
And if you cannot afford such high cost of education of MBA from top business schools in India then most probably MBA is not a good choice for you because there are thousands of MBA graduates who are unemployed because they lack the skills required to get employment as they graduated from low grade business schools in India so if you cannot afford the education to study in top business schools like IIM or Xavier School of management, MBA is not worth it.
One of the reasons for such high unemployment rate of MBA graduates in India is because the business schools they join are not providing skill based education, the syllabus is not updated regularly, They don’t have many facilities and infrastructure, and they do not have great faculty and professors as well.
So my only advice would be that if you want to do MBA in India especially then try to get admission in top business schools like IIM or You should probably choose admission in foreign business schools like Harvard or Stanford or MIT and others if you can afford it or try online MBA courses of these universities on upgrad or Coursera but try to avoid graduating from small business schools of India which do not provide you good education and employment.
These are all the advantages and disadvantages of choosing a marketing specialisation and becoming a marketing professional through MBA.
Before concluding the article i would recommend you to check out my article on pros and cons of studying MBA in IIM to understand whether it is worth it or not.
With that said let’s conclude the article.
Conclusion
These are all the things you need know about MBA in marketing.
Do let me know what are your thoughts about MBA marketing in the comment section below.
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