What Do You Need to Study to Work in Marketing?

Marketing is not only for marketing graduates. See which degrees fit which marketing roles, the skills employers really check, and how to build proof of work.

A young engineer with an industrial engineering degree has always loved creating content and runs the page for his family shop. He wants to apply for marketing jobs but hesitates: “I didn’t study marketing, nobody will hire me.” Another person has a marketing degree but fails several interviews because she cannot say what campaigns she has worked on. Both stories show a degree can open the door, but it is not the only thing that gets you hired.

What qualifications marketing jobs require

Many marketing roles do not require a specific major. Plenty of postings say “Bachelor’s degree in marketing, communication arts, business administration or a related field”, and “related field” is fairly broad. What employers really check is whether you understand customers, can communicate and can read numbers.

Which degrees fit which marketing roles

• Marketing, business administration: broad foundation, suited to Brand, Product Marketing, Trade Marketing
• Communication arts, journalism, advertising: suited to Content, Social Media, PR, Creative
• Arts, languages: suited to Copywriting, Content, and marketing roles using foreign languages
• Statistics, economics, computer science: suited to Marketing Analytics, Performance Marketing, CRM, Marketing Automation
• Engineering, science: suited to B2B marketing for technical products, tech Product Marketing or Growth
• Art, design: suited to Creative, Brand Design, image and video work

Skills employers really check

Core skills

• Understanding customers: who buys, why and where
• Writing and communicating so readers understand and want to act
• Reading basic data such as reach, conversion and cost per result

Tool skills

• Ad tools on major platforms such as Meta, Google and TikTok
• Google Analytics or another website measurement tool
• Canva or basic design tools
• Excel or Google Sheets for reporting
• AI tools for drafting content and analysing data, while still checking and editing yourself

How to start without a marketing degree

Build real work instead of credentials

A portfolio carries a lot of weight in marketing. Try these:

• Run a page for a family shop, a friend or a volunteer group, and record results before and after
• Write a mock marketing plan for a brand you like: analyse customers and competitors and propose a campaign
• Write articles or make videos on a topic you know well to show communication skills
• Run a small-budget ad for a real product, then summarise what you learned

Study only what you are missing

You do not need a new degree. Choose short courses that match your target role, such as Digital Marketing, Content or Data Analytics, and use them right away to produce real work.

Use strengths from your original field

Engineers analyse systematically, language graduates write well, statistics graduates read data fluently. State clearly in your resume and interviews how that strength helps in marketing.

If you studied marketing, what else to do

Classroom theory is a good base, but you also need real work, such as internship projects, marketing plan competitions or a page you run yourself, and you should keep up with tools the market uses.

Answering in the interview

If asked, “Why apply for this job without a marketing degree?”, try: “I studied engineering, which trained me to analyse problems step by step, and for the past two years I have run my family shop’s page, testing different posts and ads until I learned which content makes customers message us. I want to use both in a full-time marketing role.”

A degree says what you studied. Your work shows what you can do.

A three-month starting plan

1. Choose one marketing track, such as Content or Performance
2. Read ten postings in that track and note the skills that repeat
3. Take one short course that fills a skill gap
4. Produce two or three real pieces of work with results and lessons
5. Update your resume to highlight work and skills, then apply for entry-level roles

Find marketing courses from our partners on the courses page, and read more on building a marketing portfolio without experience and switching into marketing.