Deciding what you’ll devote several years of your life to can be difficult, especially with so many industries in a constant state of flux. If you’re considering marketing or advertising as your major, you should think carefully about which one you’ll go for.
According to Forbes, undergraduate college enrollment dropped by 3.5% in 2021 as a combined response to the global pandemic and the ever-changing socio-economic status quo. Choosing which major you’ll study and picking the right one on the first try can save you a lot of time and money. Here’s why these two majors are both valid choices:
- Gain the know-how to start your own business
- Learn how to sell or promote to customers
- Gain the ability to change jobs easily
- Both majors will lead to a steady career trajectory
Understanding what makes marketing different from an advertisement and vice versa will give you enough insight to make an informed decision about your academic decisions. Here’s what you should know about both degrees.
Choosing Marketing-Related Majors
While the terms are often used interchangeably, in an academic sense, they’re very much unique and cannot be mixed. Marketing is a business-related process, an activity that involves careful market research, strategy development, and customer analytics.
It is a discipline that relies on the analytical understanding of gathered data and doesn’t leave a lot of room for creativity. The courses you can look forward to if you opt for studying marketing involve business, math, analytics, and sales-oriented courses.
As a graduated marketer, you’ll be able to work in large-scale companies which are operating internationally and become a part of their marketing department, working on various strategies and campaigns from an analytical standpoint. Typical job positions in marketing involve brand and product management, sales management, research analytics, as well as being a marketing director. While this may sound dry to some future freshmen, others will look forward to the opportunity to flex their mental muscles and devote themselves to the understanding of market data.
Choosing Advertising-Related Majors
Advertising is less management-focused and more creative-focused, meaning that it’s also more approachable than marketing. Advertisers are focused on acting on the data analyzed by marketers to push products and services to the market more successfully.
Advertising comes in different forms, including graphic design, video design, copywriting, and other forms of creative expression which are then mass-produced and distributed. As an advertising student, you can use LetsGradeIt to write your essays and research papers more quickly and then focus on other creative assignments. By studying advertising, you’ll work on courses revolving around campaign management, media planning, copywriting, different design principles, as well as the principles of advertising as a whole.
Once you’ve graduated, you’ll be able to work in marketing and creative agencies as any of the above specialists, depending on what you’re passionate about pursuing. Advertising is a far more flexible degree to study since you’ll be able to shift careers easily as well as mix and match what disciplines you’ll work on as a professional.
Weighing Marketing vs Advertising
With this information in mind, which degree should you choose to study in 2022? The answer to that question is two-fold and depends entirely on what you’re comfortable doing as a job.
Do you like analytics and using content marketing tools to do customer research? Marketing is the degree you should go for. Are you more intrigued about visual communication, copywriting, and directing customers to make certain purchase decisions? Go for advertising, as it’ll allow you to work as a creative content creator rather than a market analyst.
Both choices are solid and there are no downsides to studying either one in 2022. However, you’ll want to have a clear image of which courses you’ll have to attend and what career prospects you can look forward to with each degree. Once you feel either degree pulling at you more than the other, you’ll have made a more informed and objective decision on what to devote your time, effort, and money toward.
