Marketing Degrees — A College Dropout’s Take (Not What You’d Think)
As arguably the fastest growing marketing agency in the Midwest,
We have plenty of characteristics that have allowed for such growth both internally and with our clients.
One glaring statistic is this:
We have a team of 17 (soon to be 20)
Our departments look like this:
Creative — 6
Development — 3
Strategic — 3
Marketing — 3
Advertising — 2
Nearly everyone comes from a unique background.
Compared to other companies based in Kansas City we have above average diversity between our team.
Yet aside from all being between the age of 18–23 here’s the #1 commonality.
We have 1 degree on our entire team.
This number will soon be 2–3 as a few guys finish up some part time classes,
But you get the point.
Hardly anyone on our team has college level marketing experience.
There are a myriad of possibilities that I have considered for our growth.
Whether or not our lack of degrees is the reason,
there’s no denying it’s a fascinating statistic to see.
So within the marketing landscape — is a marketing degree really worth it?
I’ll dive into both sides:
Why A Marketing Degree Is Worthless
&
Why A Marketing Degree Is Valuable
Keep this in mind before:
I am personally against college for entrepreneur types, but do believe it is still very beneficial for 90% of the population.
I have minimal experience within marketing courses, but have been apart of hundreds of discussions and debates on this topic.
Whether the answer is yes or no, this is unlikely to have any real impact on a students decision to forgo or continue their education with college.
So don’t blame me if your kid drops out.
Let’s do this ->
________
Why A Marketing Degree Is Worthless
The argument against a marketing degree is simple:
- Marketing is always changing, how could the system ever stay on top of it?
While I only spent 1 year at college, I can attest to this.
I once gave a presentation to my class on how to use Linkedin.
Not for growth hacking,
Not for generating leads,
Simply how to use it.
Yeah, I know.
Another class dedicated to essentially explaining the digital landscape
(inherently it probably wasn’t a good idea for a 55 year old guy to teach or even try to teach it in a college system)
Was so outdated, that it taught the incorrect concepts.
The e-commerce chapter blatantly ignored the existing of drop-shipping, Shopify, and the non existent barrier to entry that is e-commerce. Making it seem as if Amazon is the only e-commerce company in the world.
Another day in class dove into Search Engine Optimization (for a mere 10 minutes, don’t give them that much credit)
At the time I was surprisingly enough in the class.
Paying attention?
Of course not.
Rather I was servicing a client on,
You guessed it: SEO
About 30 minutes in I peered up for the first time to see an explanation of Google’s algorithm for ranking search results.
Not only was it 15 years behind, but it explained the tactics that Google’s new algorithm had been blatantly built against.
If I were to apply these strategies for the client I was servicing at the same time, their website would be flagged within minutes.
Luckily I don’t think a single soul in their besides myself had any clue what SEO actually was or how to use it.
Enough stories from my short college career, you get the point.
It’s impossible to teach a subject that changes so fast that most companies can’t keep up with it.
That’s the point of a marketing agency right?
And that’s why there are more of us now than ever, because it’s essentially impossible to stay on top of it.
So how can we expect a college course to be on top of it?
We can’t.
2. The best, and only way to learn marketing is by doing it
This is true without any argument — I’m confident nearly every professor would be agree with this as well.
You can learn all of the strategies in the world,
But until you do it, that knowledge is more hypothetical than it is actual knowledge that will stick with you.
After all, the best marketing plan is the one that actually gets implemented.
Marketing is more analyzing & adjusting than it is black & white.
Even more so is the requirements to be a ‘Good Marketer’
Until you have several campaigns and companies under your belt you will never command any respect in the space.
So the degree might get you the job,
But it won’t get you the client or the results.
Why A Marketing Degree Is Valuable
The truth is a marketing degree will not provide you with any great marketing skills that you can directly implement.
Today’s marketing environment consisting of Social Media, SEO, Content, and more tangible skills can’t be taught in the class room.
This has been tested within our hiring process.
When a college student or graduate reaches out to me they are tasked with 1 thing:
Provide a strategy for ‘X’ company. (Majority of the time it’s a prospect of ours that I will hand off to them if the strategy closes the deal)
90% can’t even come up with anything.
The 10% that do come up with something have strategies that are far too hypothetical.
Things like “Well, they should grow on social media”
Yeah, no sh*t. But how are we going to do that?
It is always based in only 1–2 strategies.
A client may benefit from Social Media, Advertising, Content Creation, SEO, and Email Marketing, but they will only point out 1 or two.
However, there is a case for marketing degrees ->
The core argument for marketing degrees is that it will equip you with the tools and knowledge base that will allow you to then succeed in your job.
While I can’t speak to this directly, this is undoubtedly true.
Ultimately if you put the hours and effort in towards any subject, you will have a greater propensity to grow than others within that subject.
The reason I see it as valuable is because of the cost associated with the degree.
No, I don’t think college is worth the cost.
But,
The #1 issue I see at the agency level and with marketing professionals is that they choose to stop learning.
They get stuck in their ways.
The college environment forces you to learn new things, something that many modern day marketers simply refuse to do.
Paired with the cost to students if you were to not make the most of learning at all times it would be a major financial loss.
So in the long run I see this as more beneficial than the short term loss of being behind in the marketing TODAY.
You won’t know how to do any real marketing for 6–18 months.
But marketing will continue to change, and if the college education has ingrained a propensity to continue learning faster than others, then that degree has setup the student for success at a higher level.
Now, not all modern marketers will stop learning or learn at a slower rate than their college degree counterparts.
But for the ones that do, they will get passed up by the college degree-ers (if that’s a word?)
So, Are Marketing Degrees Pointless?
The answer, of course, is…
Well it depends.
For the short term the clear cut winner is simply going out and doing it.
But in the long run, the winner will not be decided on experience vs. a degree.
Rather it will be determined by who continues to learn and stay on top of today’s digital landscape best.
Never stop learning,
Or the ones that do will pass you by.
Oh and here’s a funny meme:
