Marketing Books

Since I made the decision to go into marketing pretty late in the game and don’t have access to the marketing classes in the business school, I have decided to go about teaching myself. That it what a liberal education is really about isn’t it. Learning from a variety of fields and about subjects that interest you. So I took to the Internet and went through tons of books recommended for people thinking about going into marketing and I finally got my first three. The first is “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”, which focuses on what influences people to say yes to certain things. It teaches you six principles of persuasion, how to persuade others, and how to not be persuaded in return. The Second is “Made to Sick”, which teaches you about what makes an idea “stick” or become popular. It goes over the five key elements that one can apply to their idea to make them sticky. The last book on my list is “Guerrilla Marketing”, which focuses on different strategies for marketing across the Internet. This book emphasis the rise of new technology, as well as how you can use it to improve your marketing strategies. My goal with these books is to gain more of a fundamental knowledge behind marketing and improve on marketing strategies.

Career Path... Maybe?

For a long time I had trouble figuring out what exactly I wanted to do with my life, and what direction I wanted to go into career wise. You know typical college student problems. I had originally come into Fordham with the intention of going into Pre-Law. However, as I got further into my studies and spoke about the future with my professors, I realized that law was something I enjoyed but wasn’t passionate enough to get into years of debt for. While in college, I had also stumbled into a few computer science classes and realized that I really enjoyed this new material and found it thrilling to create programs. Trust me its extremely fun building your first program. I ended up switching into the Computer Science department and declared my major as information science. Which for the most part was great, the workload was difficult but I was learning a whole bunch of material that would be really essential in a future career involving technology. This seemed perfect for me because I strongly feel that we should all be improving our skills in technology because we will only be using more technology from here on. Although again, as much as I really enjoyed the material, I couldn’t imagine myself spending hours sitting behind a desktop solely working on a program and having no interaction with anyone. For me that is difficult because I have worked customer service practically my whole life. So while I can work quite well independently, I needed something that was occasionally much more interactive. I needed something that brought together my technical skills, my creativity, and my social capabilities. I explored through different career options until I finally came across marketing.

I had always secretly thought about a career in marketing, because I believe I hold skills that would fit well in marketing role. I have used basic marketing strategies to increase members in my club on campus; as well as, used those same strategies at work. Although, even though I had always thought about this possibility I always ended up steering away from it because “I wasn’t a business student”. I know crazy right? However, as I dug more and more into a career in marketing, I realized that it was the perfect career path for me, even without a business degree. A marketing position has all the qualities I was looking for: it is interactive and requires good social skills, demands creativity and coming up with innovative ideas, and with the rise of technology it is requiring many technical skills that weren’t necessary before. So I’ve decided to get rid of that “not a business student” mentality and work to use the skills I have gained and apply them towards a possible career in marketing. I’ve created a sort of game plan for myself, where I specified the skills I already have and the ones that I need to work on. This summer will consist of gaining the adequate skills that would potentially make me a more desirable candidate for a marketing position.