How To Break Into Entertainment Marketing
The Entertainment industry offers exciting opportunities for marketers who love entertainment and want to turn that passion into a career. But breaking into entertainment marketing can feel challenging without a clear path.
This post lays out practical steps to help you build frame your relevant skills, build new ones, gain experience, and connect with the right people to start your journey as an entertainment marketer.
It's not about your Entertainment Experience, it's about their Needs
Having worked for multiple industries without prior experience and still able to drive triple digit growth, I can tell you not every hiring manager is expecting an extensive history in the industry.
Think about the way that job roles are opened. The annual Business Goals are released, these are tied to the Operating Plan, this is tied to the Marketing Strategy and the projects that need to be worked on or delivered.
If the Business and the Marketing team currently do not have the internal skills to deliver on those projects, they need to source those skills externally.
Keyword: skills.
They can find millions of people passionate about entertainment. But not everyone will have the skills they need.
Target Specific Roles in Entertainment Marketing
In the current job market where industry changes are very difficult due to the sheer volume of candidates, focus your job search on positions that match your skills and interests almost 100%, it's not impossible to get a more senior role, but you may need to consider a horizontal move as well.
The closer match you are to the skills required, the less important the industry experience. But this means you need to have very impressive results to show for those skills, highly relevant not only to the job description, but to the conversations you will have during the interview process where you will find out more about their Objectives and Business Goals (make sure you ask!).
And that section that mentions "nice to have", those skills are a must have in this market. and you need to have your data-driven achievements ready to tackle those in the recruitment stage.
Use Transferable Experience to Your Advantage
Many entertainment companies value marketers who bring fresh ideas from other industries although this may highly depend on the manager and how much of a visionary they are and based on the Business Goals.
This is why is is absolutely key that you understand the Business Goals to the detail during your interviews, so you can tie your prior experience to how these can be achieved and how you are different from the other 1,000 candidates applying for the same role.
I'll give you one of my examples of how I landed a role in Entertainment.
For my role they needed someone that could help developing a Global strategy. They needed someone who could collaborate with the territories and enable it. They needed someone that would understand their point of view but also help them understand the wider Business Strategy and Goals and mobilize towards a unified approach to Marketing and Media. They needed someone who would ensure, over everything else, territory feedback was incorporated into Media Plans. Because they needed to drive cost savings but still remain relevant to local audiences.
You see how I frame it about them? Now, let's match to what I could offer.
I had launched and optimized markets for very large corporations with up to 500,000 products.
I had led cross-functional teams and dotted line teams of up to 15 people and had led international teams.
I had unified teams to leverage a multi-channel approach and scale revenue by connecting the channels through innovation and test and learn programs.
I had increased ROI and delivered significant increase in Revenue across Marketplaces, E-Commerce and Subscription (multi-business model experience).
I had lived and worked in different countries and and spoke the different languages and understood the different cultures.
These skills (and many more I don't list in this example) are very intentionally crafted to not only align to the requirements. They made me unique.
Not everyone has managed 500,000 products, or led a dotted line of 10 at 28, or driven revenue by connecting channels, or have multi-business model experience under one company, or understood how to lead multi-cultural teams.
It's not about the industry at all. You can learn the industry and still drive revenue. But what part of your background makes you unique?
And I am not saying you need everything I have done, and many say that it is impressive and impossible for them to achieve at this point, but please know that that's not the point I am trying to make. You don't need any of these skills for your jobs. You need to find your own unique skills that match what they need.
Once you have found those, you will need to explain how those skills apply to entertainment marketing. And that will require some in-depth extensive customer research that will usually shape into a presentation.
If you are struggling to make your examples unique or would like to understand how to do the research in a way that helps you land an offer, reach out.
It's as simple as that.
But if you'd like to go the extra mile...
"I had a really positive coaching session with Alexia. She was thoughtful, insightful, and did more than I expected by following up afterward with helpful materials and resources. That extra effort made a real difference. She helped me get clearer on how to approach different scenarios and think more strategically about next steps. Her guidance was practical, easy to apply, and tailored to my situation rather than generic advice." - M. G., Producer @ Meta
