Breaking In Without a Map

Try applying for a Marketing Manager role when you’ve never held the title.

You could’ve built brands, written strategies, created campaigns that moved the needle - but without those two words on your CV, you’re already fighting uphill.

That’s the catch-22 of modern marketing. We celebrate creativity and “thinking differently,” yet the system still favours the traditional route: marketing degree, agency internship, junior exec, manager.

If you didn’t follow that path, you can start to wonder if you even belong.

I know that feeling well.

I started out in online education, designing e-learning courses for the private healthcare sector and the NHS. It wasn’t glamorous. But it was real. You learn how to communicate clearly when your audience is time-poor clinicians or hospital staff working twelve-hour shifts. You can’t hide behind jargon or clever phrasing.

That job taught me everything about how people process information. It’s where I learned that clarity beats complexity. It’s also where I realised something: I didn’t just love design, I loved what design did.

Design is marketing in disguise.

It’s the thing that connects an idea to the people who need it. It’s the difference between something existing and something being understood.

“A builder sees a building. A marketer sees a brand — a living piece of themselves out in the world.”

That’s what pulled me in. I fell in love with being the bridge between the business and its audience. The difference-maker. The person who translates ambition into something people can actually feel.

But breaking into marketing through an unconventional route isn’t easy. The industry talks about valuing creativity and innovation, yet still scans for job titles before talent.

Every job post seems to demand ten years of experience as a marketing manager - even if you’ve been doing the work without the title for longer.

When recruiters ask about your “marketing management experience,” they’re not really asking if you can do the job. They’re asking if you’ve already done it with permission.

That’s where imposter syndrome creeps in. Not because you don’t believe in your ability, but because you start to believe the industry’s story about who gets to belong.

There were moments I genuinely doubted myself. Sitting in interviews with people who had agency backgrounds and marketing degrees. Reading job specs filled with buzzwords and thinking, “Am I even qualified to apply for this?”

Then one day, something shifted.

When I joined the Chartered Institute of Marketing, I started as an Associate (ACIM) - proud, but still uncertain. Then I worked my way up to full Member (MCIM). And that changed everything.

It wasn’t just a badge. It was validation.

When I hit MCIM, I realised I wasn’t playing catch-up. I was already there - already equipped with the same, if not stronger, skills than many in the role. I’d just taken the long way round.

That badge said what my CV couldn’t: I know what I’m doing.

And honestly, experience has been my greatest teacher. Losing £250K and rebuilding from nothing taught me more about business, marketing, and leadership than any textbook ever could. It taught me resilience. It taught me commercial awareness. It taught me what “strategy” really means when the stakes are personal.

So no - I didn’t come through the traditional route. I built my own path, one design, one campaign, one lesson at a time.

And that’s my advantage.

Because when you’ve had to prove yourself without the safety net, you don’t just learn marketing - you live it.

The title might come later.
The results are already here.