Do you have a good sense of style and what people like? If you have great business skills and an eye for fashion, fashion marketing may be the field for you. This career is a very important part of the fashion industry, since fashion marketers help create and protect the brand image of fashion designers. As a fashion marketer, you may be expected to figure out target demographic groups, create marketing plans to reach consumers, and find ways to create brand loyalty.
FashionSchoolsUSA.com wants to help you start a career in fashion marketing. We have detailed information on all 92 fashion marketing programs in the United States, including tuition costs, average scholarship awards, and class sizes. We link to every school in our list, making it easy for you to contact a school near you and learn more.
Types of Degrees
If you are a new student, you should start with an Associate’s degree or Bachelor’s degree. Both of these degrees include general education courses as well as fashion marketing classes. A Bachelor’s degree program can give you the most thorough education in the field, but you may only need an Associate’s degree if you have prior experience in the field.
Do you already have a Bachelor’s degree in fashion design or marketing? If so, you can look into the 20 graduate programs across the country. A Master’s degree or PhD in fashion marketing can help you learn more in-depth marketing techniques.
Curriculum
Since you need to know the worlds of marketing and fashion design inside and out, you can expect your fashion marketing curriculum to have classes in a variety of disciplines. You may take courses in fashion design to teach you about how your clients work. Your marketing courses can teach you about general marketing techniques, which you can hone to fit your specific field. No matter which school you attend, you can plan on taking courses in the following areas:
- Fashion Branding
- Fashion History
- Marketing Management
- Media Marketing in Fashion
- Public Relations in Fashion
- Brand Management
Fashion Marketing Careers
One of the benefits of earning a degree in this field is the variety of work environments. Some marketing specialists are self-employed, taking on various fashion clients and creating their own schedule. You might work for a marketing firm that assigns different fashion brands and designers to you, or you may work directly for a fashion design company. Overall, the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects job outlook for marketing specialists and research analysts to increase much faster than average between 2010 and 2020.
While the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not maintain statistics on the specific field of fashion marketing, it does have information on market research analysts and marketing specialists.
The states with the highest employment rates of marketing specialists are California, New York and Texas—the same three states with the highest employment rates for fashion designers. Median salaries vary between states, but the nationwide median average for marketing specialists is $60,570 per year (BLS, 2010).
As a fashion marketer, there are many job duties that may be part of your job description. Some job duties you may have to perform include:
- monitoring sales trends
- designing new marketing campaigns
- assessing success of marketing campaigns
- gather data on consumers
- create branding materials