Trainee Marketing Manager - Graduate Scheme in Birmingham

Are you a recent graduate and still looking for the right opportunity to kick-start your career? Are you ambitious, interested in different marketing strategies and looking for hands-on experience with clear opportunities to progress? If that sounds like you, keep reading...

Our Management scheme is designed for graduates who want to understand marketing beyond presentations, theory and social media metrics. This scheme offers direct exposure to how customers actually respond to brands in the real world.

At Sage, our marketing decisions are shaped by live customer conversations, campaign performance and the behavioural insights gathered by our teams across the West Midlands. You will learn how campaigns for recognised brands including BT/EE, E.ON and Mercedes are delivered at ground level, then develop towards the management side of the operation. That means understanding what influences customer decisions, interpreting campaign results, supporting Marketing Executives in the field and eventually helping manage the people, performance and client contracts behind each campaign.

About Sage: Sage is a Birmingham based marketing business specialising in face to face customer acquisition, brand representation and promotional campaigns. Our teams work directly with customers on behalf of established national and international brands. This gives us access to something particularly valuable in marketing, immediate customer feedback. Rather than relying solely on digital data, we can see which messages generate interest, where customers hesitate, what questions repeatedly come up and how different audiences respond to a campaign. Those observations are reported back through the business and used to support campaign decisions, team development and client strategy.

The Graduate Scheme: The Trainee Marketing Manager Graduate Scheme is designed to build that understanding progressively. You will begin close to campaign delivery, learning how our Executives represent clients, communicate campaign messaging and engage customers across different environments. From there, your development will move into performance reporting, campaign coordination, coaching and management. The objective is not to place a graduate immediately behind a desk with responsibility they have never experienced first hand. We want future managers to understand the work their teams are doing before they are expected to manage it.

Your responsibilities will develop across areas including:

• Representing client campaigns and learning how different customer groups respond to marketing messages
• Observing customer behaviour, objections, purchasing motivations and recurring feedback
• Recording campaign results and identifying patterns that can be reported back to the wider management team
• Learning how Marketing Executives are briefed, supported and measured against campaign objectives
• Supporting the coordination of promotional activity across Birmingham and the wider West Midlands
• Reviewing daily and weekly campaign performance with senior managers
• Developing your understanding of client expectations, campaign targets and contractual requirements
• Supporting training sessions and sharing successful approaches with newer team members
• Progressing towards responsibility for managing Marketing Executives working across live campaigns
• Building the commercial knowledge required to support client relationships and contribute to campaign planning

A significant part of the scheme is learning how to turn customer interaction into useful commercial information. You might notice that customers repeatedly respond positively to one part of a campaign but misunderstand another. A particular location may produce stronger engagement, one customer profile may raise similar objections, or a change in communication style may produce noticeably different results. You will learn how to identify those trends, communicate them clearly and understand what they mean from a marketing and business perspective.

This combination of customer behaviour, campaign reporting and people management is central to the way we develop our future managers. As you progress, the focus of your role will gradually shift from individual campaign execution towards managing performance through other people. You will learn how to:

• Run campaign briefings and communicate daily priorities
• Coach Marketing Executives on communication and customer engagement
• Review individual and team performance
• Identify development needs and provide practical feedback
• Maintain professional standards across client campaigns
• Organise people and resources across promotional locations
• Analyse campaign information and report findings to management
• Understand the commercial requirements attached to different client contracts
• Build professional relationships with senior colleagues and client representatives

Development is performance based, with additional responsibility introduced as you demonstrate the ability to handle each stage effectively.

Who we are looking for: This opportunity is particularly suited to graduates who want a commercially focused career involving marketing, business, customer behaviour and management. Your degree subject is less important than how you think, communicate and approach responsibility. You should bring:

• A completed or recently completed university degree
• Strong verbal communication and interpersonal skills
• Genuine interest in marketing, consumer behaviour and business
• The ability to absorb feedback and apply it quickly
• A professional approach when representing recognised client brands
• Good organisation and attention to detail when working with campaign information
• An interest in developing leadership and people management skills
• Confidence working in a role that combines office based learning with practical campaign experience

Experience in retail, hospitality, customer service, events, sales, promotions, university societies or other people facing environments can be useful, but previous marketing experience is not essential.

What Sage offers: Structured graduate development covering marketing, commercial awareness and management. Practical exposure to campaigns connected with brands including BT/EE, E.ON and Mercedes. First hand insight into consumer behaviour and customer decision making. Training in campaign reporting, performance analysis and client management. Gradual responsibility for coaching and managing Marketing Executives. Direct mentorship from experienced members of the management team. Experience across both campaign delivery and business operations. A Birmingham City Centre working environment with campaign activity across the West Midlands. A clear route towards broader responsibility based on performance and capability.

Location and working arrangement: This is a full time, on site position based in Birmingham. Because the graduate scheme combines office based development, live campaign activity and practical management training, applicants should be comfortable working in person and travelling to campaign locations when required. Competitive and negotiable, with the final package discussed according to experience and suitability for the role.

Applications: We are currently reviewing applications for the next intake of our graduate management programme.