Whether you’re wrapping up another semester or thinking about your next career opportunity, as you look forward and try to think of your next move, you acknowledge the fact that finding a marketing career that you love will be a challenge. At one point or another, you may have heard that it’s not always about what you know, but sometimes who you know that really matters. That realization might be disheartening, especially when you’ve put everything you have into your work, but the reality is it’s true. Sometimes, who you know is just as important as what you know. When you need help to open doors that your experience hasn’t unlocked for you, finding a mentor might be the key.
You can find experienced mentors in any profession. The lessons they’ve learned over the years can help you discover how to traverse the obstacles you encounter in your career as if you’d personally been there. A mentor is anyone willing to share knowledge that could be considered valuable with another. Whether it’s a former professor, a colleague or your current boss, anyone could be a mentor. It all depends on what you want to learn and why.
A marketing mentor is a marketing professional who shares their time and the knowledge they have acquired over their career to help other marketers achieve their goals in the profession. In other words, a marketing mentor shares their insights and feedback to help you on your marketing journey. Their insights will help you improve your work. You can learn from both their positive experiences, where they triumphed, and from their negative experiences, where they came up short. Use these moments to your advantage by asking questions and learning what you can. These conversations and lessons help you understand what your strengths are and what you need to work on.
According to a blog on ClickUp called “The Marvels of Mentorship in Marketing and How to Maximize It” by Sudarshan Somanathan, there are 5 types of marketing mentors [1]:
Marketing strategy mentors
Growth marketing mentors
Digital marketing mentors
Content marketing mentors
Social media marketing mentors
On your journey, you’ve probably received advice from professors, family, friends and peers, and just so you know, any of them could be a mentor. Remember that professor who just reviewed your work in the paragraph above? They could become your mentor. You could learn directly from them and use the knowledge you gain to make your creative work stronger. If you’re building a portfolio to apply to jobs, it could be composed entirely of work that your professor reviewed.
You could also find a mentor through networking. When you attend marketing networking events and engage in conversations, you might meet someone with whom you really connect. That person could end up being a mentor for you as well. You can find mentors anywhere and everywhere if you are open to meeting them and asking for help. For more information, there’s a great article on the Harvard Business Review from 2021, written by Janet T. Phan, called What’s the Right Way to Find a Mentor. [2]
If you’ve recently immigrated to Canada and have marketing experience, education and the skills to go along with it, the CMA Mentorship Program might be precisely what you’re looking for. This program might be the next step on your journey that allows you to land a position that will enable you to use the education you worked hard to gain and the experience that you earned along the way. Click here for more information and find out if the CMA Mentorship Program for Newcomers to Canada is right for you on your journey.
As a subsidiary of the CMA, CMA NXT holds the CMA NXT Marketing Careers Night at least three times every year. This event features Chartered Marketers, members and non-members of the Canadian Marketing Association who all strive to give back to the marketing community by sharing their marketing journeys and the most important lessons that they’ve learned throughout their careers. Click here to register for the first in-person CMA NXT Marketing Careers Night, held at George Brown – Waterfront Campus from 5:30 – 8:00 pm on October 1st, 2025. This could be a great opportunity to meet, hear from and connect with some successful Canadian marketers who were once exactly where you are today – searching for an opportunity to make a connection to help them do what they love.
Building a career takes time, and thankfully, you don’t have to do it alone. To be clear, you don’t have to go out and get a mentor, but a mentor could share knowledge that helped them find success. One thing to note is that people are willing to help if you ask for it. What you learn from these experiences will allow you to navigate challenges as if you’ve been there before. As you progress through your career, one day you may realize that you have advice that you would like to share with the next generation. Whatever you choose to do, remember, anyone can be a mentor – even you.
[1] “The Marvels of Mentorship in Marketing and How to Maximize It” ClickUp,9 May 2024, https://clickup.com/blog/how-to-find-a-marketing-mentor/#:~:text=Search%20for%20local%20marketing%20networking,likely%20you%20find%20a%20mentor.
[2] What’s the Right Way to Find a Mentor” Harvard Business Review,10 March 2021, https://hbr.org/2021/03/whats-the-right-way-to-find-a-mentor
The NXT Voice is your one-stop shop for tips, tricks and inside information about all things marketing, where Chartered Marketers share what they've learned with you. Today's topic is Life Lessons for Financial Success featuring Elizabeth Naumovski, CM, Vice President of Marketing at Caldwell Securities LTD., Host/Producer of Empowered.
Once you take your seat you hand your book over and watch patiently as the judges flip through it one at a time. After reviewing your work, the last judge tells you that while you have some interesting ideas, they’ve all been done before, and you need to start over. Today’s blog deals with rejection and how to handle it when it comes.
If you’ve made it this far, you must see the value that the CMA NXT Fund can offer your post-secondary club, association or event. You can start applying for funding on Monday, September 8, 2025.
