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Sage | Marketing Agency

Trainee Marketing Manager - Graduate Scheme

Birmingham
Posted about 15 hours ago
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Trainee Marketing Manager - Graduate Scheme 2026

Birmingham City Centre | Full Time | Competitive Salary, Negotiable Based on Experience

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. As our client portfolio and campaign activity grow, we need to develop managers who understand both sides of the operation: the customer-facing work happening on the ground and the commercial responsibilities involved in managing people and client accounts.

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. As your knowledge and capability develop, you will gain greater involvement in the commercial and operational side of our client campaigns.

Reasons to use Rodeo

I’m in my final year doing Economics and I don’t know whether to apply for grad schemes now or do a masters first. What do you think?

Honest answer — it depends on where you want to end up. A lot of top grad schemes (Big 4, civil service, banking) don’t need a masters. Let’s look at the ones you’d be competitive for now, and we can decide if a masters actually adds anything.

Also worth knowing: most autumn 2026 applications are open now. Timing matters more than you think.

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Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.

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Graduate Consultant — 2026 Scheme

PwC·London, UK
£35,000/yr

Why you're a good match

Strong

Your economics background and your summer at a regional bank line up with what PwC looks for on the consulting scheme. Applications close in four weeks.

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It searches the market for you

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Why you're a good match

You’ve got the grades and the economics background, and your bank internship is exactly the experience this scheme looks for. Apply soon — deadlines close within the month.

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Strong

Experience fit

Your summer at the bank plus your econometrics coursework map directly to the day-one responsibilities on this scheme — client modelling, market briefings, and deal support.

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Strong

Only hits

No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.

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

Marketing through real customer behaviour

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.

Management development

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.

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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.

Salary

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. If you are looking for a graduate role where you can study customer behaviour first-hand, understand how major promotional campaigns operate, and gradually build the skills required to manage both people and client activity, submit your CV for consideration.

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Skills

Marketing strategy
Customer behaviour analysis
Campaign management
Performance reporting
People management
Communication
Interpersonal skills
Coaching
Commercial awareness
Client relationship management
Data analysis
Leadership
Organization
Attention to detail
Problem solving

Location

Birmingham, England, United Kingdom

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