Market Your Expertise: Write a Compelling Marketing Manager Resume

You market goods and services for a living. Now, it's time to market yourself.

How can you effectively weave in your creative genius, human empathy, leadership skills, and project management prowess into your marketing manager resume — and fit it into 1-2 pages? 

Below, we show you how to sell your skills on paper and draft an enticing marketing manager resume that lands you an interview.

What Hiring Managers Look for in a Marketing Manager Resume 

While some marketing professionals are encouraged to develop a niche, a hiring manager wants a marketing manager with a broad skill set.

When writing your resume, hit on three themes: people, project management, and creative. This shows you can manage a team and delƒight clients, execute a marketing plan on time and on budget, and develop new ideas that convert leads to sales.

Keep these three resume objectives in mind when drafting your resume.

1. Show That You Know People

A marketing manager has to understand people. If you work in-house, you need to understand your consumer base. If you work for an agency, you will be the liaison between your team and the client. And in both cases, you'll need to manage a team of people, elicit constructive feedback, and motivate those around you.

Conveying this in a series of bullet points isn't easy (and no, writing "people person" in your skills section won't cut it). You need to weave a combination of hard and soft skills into your work experience, and include the tangible results they earned you.

Here are examples of how to display both: 

• Display your leadership skills: Increased employee satisfaction by 20%, leading to a Best Places to Work nomination by the Pittsburgh Gazette
• Prove you understand consumers: Uncovered an untapped segment of divorcees aged 35-45, leading to a 20% jump in sales
• Convey your communication skills: Served as the liaison between executive, technology, marketing, and product teams, instating a weekly all-hands meeting to cut down on inefficiencies
• Show you can delight clients: Earned an 80% retention rate amongst client, landing $250,000 of recurring revenue for the company

2. Communicate Your Project Management Skills 

Great creative minds can struggle with project management and business administration, making them unfit to be marketing managers. A recruiter wants to see both right- and left-brain skills in your resume writing, proving you can see a campaign through completion. 

Prove that you can stick to a budget, manage an entire marketing team, and hand-off deliverables before the deadline by focusing on projects or marketing plans you created. Here are some examples:

• For a market research project: Discovered the highest consumer satisfaction rating within people aged 60-75 years of age, saving 33% on paid advertising  
• For an email marketing campaign: Executed six segmented, three-part email campaigns on time and under budget, leading to $74,000 in revenue 
• For an online marketing campaign: Managed a team of six in-house creatives and 65 influencers, leading to 800,000 impressions for the client

3. Show Off Your Creative and Analytical Sides 

The best marketing managers have killer, original ideas and the data to predict their effectiveness.

Here's the thing: Even if you're a wizard at Google analytics and minored in statistics, your analytical side won't give you those rare, lightbulb-worthy moments. Likewise, even the most creative visionary won't appease a client who wants factual data about why their product launch flopped.

Great marketing strategies require vision and analytics, and you need to convey both in your job application, like this:

• Show your creative genius: Wrote the "Born to lift heavy" campaign, which received over 1.2M shares on Facebook and 3M impressions on Instagram
• Display your analytical side: Identified a dual-use for the product, causing a shift in Google AdWords that led to a $30,000 spike in profits 
• Prove you know how to use both: Developed the award-winning "A day to give" campaign, which delivered on time, under budget, and earned national recognition for the client

Marketing Manager Resume Template 

Your resume template will consist of five sections: contact information, summary, work experience, education, and skills. Use a reverse chronological resume format, listing your experience from most to least recent. Lastly, use appropriate font size, margins, spacing, and white space to allow for easy readability. 

Since a marketing manager is typically a more senior position, your resume can extend over one page. If you are a recent grad or applying for a more junior role, stick to one page. 

1. Contact Information 

Keep your contact information succinct, listing the following pieces of information: 

• First and last name
• Most recent job title
• City and state 
• Phone number
• Email
• Portfolio, website, or business social media handles, if necessary

Only list a portfolio, website, or social media handles if it's directly related to the position and up-to-date. If you have a personal blog that you haven't updated since 2018, leave it off.

2. Resume Summary 

In your resume summary, show that you can manage people, timelines, and marketing budgets, while launching creative, effective campaigns. 

For example: 

Marketing manager with over eight years of experience managing in-house marketing teams for nonprofits. Launched over five viral campaigns that earned a collective $10M in individual giving with an average donation of just $25. 

3. Work Experience 

When writing your work experience section, keep your knowledge and marketing skill skillset broad, while making each bullet specific. Below, notice how every bullet point focuses on a completely different marketing channel, making the applicant appear well-rounded. However, each bullet is incredibly specific, using action verbs and statistics to show earned results.

For example: 

• Email automation: Integrated Hubspot email automation and Salesforce CRM to launch six email marketing campaigns, handing off $1.1B worth of qualified leads to business development
• SEO and Google Analytics: Increased brand awareness by moving to the top page of Google for "athletic shorts for women," increasing site page views by 20,000 per month
• Social media marketing strategy: Recruited 250 influencers for Giving Tuesday, leading to half a million web clicks 
• Copywriting and content marketing: Wrote a website for a Y Combinator start-up with a $50M valuation
• Direct mail: Launched coupon direct mail campaign, tapping into seniors aged 65+ for the first time in company history and earning $20,000 in sales

4. Education

Keep your education section brief. List the schools you attend degrees received. If you went to more than one school, list them in reverse chronological order on separate lines.

For example:

The George Washington University, MS in Public Relations, Sep. 2011 – May, 2013

Butler University, BA in Economics, Sep. 2007 – May, 2011

5. Skills 

In your skills section, list hard skills only, such as software and systems you use. Leave off any soft skills, such as leadership or communication skills, weaving them throughout your work experience section instead. 

For example:

Adobe Creative Suite, HTML, CSS, Pardot, Marketo, Salesforce CRM, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Asana

Write a Marketing Resume To Sell Your Skills 

Companies need creative people to sell their services. A hiring manager won't trust you to launch an effective campaign if you can't sell the thing closest to you: your own expertise.

Over 100,000 job seekers trust Standard Resume to create a polished resume. Our easy resume builder helps communicate your skills and experience so you can land an interview. To write your resume and get one step closer to your dream job, get started today.