Marketing Manager Resume Examples and Tips

Marketing Manager Resume (Text Version)

Contact Info:

Steve Grimes
[email protected]
1 (617) 094-2391
Boston, MA 02133

Summary Statement:

Marketing Manager: Efficient Marketing Manager skilled at developing and maintaining marketing strategies to increase engagement and ROI. Excels at communication and problem-solving marketing issues through A/B testing and creative solutions. Proficient at creating unique and innovative marketing campaigns that utilize data for targeted and effective marketing. Experienced with team leadership and close collaboration with owners and managers.

Key Accomplishments/Areas of Expertise

• Adobe Illustrator
• InDesign
• Photoshop
• Social Media Management
• Business Development
• Data Analysis
• Creative Pitching
• Detail Oriented
• Verbal/Written Communication
• Facebook Ads

Professional Experience:

Adams Heart Center | Boston, MA
Marketing Manager | March 2015 – Present

• Coordinated all marketing, advertising, and public relations
• Analyzed performance of all marketing and ad campaigns
• Developed innovative ideas to market brand, including video ads
• Met often with Board of Directors to discuss marketing strategies
• Saw patient base increase by 5% during tenure

SHL Fabrication | Boston, MA
Marketing Manager | January 2013 – January 2015

• Executed email marketing campaigns
• Employed data-driven marketing strategies to grow company exposure
• Managed marketing and PR teams, delegated tasks and projects
• Maintained marketing database and created lead-generation strategies

Boston Vintage Autos | Boston, DE
Marketing Manager | June 2009 – November 2012

• Planned and executed marketing events and fundraisers
• Created social media posts and advertising
• Curated company website and posted updates
• Designed brochures and billboard ads
• Organized focused marketing campaigns to appeal to niche market

Education/Certifications

Bachelor of Science in Marketing
The University of Delaware, Newark, DE,
Class of 2009

In the introduction, we mentioned that it’s important to put your information in the right order.

Why does this matter so much?

It matters because the organization of your marketing manager resume will impact which of your details gets seen first. The average hiring manager only looks at the typical resume for about six seconds, so what’s included at the top of the page matters a lot. What’s seen first could impact whether the hiring manager actually keeps reading, or tosses your materials in the trash.

This means that throughout your marketing manager resume, Big Interview recommends using a format called reverse chronological order. How it works is you start off with your most recent experience first and then go backward through your work history. Your most recent experience is probably the most relevant and impressive, so you want to be sure it gets seen right away.

It’s also important that your resume is easy to understand. Go with a simple font like Arial or Times New Roman and keep the format straightforward. This is not the place to try to stand out.

Remember that sometimes the white space is just as important as the text. Spacing will help guide the eye and make your information easier for a busy reader to digest, so it’s best to avoid big blocks of text.

Finally, be sure to proofread for errors like typos and other mistakes. Double-check that you’ve submitted all the materials the employer needs to consider your application complete!

So now you know that you might only have about six seconds to make an impression on the hiring team. How should you get their attention?

Remember, this means that the top of the page is prime real estate, so you want to include a major attention-getter here, like a resume summary.

A resume summary is a short paragraph that includes your top skills, experiences, and attributes. In just a few sentences, give the reader a sense of your “greatest hits” to convince them to keep reading.

It should be pretty short, so be selective about what you include here. Be as specific as you can and avoid repeating yourself.

What does a resume summary actually look like?

Examples for marketing managers:

What makes the Yes! And No! examples different?

The first example is informative and specific, while still being short and to the point. It inspires confidence in your abilities as a marketing manager and positions you as a good candidate for the open role.

The second example is much different. It is very repetitive, general, and doesn’t really share anything about you. Not only does it not share any of the duties of a marketing manager, but it also doesn’t tell us any of your accomplishments. It also uses personal pronouns, which are not found in the typical resume.

Once the hiring manager is paying attention, it’s the perfect time to show your qualifications. We recommend accomplishing this with a bulleted list.

Since your marketing manager resume summary is in paragraph format, a bulleted list of your areas of expertise will give the hiring manager something to quickly scan to see if you’re qualified for the open role.

In this list, you should include the skills you have that would make you stand out from other candidates. For example, do you know how to use a certain analytics program? Have you had any special leadership experiences?

PRO TIP: The employer is probably looking for a marketing manager who already has certain skills. If so, they will include them in the job description, so make sure you read the posting carefully and list those skills in this section if you have them!

Example:

• Adobe Illustrator
• InDesign
• Photoshop
• Social Media Management
• Business Development
• Data Analysis
• Creative Pitching
• Detail Oriented
• Verbal/Written Communication
• Facebook Ads

A good marketing manager will have a balance of hard skills and soft skills.

What is the difference?

Hard skills are objective, technical skills that you can get better at with practice. You can learn them in the classroom or on the job. For a marketing manager, this category could include skills like InDesign or creating budgets.

Soft skills are more subjective because you can’t necessarily learn them. They are sometimes called “people skills” and include things like communication or being detail-oriented.

Make sure you include both types of skills on your list!

(Below is a helpful table of some suggested hard and soft skill ideas for marketing managers to inform your skills section.)

Next up is the section that will end up being the bulk of your marketing manager resume, your work history. It’s your work experiences that will convince the hiring team that you’re the best candidate for the job.

This is the first section where reverse chronological order is going to be important. Remember, you want your most relevant information seen first, so start with your most recent position and work backward through your past jobs as you go down the page.

With very few exceptions, most resumes are only one page in length, so choose only the most impressive and relevant jobs from your history to include here. You don’t have to include every experience you’ve ever had!

For each position, use three to five bullet points to describe your duties in the role and what you accomplished during your time at the organization. If you have any quantifiable information, like website traffic or sales data, use it!

Be sure that you’re not using the first person! Start each bullet off with an action word instead. The language will be stronger and it will help you adapt to this style of writing.

What makes these two examples different?

The first starts each bullet point with an action word and uses strong language to get your point across. It uses quantifiable information to share your accomplishments and inspires confidence in your abilities.

The second example is very general and repetitive. It shares some of the basic duties of a marketing manager, but that’s about it. Again, it uses the first person, which is not recommended. The descriptions of this position are doing nothing for you.

PRO TIP: Try to not repeat yourself. Since the descriptions are brief and resumes are short, repetitions will stand out — in a bad way. Look at how many times the second example repeats “marketing” and “managed.”

Bots, Explained

Now that we’ve talked about how to make your marketing manager resume easy for hiring managers to understand, we have to talk about who else — or what else — might be reading your resume: bots.

Bots are another name for a type of software program called Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).

Because employers sometimes get so many applications for just one open role, they sometimes will use an ATS to help sift through them all.

How do they work?

An ATS will be programmed with keywords, usually from the job description, and will search through applications to find the candidates who used those keywords in their resumes. It’s those resumes that will get looked at by hiring teams.

This means that it’s absolutely critical for you to carefully read the job description. That’s where you’ll find the keywords you need to get through a potential ATS. Even if you’re totally qualified for the job, if you don’t use keywords, you might not be asked in for an interview.

To further impress an ATS, some applicants choose to write the description in their work history section in paragraph format, as opposed to in bullets.

Here’s what that looks like:

Standard Bullet Point Format:

Adams Heart Center | Boston, MA | Marketing Manager | March 2015 – Present

• Coordinated all marketing, advertising, and public relations
• Analyzed performance of all marketing and ad campaigns
• Developed innovative ideas to market brand, including video ads
• Met often with Board of Directors to discuss marketing strategies
• Saw patient base increase by 5% during tenure

Paragraph Format:

Adams Heart Center | Boston, MA | Marketing Manager | March 2015 – Present

Coordinate all marketing, advertising, and public relations. Analyze performance of all marketing and ad campaigns. Develop innovative concepts to market brand, including social media video ads. Meet frequently with Board of Directors to discuss marketing strategies and goals. Saw patient base increase by 5% during tenure.

As you can see in these two examples, both formats can be keyword-rich. Both examples here use the same number of keywords and would have an equal chance with an ATS.

The difference here is that the second example creates a block of text, which is not written with a human reviewer in mind. For this reason, Big Interview recommends using the bulleted list format, because it appeals to both bots and humans.

Next up is your education section.

This part is going to work in a very similar way to your work experience section, but will be even easier to write!

Once again, you’re going to use reverse chronological order to list your degrees from highest to lowest, starting with your most impressive and working backward. For example, a bachelor’s would come before a high school diploma.

Include where you attended, your field of study, and the year you graduated. If you graduated recently, you may also include your GPA if you want to, since it is more relevant to your marketing manager resume at this point. It won’t always be, however, so be sure to reevaluate this the longer you are in the working world!

Example:

Bachelor of Science in Marketing
The University of Delaware, Newark, DE,
Class of 2009

If you have any other relevant information, like certifications or training, you may also choose to include them here.

Example:

• Social Media for Professionals, Weekend Workshop
  • Newark, DE
• “InDesign: Advanced Techniques and Updates,” Online Course
  • University of Delaware Online, DE

Alternative Sections

You may find that you have experiences that don’t necessarily fit into the other categories, but are still relevant. Feel free to add alternative sections if you still have some space. Other sections you could include are:

• Awards and honors
• Publications
• Noteworthy Projects
• Social Media Influence
• Speaking Engagements
• Hobbies/Interests
• Volunteer Work

What If You Have No Experience?

It may not feel like it, but it’s totally okay to apply for a role when you have no experience. How else will you gain experience in the marketing industry?

If you are making a career change or are a recent graduate, your marketing manager resume is going to look a little different from the instructions we gave above. You still need the basics, just in a slightly different order.

Start off with a resume summary and skills list, but instead of following your areas of expertise with your work experience, move up your education section. It’s more relevant to you now.

When it comes to writing your work history, you may have more experience than you realize. It’s all about positioning the experiences you do have in a way that shows you are knowledgeable about the marketing industry.

The positions in this section don’t necessarily have to be paid work. You can include volunteer roles, internships, or online coursework here. Don’t forget about summer jobs and workshops!

PRO TIP: You need soft skills to be a good marketing manager. Think about the experiences you’ve had that show your skills, like communication or leadership, and include them here.

List your contact details

When you’re so focused on writing the perfect resume, it can be easier than you think to miss the small stuff. Be sure you include a way for people to contact you, like an email address, phone number, and LinkedIn profile.

Use white space

People don’t want to read big blocks of text, especially busy hiring managers! Make sure all of your important details will be seen by using bullet points and line breaks.

Include quantifiable information

Statistics and data are a great way for hiring managers to understand the impact you had during your time at a company. Just be sure they are easy to understand without a lot of context.

Don’t go longer than one page

Except in very rare cases, your resume should only be one page. Be selective about what you include and keep your descriptions brief!

Don’t use the first person

Personal pronouns have no place in resume writing. It may feel strange to write about yourself without using “I” and “me,” but the first person should not be used.

Don’t forget to proofread

Always look over your finished resume for mistakes like typos, spelling errors, or misaligned margins. They can be easy to miss, so grab a friend with fresh eyes to take a second look for you.(We’ve put together a table of power words for marketing managers to get you started.)

Marketing Manager Power Words

• Coordinated
• Emphasized
• Analyzed
• Planned
• Developed
• Curated
• Oversaw
• Created
• Maintained
• Ideated
• Executed
• Designed
• Managed
• Organized
• Employed
• Delegated

Skills List