When the time comes to look for your next marketing strategist role, how can you describe your versatility in a way that displays your abilities, while still being succinct and to the point?
A well-written marketing strategist resume, one that shares not only what you do but how good you are at it, will help you tremendously. We’re going to show you how to write one.
What you might not realize is that you probably already have the information you will need to write a stellar resume — you just need to learn how to organize it.
We’re going to go over each section of your resume and tell you what you should include (and what you should leave out of your marketing strategist resume!), complete with examples specifically for marketing strategists.
Let’s get to it.
Summary
- Resume Template
- Formatting
- Writing Your Resume Summary
- Areas of Expertise
- Writing Your Work Experience
- Writing Your Education Section
- Additional Sections
- Resume Points to Remember
- Resume “Don’ts” to Remember
- Some Helpful Tools
Let’s begin with a sample marketing strategist resume to demonstrate how all the resume pieces fit together. Then we will break each section down to really drill into how to write the best marketing strategist resume you possibly can.
Marketing Strategist Resume (Text Version)
Contact Info:
Mandy Peters
[email protected]
1 (334) 521-0832
Montgomery, AL 36103
linkedin.com/mandypeters
Summary Statement:
Marketing Strategist: Accomplished Marketing Strategist with experience in both digital and print publications. Specializes in the development of long-term marketing strategies and initiatives based on a marriage of data-driven and creative solutions An excellent communicator who believes strongly in the importance of giving voice to people at all levels of an organization or business.
Key Accomplishments/Areas of Expertise
- Brand Development
- Analytics
- Internet Market Trends
- Copy Editing
- Idea Generation
- Social Media
- Highly Creative
- Teamwork
Professional Experience:
Digital Revolutions | Montgomery, AL
Digital Marketing Strategist | October 2017 – Present
- Established strategic goals for clients based on data & unique needs
- Cultivated strong client relationships via leading calls & client visits
- Participated in weekly team meetings to discuss strategies & progress
- Trained new analysts via paired training, reporting, & monitoring
- Monitored client accounts & adjusted priorities when needed
New Horizons Corporation | Montgomery, AL
Marketing Strategist | January 2015 – August 2017
- Aligned business goals with new and creative marketing strategies
- Developed strategies for digital marketing via social media and paid ads
- Applied knowledge of industry trends to marketing strategies and initiatives
- Kept detailed reports of progress and success rates
- Organized sales presentations for executives and internal marketing team
Renew Chiropractic | Montgomery, AL
Digital Marketing Strategist | June 2012 – December 2014
- Researched, designed, and executed marketing strategies to grow business
- Cultivated brand awareness through utilization of social media
- Expanded social media presence and grew follower base by over 20%
- Helped design email marketing campaigns
- Authored marketing copy for both digital and physical applications
Education/Certifications
Bachelor of Arts in Communications
CONCENTRATION: DIGITAL MARKETING
The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL,
Class of 2012
The Basics of a Marketing Strategist Resume
When it comes to resume writing, organization and formatting should be one of your top priorities. Why?
Proper organization will help you control which of your details get seen first and because the average hiring manager only looks at the typical resume for about six seconds, what gets seen first matters a lot.
Throughout your marketing strategist resume, you are going to use a style of organization called reverse chronological order, where you list your most recent experience first and work backward. This ensures that your most relevant details are the most noticeable.
In addition, you need to be sure that your marketing strategist resume is easy to understand, by human reviewers and bots alike (more on this later). When in doubt, simple is best for formatting, margins, and fonts. Think Arial or Times New Roman, not Papyrus or Comic Sans.
Remember to avoid big blocks of text and to leave some whitespace. This will make your information easier for the reader to digest. Finally, always be sure you proofread for typos and other small mistakes!
Your Resume Summary
So how should you kick things off? Should you jump right into your work experiences since they’re the most important?
No!
Remember, you might only have six seconds of the hiring manager’s attention, so you need to start off with something snappy and interesting to convince them to keep reading. That’s why you include a resume summary at the top of the page.
A resume summary is a short, two-to-three sentence paragraph that sets your marketing strategist resume up and gives the hiring team a good idea of who you are right off the bat. Think of this section as your “greatest hits” and only include your most relevant and impressive skills, experiences, and attributes.
Include the skills you have that make you a great marketing strategist, but remember, you don’t have a ton of space. Be informative and specific, but most of all, be brief.
Here’s what this looks for marketing strategists:
Yes!
Accomplished Marketing Strategist with experience in both digital and print publications. Specializes in the development of long-term marketing strategies and initiatives based on a marriage of data-driven and creative solutions. An excellent communicator who believes strongly in the importance of giving voice to people at all levels of an organization or business.
No!
I am an accomplished marketing strategist with a lot of experience in a lot of fields.
What are the differences between these two examples?
The first example is informative and specific, while still grabbing our attention. It inspires confidence in your abilities as a marketing strategist and positions you as an excellent candidate for the open role.
The second example, on the other hand, is much different. It doesn’t really tell us anything about you or what you do as a marketing strategist. It is also pretty repetitive and uses the first person, which is not typical in resume writing.
Areas of Expertise/Key Accomplishments
A great way to retain the hiring manager’s attention is to follow your resume summary with a list of your key accomplishments.
Your resume summary is in paragraph format, so including a list of your areas of expertise gives the reader the option of something that they can scan if they’re short on time. That way, the hiring manager could quickly determine whether you’re qualified for the role.
What should you include in this section?
What makes you special? Do you have any skills that would set you apart from the other applicants, like knowledge of a certain software program or specific leadership experiences? Include those here.
PRO TIP: Check out the job description. If the role you’re applying to requires certain skills, like copy editing or social media, those will be included in the posting, so be sure to list those skills if you have them.
Example:
- Brand Development
- Analytics
- Internet Market Trends
- Copy Editing
- Idea Generation
- Social Media
- Highly Creative
- Teamwork
One thing to think about while crafting this list is that, as a marketing strategist, you should have a balance of hard skills and soft skills.
Hard skills are objective technical skills. These are things you could learn in school or at work and you could get better at them through practice. Skills in this category include data entry or Microsoft Office.
Soft skills are much more subjective and can’t necessarily be taught. You may have heard of this category as something called “people skills.” Think communication, leadership, or reliability.
(Below is a helpful table of some suggested hard and soft skill ideas for marketing strategists to inform your skills section.)
Writing Your Work Experience
Now it’s time to work on the section that will make up the bulk of your marketing strategist resume, your work experience.
This is the section that is going to help prove to the hiring team that you are the most qualified applicant for the open role. While this is one of the most important, detailed sections, you still need to get to the point as quickly as possible.
That’s why you’re going to use the format we mentioned earlier, reverse chronological order, so your most relevant experiences get seen first. Start by listing your most recent experience and work backward through your history.
It’s important to note here that your marketing strategist resume should only be one page long, with very few exceptions. This means that you should be selective about what jobs from your history you choose to include, so pick only your most impressive, relevant roles.
For each experience, use three to five bullet points to describe your duties in the role and what you accomplished during your time at the company. Start each point off with an action word and be as specific — and brief — as you can. If you have any quantifiable information, make sure you include it – think sales numbers or social media engagement data.
Let’s look at an example for marketing strategists:
Yes!
Digital Revolutions | Montgomery, AL | Digital Marketing Strategist | October 2017 – Present
- Established strategic goals for clients based on data & unique needs
- Cultivated strong client relationships via leading calls & client visits
- Participated in weekly team meetings to discuss strategies & progress
- Trained new analysts via paired training, reporting, & monitoring
- Monitored client accounts & adjusted priorities when needed
No!
Digital Revolutions | Montgomery, AL | Digital Marketing Strategist | October 2017 – Present
- Set goals
- Met goals
- Monitored accounts
- Attended meetings
In the first example, the bullet points are specific, detailed, and informative, while still being brief and to the point. The reader can understand exactly what you do at your job and what you accomplished during your time there. This example helps us understand what you would be capable of and inspires the confidence that you are a good candidate.
The second example is very vague, detailing some of the basic duties of marketing strategists and not much else. While it uses action words, the descriptions feel very passive and do not position you as a good candidate or as capable of accomplishing much.
PRO TIP: Do not use the first person, even though you’re talking about yourself. Starting each bullet off with an action word will help this style of writing feel more natural!
More About Bots
Earlier, we mentioned that your marketing strategist resume needs to be easily understood by humans and bots alike.
Bots are a type of software program that helps employers sift through applications when they receive too many to read. These programs are called Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).
How do they work?
An ATS will be set with keywords, usually from the job description, and programmed to look through the applications and pull out the resumes of the candidates who use the keywords. It’s those applicants who will be further considered by human reviewers.
What does this mean for your marketing strategist resume?
Because there is always the potential that an employer will use an ATS, it is absolutely critical that you read the job description to identify the keywords that you should be including in your resume.
If you don’t use keywords, your materials might get tossed to the side — even if you’re totally qualified for the position. That’s why, to impress an ATS, some applicants will choose to use the paragraph format (instead of bullets), in order to fit in as many keywords as possible.
Here’s a comparison of the two:
Standard Bullet Point Format:
Digital Revolutions | Montgomery, AL | Digital Marketing Strategist | October 2017 – Present
- Established strategic goals for clients based on data & unique needs
- Cultivated strong client relationships via leading calls & client visits
- Participated in weekly team meetings to discuss strategies & progress
- Trained new analysts via paired training, reporting, & monitoring
- Monitored client accounts & adjusted priorities when needed
Paragraph Format:
Digital Revolutions | Montgomery, AL | Digital Marketing Strategist | October 2017 – Present
Establish strategic goals for client accounts based on data and unique needs. Cultivate strong client relationships via leading calls and client visits. Participate in weekly meetings with internal teams to discuss marketing strategies and progress. Train new analysts via paired training, reporting, and monitoring. Monitor client accounts and adjust priorities when needed.
As you can see, both descriptions above are keyword-rich, utilizing the same number of keywords. The difference here is that the second example creates a big block of text, which could be iffy with a human reviewer — you’re taking a gamble that they have the time to read it.
Because both formats work for an ATS, but only one is designed for an actual hiring manager, we recommend using the bulleted list format.
Educational Background
Just like that, the most time-intensive section of your resume is over!
Next up is the education history, which is very similar in format to the work experience section.
Once again, use reverse chronological order, starting with your highest and most impressive degree first and working backward. For example, a master’s degree would come before a bachelor’s degree.
Include the school you attended, the year you graduated, and your field of study. You may choose to include your GPA if you graduated recently, as this is still relevant to your marketing strategist resume now.
Example:
Bachelor of Arts in Communications
The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL,
Class of 2012
If there is anything else you want to include in this section, like online coursework, training, or certifications, include them if they are relevant.
Example:
- Marketing in the Digital World,” Weekend Seminar, Montgomery, AL
- Leaders in Marketing, Annual Retreat, Mobile, AL
Alternative Sections
If you have other areas of interest or experiences that do not necessarily fit into the other categories, you can add other sections. Alternative 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’s totally okay to apply for a role when you have limited experience!
It’s all about positioning the experience you have to show that you are still a good candidate.
If you graduated recently or are making a career change, the formatting of your resume is going to look a little bit different.
First, start off with a resume summary and a list of key accomplishments. What will change is that you are going to move up your education section to come next, instead of the work history, because it is more relevant to your marketing strategist resume right now.
For the work experience section, include the experiences you’ve had that show that you’re familiar with the marketing industry. This can include summer jobs and internships, or things that aren’t necessarily paid work, like volunteer positions or coursework.
PRO TIP: There are plenty of soft skills that are required to be a good marketing strategist. Think about the experiences you’ve had that show where you’ve developed skills like leadership or collaboration.
Marketing Strategist Resume Points to Remember
Read the job description
The job posting will include much information that will be useful to you while writing your marketing strategist resume. Not only is this where you will find the keywords you need to get through an ATS, but it will also list the materials you need to submit in order for your application to be considered complete.
Keep it to one page
Except in rare cases, your resume should not exceed one page. Be selective about which of your past roles you choose to include, and be specific and brief in your descriptions.
Use quantifiable information
Numbers and data can really help show your accomplishments and abilities. Just make sure that the statistics are easy to understand out of context!
Try to Avoid
Don’t forget to proofread
Always look over your completed marketing strategist resume for typos and other mistakes. Take a break once you’ve finished writing to reread it with fresh eyes, or better yet, find a friend to read it over for you.
Don’t forget spacing
White space can help guide the eye and make your information more digestible to the readers. Remember, no one wants to read big blocks of text — especially a busy hiring manager!
Don’t forget contact details
It may seem silly, but don’t forget to include your phone number or email address. It can be easy to overlook the small stuff when you’re focused on other things, but this part is absolutely critical.(Below is a handy table full of power words that marketing strategists can use for inspiration.)
Helpful Tools:
Power Words
- Established
- Researched
- Cultivated
- Assisted
- Trained
- Expanded
- Monitored
- Authored
- Aligned
- Created
- Developed
- Determined
- Organized
- Decided
- Applied
- Implemented
Skills List
| Hard Skills | Soft Skills |
| Brand Development | Excellent Written Communication |
| Google Analytics | Teamwork |
| Marketing Trend Reports | Idea Generation |
| Copy Editing | Client Relationships |
| Social Media | Collaboration |
Further Resources:
We have many great resources available to you 100% free on the Big Interview blog. Read the articles below for more information on resumes and cover letters.The Art of Writing a Great Resume Summary Statement
How to Get the Applicant Tracking System to Pick Your Resume
8 Design Ideas to Make Your Resume Pop
