How to Write a Perfect Marketing Director Resume (Templates, Examples & Essential Marketing Skills)

Marketing directors are the top dogs when it comes to negotiating a budget, organizing a campaign, and planning a new strategy. While they may take more of a helicopter approach to tasks that are individually managed by marketing managers and marketing assistants, marketing directors always have the final say on everything a marketing department does. 

This means that prospective marketing directors need to demonstrate a large number of skills to persuade hiring managers that they’re up to the task. Which in turn means that your marketing director resume needs to encompass a lot more than just budgeting and event planning skills.

In this article, we’ll cover the differences between marketing directors and other marketing professionals, the elements needed to write a professional resume and specific tips tailored to crafting your own marketing director resume, as well as what exemplar marketing director resume examples look like. 

What Does a Marketing Director Actually Do?

It’s all well and good prepping for your marketing director application with this awesome guide, but do you know what marketing director responsibilities actually consist of?

Marketing Directors oversee the marketing strategy of all products and campaigns. This may sound familiar to marketing managers who also manage marketing efforts, however the main difference between managers, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), and Heads of Marketing, is that marketing directors have the final word on all efforts, not just one.

As a result, marketing directors need to be team players that excel at collaboration, leadership, communication, and negotiation. They also need to have an awesome resume (cue this article).

Just starting out as a marketing executive? Check out our guide on how to write a marketing executive resume.

How to Write a Professional Marketing Director Resume

We all know that resumes, regardless of the job type, have to include your contact details and your work experiences, but what else actually needs to be added? In other words, what do you need to have a professional marketing director resume?

Resume Headline

A little known fact is that the best marketing director resumes start selling themselves right from the get go with a resume headline. This is a single line (title) placed just below your name that informs recruiters of your expertise as a professional and your relevant working experience.

As this is the very first thing to be seen by a hiring manager, it’s important to make this short phrase as eye-catching as possible. Which is easily done by replacing basic marketing director resume titles like ‘Experienced Marketing Director’ with:

• Strategic Marketing Director Empowering Over 200 Employees
• Senior Marketing Director With 10+ Years Experience in B2B Product Marketing
• Passionate Marketing Director Specializing in Omnichannel Management

Resume Summary

The resume summary of a marketing director resume may consist of just a few sentences, but it’s your best shot at hammering home your marketing skills. This is due to this short 2 to 3 sentence paragraph being an outline of your career and a showcase of your most prominent achievements.

Here are some marketing director resume samples that clearly demonstrate this:

Career Objectives

While resume career objectives aren’t always necessary for experienced marketing director resumes, they’re still a good inclusion for entry level professionals to make clear your career goals and motivations - and how the company and job relates to these.

Bear in mind, however, that a great career objective for a marketing director resume should only be one or two sentences, like these ones:

Work experience

Now that you’ve set up the killer opening, it’s time to draw the hiring manager in and really let your powers shine through your academic or professional experiences by following these marketing director resume changing tips:

• Take Keywords From the JD: JD stands for Job Description, and it is both your enemy and your savior when creating a marketing director resume. It’s your enemy for obvious reasons: it’s frustrating when you don’t match the long list of requirements. The JD is also your savior: it tells you exactly what the employer is looking for. 
  It’s therefore in your best interests to take keywords from the JD to highlight the criteria that you match. That said, remember that you don’t have to match with everything; the JD constructs the ideal candidate, not necessarily a real one. 
  

• Include Action Verbs: Simply taking keywords from the JD is not enough to put the ball in your court. You also have to use an active voice and generously apply action verbs throughout your marketing director resume to highlight your outstanding marketing skills and achievements.
  This is easily done by using this wonderful table of 30 action verbs (tailored specifically for marketing director applications!)

• Include Quantifiable Results: Providing quantifiable results, like percentages and figures, automatically increases your chances of impressing recruiters as they offer evidence of the academic and professional skills you’ve been boasting about. 
  

Adding results into the section is easy if you follow this marketing director resume template: 

Here are some marketing director resume examples that adhere to this structure:

Rather, use the keywords to make your work experience section highlight your relevant and transferable skills, and the results they’ve achieved in the past. The marketing director cover letter is where you can explicitly address how they will be beneficial to the marketing director position being applied to.

Skills

Regardless of how thoughtful your resume is, hiring managers will still spend little time reviewing your resume. Help them, and yourself, out by emphasizing your best skills in the skills section. 

While the skills needed for marketing directors differ only slightly from marketing managers, please strive to include as many of the following 40 skills as possible, only if relevant to the position. 

Remember to also strike a balance between the hard and soft marketing director resume skills

Not yet a marketing director? Check out our resume writing guideline for digital marketer.

Education & Certifications

Even if you don’t have academic experience in a related field, the education section is an unavoidable part of your marketing director resume. Thankfully, you don’t need to go into much detail: only the program name, institution name, and graduation date (or duration).

Note that, should your studies be recent, you should also use this section to mention any awards you received, relevant coursework you completed, and extracurricular activities you participated in during your studies. You can also use this section to add any relevant certifications or memberships.

Marketing Director Resume Writing Tips

1) Select the Right Format

Before you spend a few minutes creating your marketing director resume (that’s really all it takes with CakeResume), you have to think about what resume format you’ll be using. While most hiring managers prefer reverse chronological resume format, all resume formats can work for marketing director resumes; it just depends on you (and your work history).

You also need to consider whether your format is ATS-proof. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are notorious for ignoring columns and tables, which is problematic for many resume templates. 

Not so when using CakeResume’s FREE online resume builder, which automatically creates ATS-compliant marketing director resume templates for you.

2) Customize Your Resume

While it may seem easier to copy and paste the same resume for all marketing director positions, this is seriously not recommended. Tailoring your resume to the specific company and job is instead the best thing you can do to get noticed, as this will make you aligned with what the hiring manager is searching for. 

3) Add a Link to Your Portfolio

As a marketing director, it’s important to provide hiring managers with strong evidence that you can and have delivered, and the best way to do that is by including a portfolio. Portfolios can be created using CakeResume’s FREE online portfolio maker, which can easily link to your marketing director resume. 

Marketing Director Resume Examples

From entry level to senior, use the following examples as your marketing director resume templates!

No experience Marketing Director Resume Resume (Entry-Level)

Mid-level Marketing Director Resume

Senior Marketing Director Resume

Marketing Director Resume Designs Inspiration

Conclusion

While the job responsibilities of a marketing director differ from that of a marketing manager and a marketing assistant, you’ll find that the basic format and content structure stays the same from the resume profile (that’s the title, summary, and objective) all the way down to the skills section.

However, there’s still aspects that set marketing director resumes apart, not least being the required skills, ideal action verbs, and tailored tips we’ve included in this article.