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‘Marketing manager’ is an umbrella term for a surprising number of job responsibilities. From copywriters to campaign managers, data researchers to strategic implementers, a marketing manager's daily life is far from limited to one overarching task.
As a result, marketing managers need to know a business and its products/services inside out in order to promote them effectively. They also need to be able to communicate with customers using different marketing materials to stand out from the competition.
This is, when you think about it, basically the same as when you look for a job: you need to know how to promote and market yourself using effective communication and materials, such as with an outstanding marketing manager resume and cover letter.
With so many different job responsibilities to consider, let this article be your guide on how to link your own experiences with common marketing responsibilities to create a job-winning marketing manager resume.
First and foremost (literally), your marketing resume needs a resume header. As a marketing manager, this is your first shot at making an impression and selling yourself effectively.
That’s because, along with stuff like your personal information, the resume header dives into how you view yourself (your “resume title”), who you are (your “resume summary”), and where you’re going (your “career objectives”).
First up is the title and profile. While formatting this is super simple, here are a few tips to make sure that your marketing manager resume pops:
On the flip side, make sure you do not include the following on your marketing manager resume:
Next is the resume summary. When writing an attention-grabbing resume summary for your marketing manager resume, you need to remember that this is a succinct (2 to 4 sentences in length) paragraph that highlights your most impressive achievements. For example:
Marketing Manager Resume Summary Example #1
A goal-oriented marketing manager with over three years of experience in influencer marketing. Extensive knowledge of social media marketing strategies, launching a 4-month social media campaign that increased engagement by 85%.
Lastly, you need to mention your career objectives. Make these few sentences attention-grabbing by explicitly mentioning your vision for what this role will help you achieve and/or what you will gain by working at that company. For example:
Marketing Manager Resume Summary Example #2
Aspiring marketing professional with strong listening and presentation skills. Looking forward to obtaining practical marketing experience from a well-recognized company.
💡Pro Tip: Marketing manager resume objectives can be omitted if you have plenty of relevant work experience.
Unless you have absolutely no work experience at all, the work experience section is the most important section of your marketing manager resume. That’s because it’s your time to show recruiters both your previous professional experience and the transferable skills that make you qualified for the job at hand.
So be sure to follow the following key tips to make the most out of this section:
1) Use action verbs: Action verbs put you in the driver’s seat, implying your leadership and initiative in completing tasks, so make sure to include the following 30 key action verbs in your marketing manager resume.
Achieved | Delivered | Facilitated | Innovated | Optimized |
Allocated | Developed | Forecasted | Launched | Resolved |
Analyzed | Delegated | Fostered | Managed | Revitalized |
Collaborated | Enhanced | Generated | Mentored | Spearheaded |
Conducted | Established | Identified | Negotiated | Streamlined |
Cultivated | Exceeded | Implemented | Orchestrated | Trained |
2) Include and consolidate key results: Action verbs can only turn a great marketing manager resume into an outstanding marketing manager resume when used in conjunction with quantifiable results. When including such results, be sure to consolidate or summarize them as much as possible to reflect the largest impact of your achievements. This will infer to employers the amount of value you can bring.
3) Use the keywords in the job description: Alongside including key marketing manager resume skills, applicants also need to use specific keywords to appease the all-knowing ATS (more on this later). These can be picked out from the job description in question and inserted into the resume. Take these four responsibilities from a random marketing manager job description, for example.
Marketing Manager Job Description
Notice how the keywords in the JD are underlined: these are what you should strive to include in your marketing manager resume by crafting sentences using these keywords. For example, “Analyze data using marketing tools” can be reflected in your own resume through ‘Utilized Google Analytics to generate detailed reports, enabling data-driven decision-making’.
4) Keep an eye on those bullet points: Putting your work experience into succinct bullet point format is a great way to ensure a clean and easy-to-read marketing manager resume. However, you can overdo it with the bullet points, so be sure to keep an eye on how many you’re deploying - science says 2 to 4 hits the sweet spot.
5) Customize it all the way: Shockingly few applicants (only 5%) customize their resumes for each and every application, however this is the best way to ensure that your marketing manager resume is a fit with the job position. This can easily be done by customizing your work experience to center around the JD keywords (more on this later).
Though there are job-specific skills for marketing managers that are usually detailed in the job responsibilities section of JDs, there are still some essential skills that absolutely have to be mentioned on your marketing manager resume, such as communication (verbal and written), creativity, analytical skills and knowledge of data analysis tools, and attention to detail.
Hard skills
Soft skills
💡Pro Tip: Even if hard skills are your strong suit, it’s best to strike an equal balance between your hard and soft skills to convey a more comprehensive marketing skill set.
Depending on where you are in your career and the amount of relevant experience that you’ve had, the education section on your marketing manager resume can actually be quite brief. In fact, you may even just choose to include the following:
💡Pro Tip: Recent graduates with limited work experience can include more details like their GPA (if above a 3.0), relevant coursework, honors, and awards, or extracurricular activities.
However, while education doesn’t matter so much if you have adequate professional experience, marketing managers should still include evidence of continued education that has developed their marketing skills, such as marketing certifications and awards.
In other words, to make your marketing manager resume stand out from the crowd, you need to include more than just the basics. Are you a certified Google Ad practitioner? Have you received an award for your work performance, like employee of the month? While these are not required, they bring extra credibility to your skills and accomplishments.
Here is a marketing manager resume template for the education section to give you an idea about what to include (and how to format it).
Education examples:
Bachelor in Business Administration: Marketing (Major)
University of Nottingham, UK, June 2015
Certifications:
Professional Memberships:
Not quite ready to add marketing certifications and awards to your marketing manager resume? Why not get ready by upskilling your marketing manager resume skills by delving into the following marketing resources.
Courses every marketing manager should take to:
Books to upskill your marketing manager resume skills:
In addition to the key sections, below are a few marketing manager resume writing tips to bear in mind.
With the theory down, it’s time to get into some marketing manager resume examples. While these aren’t exactly marketing manager resume templates, you can still use any of the following seven examples as a foundation for your own resume.
Now that we’ve conquered the marketing manager resume, it’s time to start thinking about the cover letter. While sometimes optional, it’s still recommended that you attach one to your marketing manager application to give recruiters greater insight into who you are.
Like any other cover letter, marketing manager cover letters need to include: your contact information; an introduction explaining who you are, what position you’re applying to and why; your skills and experiences (and how they make you qualified for the position); and a polite closing of thanks coupled with a mini push to give you an interview.
The marketing manager cover letter below, borrowed and tweaked from how to write a cover letter for a marketing manager, is a great example of how to weave in all of these elements. Let’s take a look.
Stacy Brown
New York City, NY
+1 (846) 787 8486
[email protected]
March 30th 2024
Olivia Trevail
Managing Director of Sales
Flair Marketing
888 Santana Avenue
San Francisco, CA 95129
Dear Ms. Trevail,
My name is Stacy Brown, and I am currently a social media marketing specialist at Stark Industries. After 5 years of running successful marketing campaigns to obtain and retain leads, I have decided to change course and pursue a passion of mine: influencer marketing. For many years now, I have been incredibly interested in the rapid success of Flair Marketing within the industry and, after seeing your advertisement on CakeResume, I would be delighted to further my career with you.
During my 8 years of experience, I have orchestrated over 35 large-scale campaigns. My greatest accomplishment is spearheading the new Avengers branding and creating widely popular and interactive social media accounts for each of these heroes. I have honed my customer service, communication and organizational skills through these experiences, all of which I believe will make me an invaluable asset to Flair Marketing’s clients in influencer marketing.
What’s more, I have a history of success in creating effective social media for individuals, as is indicated through the following accomplishments:
Gained 1 million followers for the Avengers’ Facebook page in the space of two months after launching the incredibly well-received ‘Live and on Earth’ series.
Streamlined Customer Relationship Management strategies to integrate visitor data to social media pages to improve responses to lagging pages, resulting in a 25% increase in positive customer feedback.
I am confident that these professional experiences and skills have satisfactorily prepared me to change my career path to influencer marketing, and I would love to meet with you to further discuss how I may be an asset to Flair Marketing.
Thank you for taking the time to consider my application and I look forward to hearing back from you soon so that we may discuss my future contributions with your company.
Sincerely,
Stacy Brown
From its deep dive of an introduction to its smooth transition into achievements, there’s a lot to love about this marketing manager cover letter. Most importantly, however, is the fact that it doesn’t parrot back the resume to the employer but rather builds upon the details a hypothetical marketing manager resume would present.
For example, it’s easy to spot the sentences or phrases that this cover letter draws from its marketing manager resume: just look for the action words and bullet points. Using these as a foundation, this cover letter expands upon how these pieces of information link to the role and why they are relevant.
Writing a marketing manager resume is easy when you know exactly what you need: an attention-grabbing resume header; plenty of customized and quantifiable achievements with action verbs to describe your work experience, sprinkled with just enough marketing manager resume skills to satisfy the JD requirements; and a clean format that appeases the all-knowing ATS.
It’s even easier when you’ve got seven awesome marketing manager resume examples to help you.
Looking for more resources offering top-notch career advice? Cake has hundreds of articles tailored to help you craft amazing resumes, ace job interviews, and succeed in all aspects of the workplace. Follow the blog to make creating both your resume and your professional life a piece of cake!
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— Originally written by Eva O'Mara —
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