17 Marketing Manager Resume Examples & Guide for 2024

Finding an experienced marketing manager is no easy feat. There are hundreds of resumes HR experts must go through to find the crème de la crème for a single position. The diamond in the rough.

You can make your resume shine bright by taking proactive steps to create a tailored resume that includes job-related keywords and quantifiable achievement. This guide will help you do that.

We’ll discuss some of the difficulties and common issues that marketing managers face when building their resumes, such as:

• Demonstrating managerial and leadership skills alongside technical and creative skill sets.
• Tailoring the resume summary, experience, and skills sections to the specific job details.
• Highlighting professional associations and networking to show they are current with new trends and technologies.
• Quantifying their achievements using numbers and percentages when talking about market expansion, revenue growth, and website conversion and bounce rates.

Throughout this guide, we will use real-world examples from experienced marketing managers to give you an idea of how your resume should look.

If a marketing manager does not quite fit with your career goals, check out these related resume guides:

• VP of digital marketing resume
• Junior project manager resume
• Ad operations manager resume
• Sales marketing manager resume
• Associate brand manager resume

The proof is in the pudding! Let’s take a look at a real-world example of a marketing manager's resume. Ella Green has over 8 years of experience and is exploring their options for a new managerial position.

Marketing manager resume example

Notice how she takes full advantage of the header by including relevant keywords. This is a great example of maximizing the space in each section.

In looking at the resume experience section, you can see a pattern in the companies she works for. They all have a huge social media presence in the digital marketing field. You want your work experience to all be within the same industry you are applying for.

Here are some other resume strategies that Ella does well in her resume:

• Showcasing progressive career growth: The resume effectively highlights the applicant’s career progression from Assistant marketing manager at Spotify, to marketing manager at Facebook, and then to Sr. Marketing manager at Google. This trajectory showcases increasing levels of responsibility and expertise.
• Quantifying achievements: Each role is accompanied by specific, quantifiable achievements such as increasing online engagement by 40%, managing a $5M marketing budget to reduce costs by 25%, and leading product campaigns that resulted in a 35% increase in market share. These metrics clearly demonstrate the impact of the applicant’s work.
• Highlighting relevant education and certifications: The resume includes a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Columbia University and certifications in Advanced Digital Marketing and Strategic Brand Management. These educational credentials are directly relevant to the role of Sr. Marketing manager and underscore the applicant’s commitment to continued professional development.
• Detailing skills and competencies: It lists specific skills and competencies, such as strategic planning, digital marketing, brand development, and cross-functional team leadership, which are crucial for a senior marketing role. This section directly aligns with the requirements of a Sr. Marketing manager, making the candidate's fit for the role clear.

A quick note about how this resume uses a two-column layout. You can see how it allows for more information to appear on a single page. Many of the skills and additional sections for resumes fit very nicely in a smaller space while leaving plenty of room for education, work experience, and top skills sections.

If you use a color on the smaller column, go with a dark contrasting color. Be sure to change the color of your font to white, as it will stand out better against a colored background.

Now that you have a better idea of what your resume can do, we need to talk about formatting first.

How to format a marketing manager resume

Formatting is king above all. Why?

Imagine having to read two hundred resumes to find a single employee. Now imagine all of those resumes in a different format with unique sections, font sizes, and colors. You can begin to see why using an industry-standard format is essential.

Resumes use the standard document settings of one-inch margins, single-line spacing, and font size between 10-12 points. Most people will tell you to use Arial, Courier, or Times New Roman for a font, but we are building a more modern resume that doesn’t use your parent’s fonts.

Not that there is anything wrong with using those fonts.

Using one of Enhancv resume templates comes with a whole list of modern fonts like Exo 2, Lato, Montserrat, and Volkhov. If you are building a resume from scratch, you can use any serif or sans-serif font that is easy to read.

A resume for a marketing manager will have five main sections, two of which will be for your education and relatable work experience. The other sections are where you will include:

• Current contact information
• A brief summary of your skills and how those skills relate to the job
• Organized lists of creative and business skills that are essential but not included in the job description, like ad layout, color design, and experience with Adobe or Microsoft software

Those of you out there with several years of experience can end up with a multi-page behemoth of a resume if you include every job you ever held. Your resume should be at most two pages long, so choose which jobs you include carefully.

You don’t need to detail your experience as a lifeguard if you are applying for a marketing manager position. Unless you ran a social media page or developed a new lifeguard ad campaign that increased the number of experienced lifeguards or attracted more beachgoers.

A word about applicant tracking systems

Another reason format is so important today is that most companies use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to sort through the hundreds of resumes they receive. This software searches each resume for specific keywords and phrases that indicate the skills and experience necessary for the job.

You can improve your positioning by matching industry-related keywords that are in the job description. These are typed in by the recruiting team and are something they tell ATS software to search for.

When adding your skills, be sure each skill is formatted properly and separately. Runon skills will not register:

Be sure to double-check your spacing between skills before sending it out.

If you already have a resume for a marketing manager, run it through the Enhancv resume checker to see if there is any room for improvement.

Using an existing resume is a good way to create a new resume. Just be sure you update each of the following sections so that they are relevant to the job you are applying for.

Here are some tips to help get you started thinking about the kinds of details you want to add to your marketing manager resume.

One more thing about formatting before we move on. When you respond to a job ad, send your resume in a PDF format (.pdf). This will preserve the look of your resume and is accessible on most operating systems.

Now, it’s time to add your relatable work experience. If you are looking for your first marketing manager position, we’ll go over how to format a resume for first-time marketing managers a little later on.

How to write your marketing manager resume experience

The resume experience section will take up the bulk of your resume. In this section, you will include up to three jobs where you worked as a marketing manager or other jobs where you put your marketing or leadership skills to good use.

Just keep in mind that two-page limit.

When formatting this section, you will use a reverse chronological order. That means you will start with your most recent experience and work backward from there. Each job you list will include:

• Job title
• Company name, location, and industry
• Employment dates
• A bullet list of job details that include job-specific keywords

Let’s look at a real-world example of a marketing manager's work experience to see what works and what doesn’t:

Earlier, I said format is king, but so are details. This is a forward-thinking kingdom led by two equally important kings.

This example does a great job of showing why details matter. This less-than-thrilling resume experience falls short of the boastful claim of “Exceeded growth targets by 23%.”

Such a claim is only believable with specifics on how they accomplished this task. Recruiters want to see actionable results. Your work experience should clearly state in detailed bullet points how you can improve lead generation, increase subscriber rates, or inspire a team to create award-winning ad campaigns.

Notice how there is no company description or industry type? We can assume it is in the financial industry from the company name, but you know what can happen when you assume. Why does this matter?

A marketing manager with experience in the political arena will have a completely different mindset and approach than one with experience in the beauty industry.

Let’s try this again but with more details:

What do you think? This example is pretty impressive, with plenty of juicy details. You can see how adding specifics about the type of work and the result of that work paints a clear picture of an experienced marketing manager.

Notice how there is now a line that describes the company a little better. This person would do well in a small to medium-sized company but maybe not so much in a large enterprise.

There is also a new bullet point that talks about their leadership abilities and the size of the team they managed. All very important details.

Now, we can more clearly see how they exceeded their growth targets by 23%.

Marketing managers have diverse skill sets, and not all skills can be listed in the resume experience section. Later on, we will go over other areas where you can highlight any relatable skills.

How to quantify the impact on your resume

We just saw how using numbers and percentages can make an impact on a resume for a marketing manager. Now it’s time to go over some ways that you can do the same.

One of the biggest complaints you hear from hiring teams is reading resumes that don’t quantify their actions. They are well aware of the job duties of a marketing manager. What they want to read is how much your work increased clickthru and bounce rates, ROIs, expanded brand recognition, increased web traffic, and reduced customer acquisition costs.  

Let’s look at some examples of the top metrics you want to highlight and how you can quantify your past work experience:

• Revenue growth: “Developed and executed go-to-market campaigns for 4 new products, resulting in a 30% increase in sales.”
• Market expansion: “Managed a budget of $500,000 to execute marketing initiative, resulting in a 15% increase in brand awareness.”
• Cost reduction: “Cut cost per acquisition by 25% through advanced targeting, ad copy A/B testing, and keyword bid optimization of PPC campaigns.”
• Conversion rates: “Increased website conversion rates by 15% through web analytics, buyer personas, and personalized website content/CTAs in personalization strategies.”
• Customer retention: “Boosted customer retention by 25% and customer lifetime value by 20% by implementing a CRM strategy that included integration, behavior tracking, and targeted campaigns.”
• Social media engagement: “Implemented a successful social media strategy resulting in a 25% increase in followers and engagement on FaceBook, Instagram, and TikTok.”
• Efficiency improvements: “Conducted ad hoc analysis of the affiliate channel and partners to optimize performance, resulting in a 20% increase in conversion rates.”
• Leadership abilities: “Restructured a 20-person marketing department to reduce annual turnover by 60% and apply Agile methodology to increase speed-to-market for all pilot projects by 30%.”

As you are adding the details of your work experience, be sure to include creative and business skills. You want each work experience to show your diverse skill set.

How do I write a marketing manager resume with no experience

If you are applying for your first marketing manager position, don’t let that discourage you from going after your dream job. You have experience in relatable roles that primed you to be an effective and productive marketing manager.

Most entry-level manager positions will require a minimum of 3-5 years of relatable experience.  This means you don’t need to include any jobs that don't relate to marketing, sales, design, copywriting, or business leadership.

Only list the jobs where you gained experience in:

• Managing projects and people
• Content creation
• Digital marketing initiative
• Data analysis and reporting
• Graphic design/multimedia presentations
• Ad layout
• Training and mentoring
• Event coordination
• Customer service and engagement

When listing relevant work experience, you should only include up to three entries. Of those entries, you want to highlight how your career has progressed. The resume section for first-time managers will look something like this:

You can clearly see how this person’s career has advanced over the years. This is why recruiters prefer to see a reverse chronological order when reviewing the resume experience section.

The next section you want to include on your resume is a list of technical, personal, and creative skills.

How to list your hard skills and soft skills on your resume

marketing managers rely on a wide variety of skills to allow them to effectively manage strategic marketing communication projects through a mix of media channels. You need experience in leadership, color analysis, and ad design for print and digital channels, and analyzing reports and trends to effectively plan and implement a profitable ad campaign.  

The best way to pick up those necessary Hard skills that marketing managers need is to earn a bachelor’s or master’s degree from an accredited university. They will teach you skills like advanced editing and photo-retouching, running and analyzing marketing trends, copywriting, and knowledge of marketing software.

Soft skills are those natural skills that you develop over time. They include essential skills like communication and expressing empathy, having an eye for design, and interpersonal skills. They are the skills that make for a well-rounded marketing manager who can work with all types of creative and business people and inspire them to work together efficiently.

When you add these skills to your resume, you want to highlight those skills listed in the job description word-for-word. If the job specifically lists “passion for digital storytelling,” your resume experience or skills section should include “passion for digital storytelling.”

Here are some of the top hard and soft skills that all marketing managers should have:

Tailoring your marketing manager resume to the job description

Let’s talk a little more about tailoring your resume to the job description. Sending out the same resume to every job you are interested in is like sending the same love letter to different partners. You may get it right with one or two people but not many others.

What you want to pay attention to are the job's listed responsibilities and duties. You will use this information to tailor your resume summary/objective and work experience sections.

Let’s use an example of a marketing manager position for an elevator manufacturing and services company:

The keywords that you should consider adding to your resume are:

• Implement advertising and promotional initiatives
• Revenue generating
• Meeting consumer wants and needs
• Support, train, and develop
• Product launch strategies
• Social media
• Search engine optimization
• Brand awareness

These are the keywords that an HR person would enter to find the right candidates. Your job will be to add those skills that you have experience with into your work experience and resume summary. This is where those copywriting skills will come in handy.

Now it’s time to include your post-secondary education along with any certifications or continuing education courses that relate to marketing, design, and media.

How to list your certifications and education on your resume

The education portion of your resume is just as important as the resume section. Your past work experience may make you look like a rock star marketing manager, but without showing a firm understanding of old and new technologies, you’ll come up sounding flat and out of tune.

For these sections, you want to include the following information:

• Degree
• School name and location
• Dates of attendance/graduation

If you have multiple degrees, like a Master of Business Administration, you want to include that, as well as any certifications that you have earned since graduation.

You will add these to your resume in a separate section, like so:

Check out these sought-after certificates for a marketing manager if you need to increase your skillset and be more marketable as a manager.

Another section of your resume that you want to tailor to the job you are applying for is the resume summary or objective section.

How to write your marketing manager resume summary or objective

Here is another critical section of your resume where you get to use your advanced writing skills.

How you write this section will depend on the number of years of experience within the same industry. If you are fresh out of school with only a few years of experience, you will write a resume objective. If you have five or more years of experience, you will summarize your past career and how that experience can benefit the new company.

Because most marketing manager positions require up to 3-5 years of relatable experience, we will focus on the resume summary.

In this section, you will summarize your past work experience in 3-4 concise sentences. You will include keywords from the job description as well as quantifying your achievements.

To give you an idea of how you can use this section to sell yourself, take a look at these examples from a real-world marketing manager resume.

This is a good example of Try Again.

The overuse of “experience” and “campaign” does not fit well with someone with copywriting experience. Use your writing skills to make this section sing your praises and keep the reader interested in learning more about you. This section should scream, “I am the best fit for the job.”

You also want to avoid vague terms like “several years of experience” and “creating marketing campaigns.” Remember, details are king on a resume.

Let’s try this again:

That’s more like it! They sound like a person a consumer electronic company would love to hire. This summary does a great job in:

• Listing the industry type and years of experience
• Includes relevant keywords and industry terms
• Details a specific campaign and quantifies the results
• Highlights time management skills

One big difference between these two examples is using “I am.” Both are acceptable, but keep in mind you are limited to two pages, and you have a lot of relevant skills and experience to add.

Maximize the use of this space by only including relevant details.

Additional sections for a marketing manager resume

Let’s focus on adding those relatable skills that the job description did not include but are still necessary for an experienced marketing manager.

Enhancv has special resume sections that you can add to your resume to showcase different technical skills, leadership abilities, and creative abilities. Take a look at our Strength section, which is perfect for listing important soft skills:

Marketing managers should have their ears and eyes open for new technologies and data analyses. One of the best ways to showcase this is through memberships in professional marketing associations and local networking groups, like so:

Other resume sections that marketing managers can use to showcase their experience and achievements include:

• Awards and honors
• Spoken languages
• Publications
• Client testimonials

Another way to show your creative and marketing skills is by having a website portfolio.

The importance of including a portfolio on your marketing manager resume

Having a portfolio is a great way to showcase different projects, designs, and campaigns without making recruiters click on multiple links or have to search for your work. A portfolio website can include your creative works as well as other vital information, like work samples, client testimonials, awards and recognitions, and other key accomplishments.

Plus, building a website is another way to show off your technical and design skills.

Here are some of the best sites for building your digital portfolio:

• WordPress
• Adobe Portfolio
• Squarespace
• Wix
• Canva

Where can you include a link to your marketing portfolio? One of the first places you can do this is at the very top in the header:

The header is also where you can mention if you are certified as a professional marketing manager, designer, or analysis expert.

If you manage any social media pages or run an influencer site, you can use the Enhancv social media section to include additional links.

Key takeaways

By now, you will have everything you need to craft a compelling resume for a marketing manager that stands out and gets you an invitation to interview.

When building your resume, keep in mind the following advice:

• Use an industry-standard format that includes all necessary resume sections and other sections to demonstrate a diverse skill set.
• Only include relatable work experience that details the skills and experience marketing managers need.
• Tailor each resume to the job description using specific keywords listed under duties and responsibilities.
• Quantify your experience for each job entry to highlight how your work improved ad performance, ROIs, and marketing strategies.