Marketing Manager resume examples & templates

Your marketing manager resume is the sales pitch for your career. As a marketing manager, you know how to leverage social media and search engines to put your products and services in the public’s eye. Now, you are the new product you’re going to sell to hiring managers. 

That’s a little different, but you can approach it in almost the same way. As a job seeker, you need to define your target market and present your work experience in a way that speaks to the recruiters who are gatekeepers to your next opportunity. Get your career moving with a resume that markets your best qualities.

Resume guide for a marketing manager resume

Sell yourself with help from Resume.io. Our guides and resume examples cover over 500 professions, and our resume builder makes creating a top-notch resume easier than ever.

This marketing manager resume example is filled with dozens of adaptable samples to help you:

• Wow right out of the gate with a clean, professional layout
• Choose the right resume format for a marketing manager
• Add your contact information
• Display your sense of style in your creative profile
• Show the progression of your career in your employment history
• Focus on your most desirable skills
• List education and relevant experience
• Understand what the car sales market looks like and what salary you can expect.

How to write a marketing manager resume

Learning how to write a marketing manager resume is all about knowing what your target audience wants—only this time, you're selling your experience to a hiring manager. 

Make sure you follow this format and include the following sections in your marketing manager resume:

• The resume header
• The resume summary (aka profile or personal statement)
• The employment history section
• The resume skills section
• The education section

As companies try to stay on top of their game during uneven economic times, they need to stand out from the crowd. It’s your job to help them do that by using your knowledge of business development and marketing techniques to get customers talking about you. That’s your sales pitch. But first, you have to get recruiters talking about you.

This formula for success will get you there:

• Hone in on your accomplishments. A list of responsibilities reads like a job ad. Instead, tell employers how you solved problems, developed strategies and led successful marketing campaigns.
• Customize each resume just as you customize your message for each target audience.
• Choose a resume template that echoes your style and design eye. Balance between creativity and professionalism.
• Take the ATS filtering software into account by artfully inserting important keywords and phrases into your text. Try out an ATS resume template.

Choosing the best resume format for a marketing manager

Typically, we recommend reverse chronological order as the best resume format for two reasons:

1. Recruiters are used to this format and can easily find the information they seek on a first scan: your most recent position and your skills
2. It helps when you input your resume into an Applicant Tracking System online, since these applications are typically set up to look for the standard chronological order format.

Include your contact information

Marketing relies on communication and availability. Your online signatures include all the ways you can be reached. The header of your marketing manager resume serves the same purpose. 

Position your contact information so that it is easily accessible. Present it clearly and professionally. 

• Full name & title. List your first and last name. Your title should match that of the role you are pursuing.
• Professional email address. Use a clean format like firstname.lastname@gmail.com. Numbers after your name are fine.
• Phone number. List a number where you can be readily contacted, with a professional voicemail greeting.
• Location. List only your city and state. No need to list street address or zip code. Note 'Willing to Relocate' here if applicable.
• LinkedIn. If your LinkedIn profile is active, relevant, and shows your marketing network, include it here.

Don’t include:

• Date of birth: Could lead to age discrimination and is irrelevant for your job search.
• Personal details: Marital status, social security number, passport number, etc.

Make use of a summary

The summary of your marketing manager resume is the one area of this document that gives you the chance to unleash your creativity as you show off your talents and what you will bring to prospective employers. The summary is no place to be shy about your greatness.

Most summary examples of marketing managers will include their most impressive achievements, best qualities, and specific strengths, described with powerful, evocative language.

This section is sometimes called a profile, and feel free to label it as such, however you should think of it as much more than that. You are not detailing every move in your career; you’re showing off the best of it.

You excel at knowing your audience and understanding how you should deliver your message. Use those abilities here. Think of your profile as your direct mail to hiring managers. You need to wow them with your stellar marketing skill by crafting a campaign for yourself. You’re in luck because you’re used to saying a lot with few words, but maybe you’re not used to patting yourself on the back. This is the place to do it (without exaggerating, of course).

Here are some sample questions to help you craft a marketing manager summary in four lines:

• What am I most proud of in my career?
  • What metrics do I have to back up my success?
• What is my marketing philosophy?
• What are my top two attributes?
• What makes me a great candidate?

You don’t have to include all of that, but thinking through those questions should help you write the best profile section possible. Focus your paragraph by imagining your dream job, and including the attributes and achievements that you need to get there.

You may already specialize in one of these areas, or you may be more of a generalist. Either way, you will be focusing each section on your dream jobs, so you will have some tailoring to do with each application.

You can find adaptable marketing manager resume examples summary below:

Detail your marketing manager work history: experience counts

Your employment history section is the best place in your marketing manager resume to explain how you develop, implement, and execute marketing strategies to retain current customers and attract new ones. Stick to the script: organize it in reverse chronological order and use bullet items.

This is the spot to detail times when you increased public awareness of the company and its mission, and deployed marketing campaigns to drive their efforts. 

But, how do you keep this highly formatted section from sounding stale?

First, make sure all your bullet points contain active verbs and descriptors. That’s the easy part. You know how to use a thesaurus.

The real challenge is to create a story out of your work experience. You started at point A, perhaps as a marketing intern or assistant. As you progressed, you took on bigger challenges, successfully solved problems, and created campaigns that brought your company higher market share.

Employers want to know that you can expand your knowledge of marketing strategies as you work, so show them within your work experience section that you already do that. Even better, think about the responsibilities you will have when you get your next marketing manager’s job. Then, use your job descriptions to show that you are already performing many of those tasks well.

Avoid generic statements such as the ones below:

• “Spearheaded marketing campaign.”
• “Led social media team.”
• “Increased revenue.”
• “Met with global clients.”

Instead, get into the details with bullet items that show off the results of your work:

• “Spearheaded multinational campaign for toothpaste brand that resulted in 50% jump in  brand recognition.”
• “Mentored and managed team of 10 social media marketing experts through multiple campaigns using TikTok, Instagram, and other social media.”
• “Collaborated with sales team to target prospective customers for appliance brand, leading to 25% leap in revenue.”
• “Communicated with global clients to ensure satisfaction and goal attainment for marketing campaigns.”

You can adapt this basic employment history example to the bullet point achievements of your own past jobs. See the marketing manager employment history resume sample below:

Highlight the skills that make you an excellent marketing manager 

The skills section of a marketing manager resume is the place to highlight unique qualifications. It’s not that easy to take all your attributes, accomplishments, and marketing savvy and turn it into a bulleted list of 5-10 items, but that is what you have to do here.

We suggest doing a brain dump of every skill you have. This is your “Master List.” Then, you can categorize your skills in any way that makes the most sense to you. You should keep this list and add to it as your career grows so you don’t have to repeat this step at every juncture. 

Think through all the abilities you need to oversee all marketing efforts and activities within a company, including responsibility for the marketing budget and campaigns based on company goals. You must be a strategic thinker to create long-term marketing plans and be able to analyze data and present findings to upper management. In addition, you need detailed knowledge of the industry in which you work so you can develop excellent marketing strategies.

Skills can be broken into two broad categories: hard skills, or the knowledge you learned in school and on the job, and soft skills, or the interpersonal and organizational abilities that make you a good employee.

We’ve already mentioned many of the hard skills you need, but you know to be a good leader, you have to be a great listener and communicator. You need to inspire your team to unleash their creativity without fear of judgment. 

So, how do you choose which skills to list? Pick the ones you feel give the best picture of who you are as a marketing manager. Make sure you include those that your prospective employer ranked high in their job description, a move that will also help you beat the ATS. Finally, if you are struggling to keep the list short, drop lower-level skills. For example, employers will assume you understand e-commerce if you have been promoted in your current e-commerce job.

Here’s what the skills box looks like in our marketing manager resume template. 

Infuse your skills throughout your marketing manager resume by providing examples of how you use them to excel at your job. For example, you can highlight

• Knowledge of current social media trends by describing a campaign in which you targeted the latest app
• Leadership skills by mentioning your team and how you encouraged their success
• Client relationships by detailing how you collaborate to develop strategic marketing plans that get the results clients want

Look to the job description as a guide for what key skills to include.

Detail your education & relevant marketing manager  certifications

The education section of your resume is the easiest to compile: List your degrees, the schools from which you graduated, and the years you attended each school.

Marketing managers need at least a bachelor’s degree. Many hold degrees in business, marketing, advertising, or communications, although those specialties are not a requirement. Some employers may prefer that you have an MBA. If you do have a master’s degree, there is no need for you to include your high school diploma. We also recommend leaving out your GPA, even if you are really proud of it. Your work successes speak for you at this point in your career.

Consider adding certifications or training relevant to marketing. For example,

• Awards and honors. Any professional accolades for your campaigns or leadership abilities enhance your candidacy.
• Professional development. Marketing relies on networks. If you are an active member of a professional organization or industry networking group, list that as well.
• Training and certifications. Certificates from organizations such as the American Marketing Association show your determination to keep learning your trade.

Choose the best resume layout and design for a marketing manager resume

Marketers know that visuals are important, and this applies to the layout of your marketing manager resume just as much as it does to your ad campaigns. You may have an eye for design and enjoy the visually creative aspects of your job. 

You can show a bit more style in your resume than, say, an accountant could. In fact, you should check out Resume.io’s creative category of resume templates.

That said, you still have to color in the lines. Resumes should be designed to make it as easy as possible for recruiters to find your relevant information. Just as you want the message in your marketing materials to stand out, here you should be leading the eye toward key bits of data:

• Your contact information (including a LinkedIn profile if you have an up-to-date one)
• Your current job and title
• Your previous job and title

Hiring managers are looking for those items first. If they can’t find them within a couple of seconds, you may end up in the “no” pile.

Marketing manager text-only resume example

Marketing manager job market and outlook

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, marketing manager jobs are projected to increase by 6 percent by 2032—above average for most professions. That means you have plenty of opportunities to grow your career. 

If you’re looking for a high salary, gain expertise in one of these fields since they are the highest paying: web search portals, libraries, archives, and other information services; oil and gas extraction; pipeline transportation; inland water transportation and alumina and aluminum production and processing.

What type of salary you can expect in marketing management

Marketing managers bring in a median salary in the six-digits and with the boom in online commerce, your digital skills are at a premium. Your resume is the perfect tool to promote yourself in a booming industry.

The median pay for a marketing manager is $119,801 with a typical range of $104,936-$137,094. Workers in New York and California earn the highest salaries, according to U.S. labor statistics.

Key takeaways for building a marketing manager resume

The analytical skills you use to parse consumer data will also help you advance past the ATS. As you market yourself throughout your resume, answer the question, “Why should I hire you?” with examples of your achievements.

Create a ladder of success that demonstrates continued growth in your employment history section. Finally, make a great first impression with a design that remains clean and professional but adds a little flair.