How To Build a Strong Digital Marketing Resume [+Samples]

Having a standout resume is important when you’re applying for any job. But it’s especially important when you’re applying for a job in digital marketing. Whether you’re applying for a full-time job or a freelance position, your resume will prove to employers that you have the digital marketing skills and experience needed to get the job done. 

But what does a strong digital marketing resume actually look like? And how do you distinguish your resume from the thousands of others that a potential recruiter will look at? In this post, we’ll guide you through the process of crafting your resume, and show you some examples of what a strong digital marketing resume looks like. 

How Important Is a Digital Marketing Resume?

When you apply for a job in digital marketing, having an eye-catching resume is a critical step in the process. The recruiter won’t know anything about you beforehand, so your resume is your first impression, and you need to make it a strong one. 

Recruiters and hiring managers spend an average of six to seven seconds scanning a resume. The specific time may vary, depending on the company and the number of applicants, but you can assume it’ll be a very narrow window of opportunity. So to get taken seriously as a digital marketer, you need to make sure your resume stands out from the rest. Let’s break down how you can do that. 

Digital Marketing Resume Format: What To Include

There’s a lot of information you might want to include in your resume, but you should use only the information that’s useful to the company where you’re applying.

Name and Contact Information

Your resume should contain your full name and contact information, including your phone number, e-mail address, and any relevant social media platforms that you want to showcase. Including your own social media accounts is especially important if you’re applying for a social media marketer position. 

It can be helpful to add your website link to the resume if you have a professional site. Especially if you’re a creator, recruiters want to see your portfolio, so they can get a sense of what your work looks like. 

Education

Your education should be one of the first things on your resume, especially if you’ve completed a marketing degree, bootcamp, or certificate. 

You should add the most relevant education information to your resume. Be careful to avoid unnecessary details—this section needs to be relatively short. Add only the information that will be relevant to the recruiter like the school, your degree and specific area of study, and any noteworthy honors or awards.

If you’re nervous about recruiters ruling you out because you don’t have a formal marketing degree, then consider taking an online course in digital marketing.

Skills

Skills are critical to highlight on your resume, especially if you have a marketing specialty—email marketing or search engine optimization (SEO), for example. 

Tailor your skills section to the specific role that you’re applying for. So if you’re after an email marketing position, don’t list your SEO skills first. Here are a few more examples of digital marketing skills you can list on your resume:

• Search engine optimization: SEO is a digital marketing strategy that’s used to help the content on your website rank highly on search engines. If you’ve applied SEO practices to get your personal blog ranked well on Google search results, for example, you can mention this skill on your resume with a link to your blog. 
• Video marketing: This is a type of digital marketing where you promote your product or service through videos. If you own a YouTube channel or accounts on platforms like Vimeo, you can mention them on your resume to get an upper hand in the hiring process.
• Email marketing: This is a type of digital marketing where you use email as a medium to promote your product or service. You collect potential customers’ email addresses and promote relevant products and services in mailing campaigns to subscribers. If you have experience in this area, you can highlight it on your resume to make yourself stand out.

Employment

Showcasing your professional experience is as important as listing key skills on your resume. If you have a lot of digital marketing experience in your career, place the strongest focus on the previous roles that are relevant to the job you’re seeking (for example, a video editing or graphic design position). Mention your roles and responsibilities in each organization, along with your start and end dates.

If you’re an entry-level digital marketer, you can add information about any internships and projects you worked on. This can be a great way to show an employer that you have applicable experience in a professional setting.

Whatever level the specific job is, a recruiter will want to see that you have previous relevant experience to make sure you would fit the role and the organization’s marketing department.

Projects With KPIs and Metrics

Mentioning key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics on your resume can be an effective way to demonstrate your value. It gives the employer an idea about your potential and how you can make a positive impact on their organization. A sentence like “I helped Company X increase traffic by more than 50% in five days using proper SEO” will be much more effective than “I worked at Company X and helped with SEO.” 

The more detailed metrics you provide about successful marketing campaigns, the more recruiters will trust your ability to contribute to their business. A digital marketing resume without KPIs or metrics is a lot less likely to leave an impression—and you’ll need to stand out from the crowd any way you can.

Awards and Recognitions

While awards and recognitions aren’t required for a digital marketing resume, it might prove useful to add information about any honors you’ve achieved, whether you earned them in an academic or professional setting. This indicates exceptional performance to an employer.

Digital Marketing Resume Examples

Now, let’s look at examples of some digital marketing resumes that reflect different experience levels.

Entry-Level Digital Marketing Resume

If you’re an entry-level digital marketer, you won’t have a lot of professional experience to highlight. In this case, you can add information about your projects and metrics from any internships or similar experiences. 

The above digital marketing resume sample works well because it’s succinct, but still shows that this applicant has some relevant internship experience. It also demonstrates that they’re diligent and capable of handling responsibility by showcasing their strong academic performance and listing numerous activities and volunteer projects.

This is another example of an entry-level digital marketing resume. It uses a different type of layout, but emphasizes the candidate’s work-related experience in the field by showcasing a digital marketing internship and offering metrics to demonstrate their skills.

As with the first example, this resume includes the candidate’s skills, projects, and education information, including a list of specific courses that relate to the marketing world. Again, it’s just one page, it’s compact, and it displays information without any friction.

As a digital marketer seeking an entry-level role, you’ll want to list all your work experiences, from freelancing to internships, to demonstrate your hands-on experience. You can also list your personal projects if you don’t have any prior work experience.

Senior-Level Digital Marketing Resume

As a senior-level digital marketer, you’ll have a lot more professional experience to feature on your resume. Remember, focus primarily on past roles that are most relevant to the job you’re applying for.

This is a good example of a senior-level digital marketing resume because it provides relevant metrics. This helps hiring managers envision what it would be like to work with you. Providing proven KPIs will help you stand out because it establishes that you value results and you’re capable of achieving them.

If you’re a senior-level digital marketer, you don’t need to worry about showing every detail of your educational background. Your previous job experience will be far more valuable. You can still include your education information, but only the basics are necessary (as shown on the right side of the example above).

The resume is designed so that it’s easy to read. Color is used to help different elements stand out—the company names are in yellow so that recruiters can easily spot them.

This is another good example of a senior-level digital marketing resume. The employment section takes up the most real estate here, because if you’re a senior-level professional, recruiters pay more attention to your past work experience. In this example, notice the bullet points following each previous job indicating exactly what the digital marketing professional has worked on and what they achieved. And as this resume does, make sure that you list your most relevant skills to illustrate your value. 

Other Digital Marketing Resume Examples We Love

Here are three more examples of digital marketing resumes that you can use for ideas and inspiration. 

This resume is clean and uncomplicated, and it displays all the necessary information on a single page. This example is distinct because of the name in the resume header with the minimal box design. This approach can be useful because it makes you stand out easily.

This example also has a minimal design that looks attractive and is easy to read. All the headings are highlighted with black boxes, which can help hiring managers scan through your resume.

The layout of this resume isn’t fancy, but all the information is displayed in a very straightforward, easy-to-read design that helps a recruiter scan through different sections easily.

Tips for Creating an Awesome Digital Marketing Resume

How To Stand Out

You can make your resume stand out by incorporating a design that’s eye-catching but not irritating. Definitely include any relevant awards or recognitions. It can also help to host your resume online to make it conveniently accessible.

Here are a few other tips to help you stand out from the crowd:

Follow a Reverse-Chronological Format.

List your most recent and relevant work experience first, then work your way backward. Recruiters are more interested in your most recent position, not your first. 

Add a Compelling Summary

If you catch the attention of the recruiter by using an eye-catching, convincing summary, chances are that they’ll read your resume completely and you might have a greater chance of getting hired.

Use the STAR Method

When listing what you did in a previous job, try describing your specific experiences through the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result). Describe the situation you helped solve and what tasks needed to be done. Explain the specific actions you took to complete those tasks. Finally, describe the result of your efforts and how your work helped the organization.

Include Specific Projects

By mentioning professional and personal projects, you can show your employer specific examples of what you’ve accomplished in the digital marketing industry and help demonstrate the potential value you bring.

List Any Certifications

This shows a prospective employer that you’ve diligently worked at expanding your related skills and helps establish you as a ​​digital marketing expert.

What To Avoid

While certain elements will help your resume stand out, it’s also important to avoid these common pitfalls.

Overdesigning

Be careful not to overdesign your resume. It should be clean and readable, simple but striking. The recruiter should be able to follow and understand your resume easily.

Rating Your Skills

Resist the temptation to rate your skills. Hiring managers might not be familiar with the rating system you used, and the applicant tracking systems that companies commonly use to vet resumes may not be able to read your ratings—especially if they’re presented in a graphic format.

Listing Irrelevant Jobs or Experience

You should avoid mentioning previous jobs that aren’t applicable to the position you’re applying for. Recruiters are primarily concerned about the experience that’s related to the digital marketing role they’re trying to fill. Mentioning unrelated experiences will crowd out what’s relevant.

The resume below, for example, lists gaming experience—which isn’t a relevant skill for the desired position.

Leaving Big Gaps Without an Explanation

If you have a job gap, you should always mention the reason behind it on your resume. A job gap can be a significant barrier when it comes to landing a job. It indicates that you aren’t up to date with the latest developments in the field and haven’t always been steadily employed. If you have a genuine reason for the gap, acknowledge it on your resume and be prepared to explain it in a job interview.

Overstating or Misrepresenting Skills

Always be truthful about your experience on your resume. Companies often perform reference checks and confirm if you worked at an organization or if you have the skills mentioned on your resume. If any of the information doesn’t match, it will make the recruiter suspicious and likely create a poor impression that ultimately won’t help you in getting hired.

Where To Find Digital Marketing Resume Templates

You can find a wide range of digital marketing resume examples and templates on numerous websites. ResumeViking.com (partially paid) and Kickresume (free PDFs) are two well-known options.

In addition to templates and other resume-building tools, Kickresume includes real examples like this one:

You can also use a service like Canva, which provides a lot of resume template options to get started so you can make your own. Canva is a paid service, but most of the minimal resumes are free to edit.

Digital Marketing Resume FAQs

We’ve got the answers to your most common digital marketing resume questions. 

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