Laura Slingo 
Learn how to write an impressive CV for any digital or traditional marketing job
As a marketing professional, it's likely that you've spent your career surrounded by service and product promotion. As a result, you're no stranger to identifying the right audiences and shouting about USPs. Writing a marketing CV is not dissimilar, but in this case, you're the product and employers are your target.
Whether you're looking for a general Marketing Assistant, Marketing Executive or Marketing Manager role, or even something more specialist within creative and digital marketing, this guide will help you to write a winning CV for a marketing job.
How to structure a marketing CV
Everyone needs to start with the same solid foundation to craft a marketing CV. Always include the following sections:
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Name, professional title and contact details
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Personal profile
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Key skills
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Employment history
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Education and qualifications
You can include additional sections in your CV if you have room and feel it will add value to your application. As a Marketing Assistant starting out in your career, you might like to add relevant volunteering opportunities or hobbies and interests. If you're a more experienced marketing professional, you could create a section for specific projects, or even link to a portfolio showcasing your work.
How to format a marketing CV
Whether you're a Marketing Executive with a few years of experience or a Marketing Manager with a decade or more under your belt, you need to get the basics of your CV layout correct to be taken seriously.
Two A4 pages is about the right length for your marketing CV. If you're entry-level, one page may be enough, and if you're executive level, you can extend it to three. A CV isn't a document detailing your entire career history. At the most, it should highlight the last 10 years, so two pages is more than enough for most people to create a strong overview.
Each section of your CV should be introduced with bold headings, to enable easy scanning, and a simple, contemporary font throughout to enable an easy read.
Bear in mind font size and page margins too. As a marketer, you know that a clean, professional document will win you more brownie points. Tweak the font size and margins until your CV fits neatly onto two pages and keep the white-space-to-text ratio balanced.
How to write a personal profile for a marketing CV
A personal profile, also known as a personal statement, is a vital component of a marketing CV. It's a short paragraph with a summary of your marketable skills, sector experience, and industry-related qualifications. The content typically includes:
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Who you are
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What you can offer to the company or organisation
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What you specialise in or your area of expertise
In this section, you're providing a snapshot of your most pertinent marketing skills to entice the recruiter to keep reading your CV. To stand out from the crowd, research the role and the company to tailor the profile, be concise, avoid cliches, and focus on the value you'll contribute.
How to write key skills for a marketing CV
The key skills section that follows includes a snappy bullet point list of your core marketing competencies. We highly recommend a core skill section, as it provides a powerful overview of your USPs at the top of the first page in an easily digestible format. It will capture a recruiter's attention immediately – providing you choose the right skills.
Like all marketing campaigns, start by researching your audience and understanding their needs – that is, research the employer and go through the job description with a fine-toothed comb. Pull out the competencies that you align with. It could be anything from experience with digital marketing tools and analytics to product or industry knowledge. Aim to list between six and 10 skills in this section overall.
How to write work experience for a marketing CV
The work experience section is the single most important section of your marketing CV for promoting your candidacy. You have to present yourself as an undisputed best-seller, so here are a few tips and tricks to achieve this with ease.
List your employment history in reverse chronological order, starting with your most recent role. This is because your latest job is often the highest point in your career to date and encompasses the most impressive of your abilities.
Structure each position with your job title, the employer, and the dates you worked there, which can either be written in a month and year format, or year only. Following this, write a top-level summary of the role.
The next part is vital. Below this information, bullet point your key achievements and bolster each one with powerful verbs, such as established, expanded, and grew, and statistics to showcase your ability.
Here's an example of how to list marketing achievements on your CV:
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Analysed keyword performance data to optimise page rankings, resulting in a 14% YoY uplift in organic traffic
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Created automated social media KPI reports in Google Sheets, saving 10 hours of work per month
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Executed a global content marketing strategy for example.com's blogs across 25 countries
Consider the examples of your skills carefully, as they should not only be impactful, but relevant to the vacancy too. Too much extra detail will dilute your message.
As you work through your career history, reduce the level of detail. Positions from over 10 years ago can be summarised to one line or deleted altogether.
How to write education and qualifications for a marketing CV
Your education section is the most crucial when you're early in your career, but it still plays an important part if you're a seasoned professional. This is especially true as the digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving and online courses have become commonplace.
As with your employment history, list your qualifications in reverse chronological order, starting with your most recent. Detail the name of the institution, the date the qualification was awarded, plus the name and level of the qualification. You can include the grade you achieved, too, if it's strong.
As a marketing professional, it's likely that you'll have awards and certificates for your specific niche, such as Google Analytics, CIM, or Digital Garage, so don't neglect to include those as well.
If you're a recent school leaver or graduate, detail the relevant subjects and modules you studied or add dissertation details to add more weight to your academic record, especially if you have little work experience under your belt.
Example of a marketing CV
Below is a sample of a marketing CV that showcases common experience, skills, and qualifications and demonstrates how to structure the CV. 
Writing a marketing CV is ultimately all about what you do best – promoting a product. Except the product is you! The chances are the process will come as second nature, but if you'd like to check that you've highlighted your skill set in the best possible way, a free CV review will help you to land your next marketing role.