How to Put Marketing Skills on Your Resume

Updated June 18, 20221.5k

Marketing skills are important for succeeding in many different industries. How can you show off your marketing skills throughout your whole resume?

Marketing Skills

There are many different skills that you’ll likely need to have if your job involves selling products and services to others. Marketing skills are a big part of that. Whether you’re trying to become a marketing manager or just looking to learn more about important skills for different jobs, marketing skills can be an important part of your resume. Here’s what you need to know about skills that a successful marketer will have.

What Are Marketing Skills?

Marketing skills are communication skills that allow you to communicate the value of a product to someone, or sell it. Modern marketing skills are rarely individual person-to-person sales skills, although some individuals in a marketing team might still physically sell products and services to individuals. Instead, it’s more common for a good marketer to utilize marketing tools to craft marketing campaigns and projects that bring in potential customers. Marketing work allows team members to reach out to thousands and sometimes millions of people at once.

Top Marketing Skills To Include on a Resume

Marketing is a skill set, not a single skill. Especially in the modern era, where marketing automation is so common and a marketing job is often largely about creating coherent messaging for a marketing project, you need to have a wide variety of skills to succeed. Here are a few of the top skills that you might need to succeed in marketing:

Digital marketing skills (social media, SEO, Google Analytics, HTML)
Content marketing skills (social media marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing)
Marketing campaign creation (graphic design, copywriting, content creation, video production)
Marketing strategy (target audience decisions, market research, user experience research)
Marketing analytics (data analysis, metrics, rankings, user experience)
General interpersonal skills (communication skills, problem-solving skills, project management)

Marketing professionals often need some amount of skill in all of these areas. From content management systems to search engine optimization, remember that you need a wide skillset to succeed as a marketing expert. Your best option for finding a list of skills that will help you in your marketing efforts is to look at resume examples in your industry. Not only will you be able to see the marketing skills that your industry finds most important, but you’ll also be able to understand how other people describe those skills.

Tips for Proving Your Marketing Skills

Just because you have marketing skills, that won’t be enough to make a hiring manager take interest in you. Rather than just stating you have skills that a marketing agency wants, you should instead showcase how good you are at those skills. There are several ways to do this.

For many skills, you can get certifications. If you get these certifications, you can show that you’re great at using the tool you’re certified in. For example, you may get certifications in WordPress or Microsoft Excel. Some common certifications include the Google Analytics IQ Certification, HubSpot Content Marketing Certification, and Meta BluePrint Certification, all of which exhibit important marketing-related abilities.

Education can also show off your marketing skills. If you have a recent marketing degree and lelack ss professional experience, you can mention relevant coursework that gave you the skills you can apply to the job you want.

If you can’t get certifications for a skill or you didn’t learn them while in school, you can instead showcase how you’ve used that skill in your work history. Cite metrics and percentages that show the benefits of different marketing skills that you’ve utilized. Were you able to head a multi-million-dollar marketing project? Have you skyrocketed someone to fame through social media management? Did you bring in thousands of new customers through a single blog post? These achievements can all show off the fact that you’re a successful marketer.

FAQ: Marketing Skills

Are marketing skills hard skills or soft skills?

Both hard skills and soft skills can be crucial when it comes to marketing. Soft skills can be incredibly important because they are your interpersonal skills: how you interact with both customers and team members. However, hard skills are also important, because your analytics skills and specific software skills will play a key role in creating and understanding marketing campaigns. You should list both in your resume.

What types of jobs can benefit from marketing skills?

You don’t need to have a job that’s specifically based on marketing to utilize marketing skills. Social media managers, for example, almost always need marketing skills, because running a social media page for a company is a lot like advertising your company at all times. Again, the more you look at resume examples for your job, the more you’ll see whether or not marketing skills are important for your position.

How can I improve my marketing skills?

Formal classes are one of the best ways to improve marketing skills. However, you can also take classes online or even apply for internships at places that do a lot of marketing. Experience is one of the best ways to learn more about any skill, and that includes marketing. The more knowledge you have of the marketing process, the better your marketing skills will be on average.

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About The Author

Cindi Cervone Carlson

Cindi Cervone Carlson is a Senior Vice President for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. Cindi is responsible for developing, delivering, and implementing a dynamic, world-class organization dedicated to delivering outplacement consulting, training, support, and executive coaching. Cindi started her career at Challenger as a client who had lost her job. Over the past nine years, she has risen from an entry-level, part-time professional to Senior Vice President.