Marketing CV Examples & UK Templates

Marketers are in demand, but to give yourself the best chance of securing your dream role, you need to create an impressive CV.

Generic, run-of-the-mill CVs are unlikely to generate positive results for your job search. Think of your CV like a targeted marketing campaign that needs to generate some interest and position you as the leading brand. 

How can you create some buzz with your marketing CV? By showcasing your top-flight marketing skills, experience, and achievements, with a dash of personality.

In this step-by-step guide, we’ll explain exactly how you can impress the hiring manager with a polished CV that markets you as the best person for the job.

CV guide for a marketing CV

Boost your job search with Resume.io. Our collection of CV examples spans over 150 professions and our CV builder makes it easy to create a top-notch CV from scratch.

This CV guide and the corresponding marketing CV example will cover the following:

• How to write a marketing CV
• Choosing the right CV format for marketing
• How to add your contact information
• Using summaries
• Adding your marketing experience
• Listing education and relevant experience
• Picking the right CV design/layout
• What the marketing job outlook looks like, and the salary you can expect 

How to write a marketing CV

Having an awareness of the correct structure to use will help you stay on track when writing your CV. With few exceptions, all marketing CVs should include these essential sections:

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

Job applications are very similar to marketing campaigns, the only difference here is that you are the product! A successful campaign requires a clear understanding of the target audience, a unique value proposition, effective communication, and a well-defined brand identity. These all combine to compel a consumer (or recruiter) to take action and invest in you/your product.

Gather as much information as you can about the job you’re applying for so that you can show via your CV that you fully meet these requirements. Then, complete some self-reflection to pin down your personal brand and value proposition. Who are you and what do you offer? Why should someone hire you? The answer to these questions will lie in your core values, strengths, passions, skills, achievements, and goals.

Regardless of the marketing role you are targeting, follow these key principles:

• Showcase your marketing strengths and achievements. It’s easy to list day-to-day tasks when describing your experience, but outlining what you have achieved shows the hiring manager the specific value you will bring to their marketing team.
• Ensure the tone of your CV matches the company you’re applying to. You should always tailor your writing and visual style to the employer’s image and branding – as a marketer, you know the importance of this!
• Convey your brand by using a clean and professional format for your marketing CV. Design-heavy formats can be distracting and difficult to read.
• Refer to relevant keywords across your CV to impress recruiters and ensure your CV performs well when parsed by applicant tracking systems (ATS). 

Choosing the right CV format for marketing

Next, it’s time to decide on a CV format. Reverse chronological is the most popular format for marketing professionals who have followed a structured career path. This format is preferred by hiring managers and ATS alike as it presents a detailed, easy-to-read employment history. 

However, if you’re just starting your marketing career (whether a recent graduate or a professional seeking a career change) you may decide on a functional format instead. This structure shifts the focus to transferable skills, rather than work experience. Increasing numbers of employers in the UK are prioritising skills-based hiring in order to attract talented employees, so adopting this format can definitely help you get a foot on the ladder.  

Marketing professionals with employment gaps or those targeting niche positions that rely heavily on both skills and work experience may want to consider the hybrid or combination CV. Often considered the baby of reverse chronological and functional formats, this format places equal weight on skills and work history.

Check out our job-winning CV templates so you can see these formats in action and select the one that is most relevant to your unique situation. We also have 170+ CV examples to help you create the perfect CV.

Include your contact information

When a hiring manager reads a top-notch marketing CV they will be keen to get in touch with you. Having your contact information up-to-date and clearly presented is therefore vital.

Think of your CV header as a professional business card that you hand out to prospective clients. Here is the information you should include and exclude: 

• Full name & title. Start with your first and last name, then add the title of the marketing role you are pursuing.
• Professional email address. Next, include a suitable email address where employers can contact you, such as [email protected]. 
• Phone number. Add a phone number where you can easily be reached, with a professional voicemail message.
• Location. There is no longer a requirement to include your full address on your CV, so simply list your town or city and country. 
• LinkedIn. Many prospective employers will check your LinkedIn profile, so make their lives easier by including a link. Ensure your profile is updated.   

Don’t include:

• Date of birth: Including your DOB can lead to age discrimination.
• Personal details: Avoid including details of your marital status, nationality, number of children or NI number.

Make use of a summary

Marketing professionals need to have the ability to connect and communicate with their target audience instantly. Your summary, or profile, serves as the introduction to your marketing CV and is your opportunity to quickly build rapport with your intended audience; the employer. 

Create 2-3 sentences that spotlight your top-level marketing skills. You don’t need to go overboard here with marketing jargon or flashy statements. Keep it simple and provide a snapshot of who you are as a marketing professional and your unique selling features. Perhaps you’re an expert in product design or recently led an award-winning marketing campaign.    

Action verbs in the simple past or present tense are a great way to make your summary pop. Examples include inspired, boosted, delivered, transformed, convinced, and cultivated. 

While the summary section is at the start of your CV, a good approach is to write this section last. After you’ve written your key skills and work history sections you’ll probably find that creating a summary of your career to date is a lot easier. Follow the rest of this guide, then loop back to create a compelling professional summary.   

You can also find adaptable marketing example summaries below:

Outline your marketing work experience; your career journey

Once you’ve hooked the reader's attention, it’s time to share your work experience. The hiring manager will be keen to learn what you have done and what you have achieved in the workplace. Written the right way, this can convince an employer that you are the best candidate.

Start with your current (or most recent) employment, then work back to earlier roles. Focus on experience that is directly related to the job posting, covering no more than 10-15 years. Any roles that seem less relevant can be listed under an “Additional experience” section.

Under each employer and role heading, create concise bullet points that describe your contributions in the workplace. Dynamic action verbs should be used here too, such as envisioned, created, steered, identified, and collaborated.

Facts and data demonstrate your marketing skills in action. Rather than simply listing duties and responsibilities, highlight your accomplishments in the workplace. For example, you may have held the following responsibilities:

• "Led marketing campaigns.”
• "Promoted brand awareness.”
• "Handled client enquiries.”

While these statements provide details of your core duties, they are pretty bland. Adding some specific facts and tangible results will add some colour to your work history. For example:

• "Led a direct marketing campaign that boosted sales by 45% for the spring collection - the highest recorded increase in the past five years.”
• "Promoted brand awareness via exciting and informative content marketing, leading to 20% growth in organic traffic.”
• "Served as a key point of contact to clients, with success averaging a 92% retention rate and regularly attracting new customers via referrals.”

Your work experience section is the perfect place to promote yourself as the best candidate for the job, so maximise this opportunity by providing quantifiable data where possible. Refer to the job description as your guide when deciding what to include. This will ensure your experience reflects your suitability for the role. 

Take a look at the marketing employment history CV sample below:

How to write a marketing CV with no experience

If you don't have any marketing experience, you can still create a compelling CV to land an entry-level opportunity. The strategy here is to focus on transferable skills and your passion for all things marketing.

Think about the transferable skills you have gained from a part-time job or any voluntary work. Maybe you secured a weekend job in customer service, where you honed your communication, sales, and merchandising skills. All vital skills that are relatable to marketing.

Another way to get a foot in the door if you have no direct experience is to show your commitment to pursuing a career in marketing. Blogging, internships, training, or completing projects in the marketing sphere, are all things you can mention in your marketing CV to highlight your skills and potential.   

Include the relevant key skills that make you a great marketer

Within marketing, you need to be highly creative and constantly evolve your ideas to keep ahead of the curve. Additionally, the ever-changing digital landscape means that it’s also paramount to keep up with technology in the marketing world.

Marketing professionals also need to be highly organised, strong communicators, and adopt a collaborative approach as they manage a range of clients and campaigns. Success comes when these skills all combine to produce positive results. 

A good balance of hard and soft skills should be included in your marketing CV. Hard skills may include content marketing, social media management, and predictive analytics. Soft skills are general traits that help employees excel at work, such as communication and problem-solving. 

Our CV builder provides a wide range of key skills to choose from, with proficiency levels you can adjust. You can also add your own unique skills.

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

While you should mention your key skills in this section, you can also weave them throughout the rest of the document. Add them to your professional summary, work experience, and education sections. For example:

• Product development skills by demonstrating your expertise in creating product roadmaps, preparing budgets, and executing go-to-market strategy.
• Critical thinking skills by analysing marketing campaigns and making adjustments to facilitate optimal outcomes.
• Collaborative approach by describing your role in a project team, mentioning team size and any positive results.

Look to the original job advert for inspiration on the critical skills to include.

Detail your education & relevant marketing certifications

The education section is straightforward on your marketing CV. Use reverse chronological order to list your academic achievements. When listing university degrees, simply include the name of your degree, educational institution, and years attended (if within the last five years).

There’s no need to include A-Levels and GCSEs if you’re a university graduate with several years of marketing work experience under your belt. If you’re still completing your studies, then just include an expected completion date. 

Aside from your formal education, you can also include other certifications and training related to marketing in this section. For example,

• Training and certifications. Courses, workshops, and training in areas such as digital marketing, SEO, advertising, PR, and market research.
• Internships. If you’re just starting your marketing career, then include details of any internships or work placements in this section.
• Professional development. Professional memberships boost your credibility, so mention registration with organisations such as The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) or the Market Research Society (MRS). 

Pick the right CV layout and design for a marketing CV

Hiring managers typically receive hundreds of CVs after posting a job advert, so they know a great CV when they see one. Selecting a clean, crisp, and professional layout and design for your marketing CV can set you off to a great start.

Poor formatting, distracting designs, and awkward layouts won’t be effective. Instead, keep it simple. Check out our CV templates and user-friendly builder tool for professional, field-tested results. 

Marketing text-only CV example

Marketing job market and outlook

The job market for marketing professionals remains promising, with content-related roles emerging as in-demand for many businesses. Increased hiring and demand were the highest in the specific roles of content manager (25.3%), social media manager (23.8%), data specialist (22%), and performance marketer (20.2%).

Additionally, B2B brands are projected to have more vacancies than B2C brands. If you're looking for a new role in marketing, you can use this information to your advantage.

What type of salary you can expect in marketing

The wage you can expect in marketing will depend on the role you are targeting. Here’s a breakdown of salary ranges in the UK across a range of marketing jobs: 

• Marketing assistant – £17,000 - £25,000 per year
• Marketing executive – £20,000 - £33,000 per year
• Marketing manager – £25,000 - £53,000 per year
• Brand strategist – £26,000 - £65,000 per year

Some roles offer the opportunity for healthy bonuses and commissions to boost your base salary, with bonus ranges of circa £500 to a whopping £39,000 in the case of brand strategists.

Key takeaways for building a marketing CV

Marketing is a critical part of any organisation, so there is a strong demand for marketing expertise across a wide range of industries. To land the best opportunities, your marketing CV needs to show off your unique value and allow your personal brand to shine.

Having a clear understanding of your target audience is vital. Always refer back to the job description and tailor your CV to the demands of the position. This will ensure you deliver a compelling story of your candidacy for the job opening and boost your chances of an interview.

Kickstart your job search by using our online CV builder to create the perfect marketing CV in mere minutes.