6 Skills to Make Your Marketing Director Resume Stand Out

Building a resume is a lot like SEO, but you are the product that you are trying to make stand out. Here are 6 categories of skills to make your marketing director resume stand out:

Marketing Directors spend more than their fair share of time reviewing copy, crafting strategies, and editing campaigns for the company. In turn, this leaves little creative time for their own resume. Even if there were more hours in the day, it is important to remember that being an expert in B2B or B2C strategies doesn’t necessarily translate into being able to craft a compelling marketing director resume.

Over 70% of all resumes are rejected by the Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) commonly used by employers. Want to stay out of the rejection pile? Here are the 6 skills found on the resumes of the best marketing directors:

1. COLLABORATIVE LEADER

The title “director” is a good indicator that the organization is looking for someone experienced in leading a team of people including direct reports and vendors. The best marketing directors understand how to lead while also managing up. To illustrate your collaborative leadership skills on your marketing director resume consider the following:

• Direct Reports. Internal marketing departments are often one the last to grow and sometimes people land the title of marketing director without having any direct reports. But, if you have them make sure to play this fact up and to highlight the growth of these individuals under your leadership.

• Vendors. Managing outside vendors who produce the content or supervise the SEO/SEM campaigns goes hand-in-hand with being a marketing director as your time is spent managing – not producing. Make sure to include info on volume but also on any cost-savings or quality initiatives to demonstrate your effectiveness in leading outside marketing partners.

• Enterprise Initiatives. This could be a new website launch, specific campaigns, instructional videos, or a variety of integrated marketing tactics.

• Major Campaigns. No major campaign gets launched without the help of a cross-functional team to build the strategy, develop the content, and to manage its evolution. So, make sure to include specifics about a large campaign from number of people to spend and everything in between.

2. STRATEGIC THINKER

The best marketing directors are able to keep the big picture in focus while attending to the details. This is often reflected in a range of big and small initiatives within the company that can depend on the size of the organization. Here are a few ways to reflect your big picture abilities with strong attention to detail:

• Revenue from Campaigns. The best marketing directors know that the goal of their efforts is to increase revenue for the company. To reflect this understanding, consider adding achievement statements to your resume that ties real revenue to a campaign that you conceived or otherwise spearheaded.

• Brand Management. Adhering to brand standards while applying innovative tactics requires juggling both the big and small pictures. Great marketing directors can provide countless examples of how they managed a team that successfully managed a brand through a variety of changes.

• Strategic Planning. Annual strategic planning is where many large enterprise initiatives originate. The involvement of the marketing director at this stage and her ability to execute it can be a great way to demonstrate success as a strategic partner.

3. VERSATILE AND INNOVATIVE

Adaptation is critical in the current viral marketing culture. The top marketing directors are able to roll with the punches while crafting a new campaign to address the ever-changing circumstances. They are also continuously learning the latest technology to improve the effectiveness of their efforts. To capture examples of versatility on your marketing director resume think about:

• ​Strategic Communications. Many marketing directors are tapped to help develop strategic communications plans that serve to engage and retain employees. When capturing this experience, make sure to include stats on the reach of the communications, retention, media used, and audience segmentation.

• Crisis Communications. Crisis communication needs come up unexpectedly and require a strong tactical plan to achieve their objectives. Make sure to include some explanation on the crisis and the outcome of your role in crafting the communications when trying to capture an example of your crisis communication experience (and the versatility it required).

• Media Relations. An in-house marketing director knows that even the best press release won’t always get picked up by the media outlets. So, include stats on coverage or even the earned media (even if it’s online only sources) that resulted to showcase your abilities to manage the media in a range of circumstances.

• Global Campaigns. International marketing strategies require the ability to identify sometimes conflicting regulations, work with new outside partners, and to adjust the campaigns based on locality variances. Including stats on the results from global campaigns can be a great way to demonstrate versatility on your marketing director resume.

4. UNDERSTANDS THE CLIENTS

Marketing directors have to know the business, its products or services, and its customers. This knowledge is essential for a marketing director to gain insight into what is happening within the market and to determine the most effective strategies to reach the desired goals. Consider the following when trying to capture your ability to quickly learn any business or industry on your marketing director resume:

• Product Knowledge. The ability to learn products or services is essential to any marketing director role – regardless of industry. So, the best marketing director resumes always include information on how they learned the varying products and how that information translated into successful marketing campaigns.

• Industry Experience. Working for a competitor of the prospective employer means that you know the industry and have probably tackled many of the same issues. Make sure to incorporate specifics on this experience and to really highlight the words or acronyms relevant to the industry whenever building a resume that is used within your current resume.

• Additional Training. Any post-college training or certifications in marketing, the industry, or leadership can be important additions to your marketing director resume. Really, including these can hit some important keywords for the prospective employer or otherwise demonstrate the depth of knowledge that is important in the role you are applying to. So, never underestimate the value of continuously learning.

• Professional Associations. Including details on your involvement in professional groups or trade associations that the prospective employer supports is a great way to show a share approach and knowledge of the market.

5. DATA DRIVEN

The best marketing directors utilize data to create and grow strategies that yield the highest conversions. Marketing is undeniably driven by increasingly complex analytics and a plethora of data on the existing or prospective customers. Here are a few examples of how to effectively capture your ability to synthesize and leverage the right data on your marketing director resume:

• Testing. Even the strategies built from the most accurate marketing data need to be proven. Include examples of your experience leading A/B testing in various campaigns or across outside agencies to help highlight your ability to read the data and to continuously leverage the information to ensure success.

• Automation and AI. The application of artificial intelligence is permeating technology which means that identifying the best marketing automation tools now increasingly means applying AI for continued success. Capture this experience by identifying all of the key details in implementing, leveraging, or standardizing the marketing automation or AI tools used by your department.

• Social Media. Growing and engaging an audience on social media requires a constant reliance on data to cost-effectively succeed. Marketing directors can capture their success with social media on their resume by identifying the campaigns and people they manage to execute the strategies driven by social media data.

6. EXCELLENT COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Excellent communication skills is hands down the most important skill for the resume of any marketing director. This is something that many organizations say they want and that many candidates say they have. But, how do you illustrate on your marketing director resume that you are a highly skilled communicator:

• Clarity. This means have a clear structure to your resume as well as the sentences or bullets contained on it. Think visually and intellectually when crafting your marketing director resume.

• Avoiding typos and grammar mistakes. These will kill your chances at a position faster than anything else. Make sure to double-edit your resume and cover letter before hitting submit on that marketing director application.

• Focus. Marketing directors need to be decisive and capable of focusing a message on the targeted audience. The only way to really show you can do that is to have a focused resume that highlights your unique value proposition to the prospective employer.

There are many more skills that are found on the resume of a great marketing director. The keywords aside, the key to building an effective resume for your marketing director job search, is to start by building a persona for your prospective employer.

To do this, start by thinking about the demographics, industry, size, and all other aspects of the organization. Now start writing your marketing director resume by focusing on what makes you different from the competition. Then, step back and take a hard look at your resume to evaluate whether you would hire the person presented in the resume. If not, then you probably have more work to do.