Marketing is one of the broadest fields in hiring — which creates an ATS challenge. "Marketing" covers everything from paid acquisition to brand strategy to email automation. A generic marketing resume won't match any specific role well.
The key is knowing which type of marketer you are, using the language of that specialism, and structuring your resume to show measurable results alongside the keywords. Here's how.
Marketing Specialisms and Their Keywords
Identify your primary track and make sure those keywords are prominent:
Performance / Growth Marketing: PPC, paid search, paid social, Google Ads, Meta Ads, programmatic, CPC, CPL, ROAS, conversion rate optimisation (CRO), A/B testing, attribution, Google Analytics, GTM, demand generation.
Content & SEO: SEO, content marketing, content strategy, editorial calendar, keyword research, on-page optimisation, backlink building, organic traffic, blog, thought leadership, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Surfer SEO.
Email & CRM: Email marketing, marketing automation, lifecycle marketing, customer segmentation, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Klaviyo, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, drip campaigns, open rate, click-through rate, list management.
Brand & Communications: Brand strategy, brand identity, messaging, positioning, integrated marketing, campaign management, PR, media relations, copywriting, creative direction.
Product Marketing: Go-to-market strategy, product launch, competitive analysis, customer research, sales enablement, persona development, positioning and messaging, win/loss analysis.
How to Write Marketing Bullet Points
Marketing bullet points live or die by metrics. Every campaign you ran, every channel you owned, every audience you grew — quantify it.
Weak: "Managed the company's social media channels and grew the following."
Strong: "Grew LinkedIn following from 3,200 to 18,000 in 10 months through a weekly thought leadership content series, generating 400+ marketing-qualified leads per quarter."
Key metrics to include:
- Audience growth (followers, subscribers, reach)
- Pipeline and revenue generated
- ROAS and cost-per-lead for paid campaigns
- Email open rates and CTR vs. industry benchmarks
- Organic traffic growth and SEO ranking improvements
- Campaign performance vs. targets
Tools Section
Marketing is highly tool-specific and ATS systems filter by tool names. Include a comprehensive tools section: Google Ads, Meta Business Suite, HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Hootsuite, Buffer, Google Analytics 4, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Canva, Figma, Adobe Creative Suite — list everything you've genuinely used.
The Tailoring Problem in Marketing
A performance marketer applying for a content role (or vice versa) needs to address the gap directly in their summary rather than sending a generic resume. Marketing hiring managers are attuned to specialism — a generalist resume for a specialist role signals you don't understand what the job actually is.
Tailor your summary for every application. It takes five minutes and makes the difference between "relevant candidate" and "wrong profile."