A Marketing Portfolio is an easy way to showcase your skills and past projects. It helps you stand out from other candidates and allows employers to understand whether you have the necessary skills they’re hiring for.
Show, don’t tell. It’s a lot easier for an employer to grasp something if they’re shown it, rather than told it. The saying isn’t “Tell me about the money”.
ACTA School advocates creating a comprehensive Marketing Portfolio, in particular, a portfolio website. We’ve got a whole article on the importance of creating a Marketing Portfolio for those who want to get ahead in their career. Where that article covers the why, this article covers the how.
The process of creating a portfolio
This article assumes that you are creating a portfolio website. You can also create a presentation or PDF portfolio using a platform such as Canva, PowerPoint or Keynote. However, by doing so, you miss out on developing valuable website management skills that are highly desirable in the market. You also limit yourself to that one application, which may make it more difficult to carry out edits and updates in future.
Step 1: Select the Content Management System (CMS) for your website
First things first, pick a Content Management System (CMS) for your Marketing Portfolio. There are lots of free platforms available, and many are template-driven and provide supportive online tutorials to help you get started.
Here are some of the most popular platforms:
Free platforms
- WordPress – The most popular platform, powering more than 43% of the internet. Incremental paid plans are also available.
- Wix – One of the easiest website builders to use, with web hosting and tech support, as well as around 1,000 templates to choose from.
- Weebly – Also offers an intuitive drag and drop editor with web hosting and tech support, though it has a lot fewer template choices.
Paid platforms
- Fabrik – A platform specifically for creating professional portfolio websites that showcase your work. Themes built by creatives, for creatives, with competitive pricing.
- Webflow – A website builder that allows customisation such as you’d expect from the likes of WordPress, making it the choice for a lot of industry start-ups, with some excellent templates too.
- Squarespace – The intuitive editor makes it easy to use, with slick, contemporary templates that are fully responsive.
Step 2: Decide on your domain
When you create your portfolio with a CMS, you are provided with a domain name that will contain your name and the platform name (e.g. www.namesurname.wix.com). While this is perfectly fine to start with, a custom domain name looks more professional. After all, it is part of your brand identity!
You will have to pay to change your domain name, but this is arguably a worthy investment. You can buy your custom domain at GoDaddy, with prices starting from £1.99/year.
Step 3: Build your brand identity
You’re pursuing a career in marketing, so you already know how important branding is—it can make or break a brand or campaign. And your personal brand is no exception. Create some simple guidelines for your personal brand that can be applied to your portfolio, including a logo, colour palette, fonts and imagery direction.
Remember to make your name or logo visible. It’s easily overlooked. This provides a visual cue for the reader and reminds them whose work they are looking at.
Don’t know where to start? Here are some pointers:
- Pinterest, aka the visual platform for inspiration. Spend some time exploring it and building mood boards.
- Behance is a great resource for previewing other brand guidelines.
- Turn to the brands you love for inspiration – explore what it is you love about them.
- When it comes to imagery, use your own photos where you can; this will promote authenticity. If you don’t have high-quality images, then stock images are also an option. There are plenty of free stock photography websites, like Pexels and Unsplash.
Step 4: Curate your work
We advise creating a page for each project that you include—whether it’s from a job, freelance work, a university course or additional training.
All courses at ACTA include a hands-on project where you can practice your newly acquired skills and create a project that you can showcase in your portfolio.
What to include
For a generalist marketer, we suggest showcasing the following kinds of work:
- Organic social media examples: creative you have worked on, captions you have crafted
- Paid social media examples: creative you have worked on, captions you have crafted
- Email or marketing automation sequences: email newsletters, onboarding emails such as a welcome email, transactional emails such as an abandoned basket email, retention emails such as a customer win-back email
- A landing page: conversion-focused, SEO-focused
- Blog posts: brand-focused, SEO-focused
- A multi-channel campaign
- Analytics projects with insights
You could also showcase:
- Your most design-led campaign
- An innovative idea
- A failed project and your learnings
Choosing your projects
Ask yourself two questions when assessing a piece of work:
1) Am I proud of it?
2) Do I want to do more work like this?
Quality is better than quantity here. A prospective client or employer will not sift through pages and pages of examples. Having five strong examples with detailed explanations is far more powerful than having 20 mediocre ones.
If you don’t have work to include
If you are a graduate or career starter, don’t worry if you don’t have many projects to showcase at this point. Select a brand you love and “simulate” being part of their marketing team in charge of a particular channel or area.
“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein
For example, you could create a week’s worth of social media posts for Allbirds, producing designs in Canva and writing the accompanying captions. Just make sure to flag that it is a simulated project.
Step 5: Explain your work
We suggest using the CAR structure to explain your projects:
- C for Challenge – What was the task? Briefly describe the context of the project, the challenges the company was facing and the objectives they were trying to achieve.
- A for Action – What was your process? Describe how you approached the task and what role you played.
- R for Results – What was the end result? How was this a success? Focus on the business results and KPIs delivered.
Step 6: Create a compelling “About Me” page
Your portfolio helps prospective clients and employers better understand what you’d bring to their team.
Let your personality shine here. Say something memorable—in a good way.
So ask yourself, what makes you different from other candidates? Why can’t an employer find someone like you anywhere else?
Step 7: Create a clear “Contact Me” page
Don’t overlook the importance of making it easy for potential clients or employers to contact you. If possible, give them options:
- Phone
- Social media profiles
- A contact form
Think beyond your “Contact Me” page too. Consider where else on your site might people look for your contact details—on your “About Me” page, at the end of case studies, etc.
Step 8: Add a testimonial page
This step is optional as it will depend on a number of factors, such as industry and employment type.
Testimonials work best for freelancers and consultants, whereas for permanent roles, we would advise you to keep any references within LinkedIn or your CV.
Want to learn more? Get our free guide on How to Create a Marketing Portfolio.
Download our full guide on “How to create a Marketing Portfolio”, including step-by-step instructions for creating a strong portfolio website, as well as best practice examples to inspire you.
Good luck with your Marketing Portfolio.
Feel free to drop us a line any time at learn@actaschool.co.uk if you have any questions, thoughts or feelings. And if you want personalised, constructive feedback on your Marketing Portfolio, we will happily take a look for you.
.svg){kind=small}
