How to Create the Perfect Digital Marketing Portfolio in 2024
What is a Digital Marketing portfolio?
A Marketing portfolio is a compilation of material that shows examples of your work. Portfolios are often associated with writers and artists – a collection of artwork or previous books they have written.
For Digital Marketing professionals, this may be a collection of some of the best projects you have worked on, your qualifications, training and your experience in general.
Rather than printing off pages of your work and experience, you’re better off creating a personal marketing portfolio and putting it online on a website.
Or some freelancers or consultants use their entire website as their marketing portfolio.
Regardless, the same principles and steps apply.
Why you need to create a Digital Marketing portfolio
A finely tuned Digital Marketing CV can help your search for a new job by letting potential employers know that you could be right for their company.
But a marketing portfolio will show them, with evidence of your most impressive work.
Whether you’re on the hunt for a new Social Media, Content or Digital Marketing job, this guide should help you to start building a marketing portfolio that sets you apart from the competition.
What you should include in your Digital Marketing portfolio
Now you have a good understanding of what a Digital Marketing portfolio is, here’s a list of what you need to include in it:
- Introduce yourself
- CV / Resume
- Contact Details
- Examples of your work
- Testimonials
About You
The first step is to introduce yourself with an ‘about you’ page. This includes your work, highlighting your interests, soft skills, personal qualities, background and experience.
But it’s also good to discuss a bit about yourself and to show your personality. This helps to show that you’re more than just a website and create a connection with the person viewing your marketing portfolio.
Your Professional Experience
Your marketing portfolio should be an online representation of your CV, containing all your professional experience and expertise. Which means it should contain all the same information:
- The areas of marketing you work in.
- What industries you have worked in.
- The types of clients you have worked on (with examples).
- Data and statistics that support your expertise.
If you need some guidance we’ve got some tips to help you write a Digital Marketing CV that stands out.
Contact details
The goal for your portfolio is to have people contact you for potential work opportunities, right? If that is the case, you need to make it as easy as possible for them to contact you. Make sure to include your phone number, email address and links to your social media accounts.
Examples of your work
This is the section of your Digital portfolio where you highlight your most successful work by sharing examples of the best projects you’ve worked on. Explain your thought process and methodology behind each project and how successful it was.
Testimonials
Sharing testimonials from previous colleagues, managers or companies you’ve worked for is a great way to build a strong first impression. Positive testimonials help to establish your credibility and reliability.
How to Build a Digital Marketing Portfolio
Now that you understand and know everything you need include – Here’s how you build a Digital Marketing portfolio that will grab the attention of anyone reading it:
- Create a website
- Design a killer homepage
- Create a strong ‘about’ page
- Showcase your best work
- Don’t forget your contact details
Create a website
Creating a website displaying a portfolio of your work will give you the opportunity to showcase your work to the public, and make it easier to be found by potential employers and recruiters.
An easy way to create your online portfolio is to use a website builder, many of them offer free templates and hosting.
Design a killer homepage
When building the website for your portfolio, remember that the homepage is going to be your visitors’ first impression of you. To create a killer homepage you need to:
- Introduce your website and yourself
- Have a clear design
- Make it easy to navigate
- Include CTA’s to push visitors to contact you
Create a strong ‘about’ page
Creating a strong ‘about’ page will set you apart from your competition. This is your chance to show why clients or employers need you. Try to highlight your experience and achievements so far in your career.
Including a few testimonials to establish your credibility won’t hurt either.
Showcase your best work
Rather than attempting to show every single project you’ve ever worked on, carefully select the ones that best represent you’re capabilities. Try to include 3-5 in-depth examples of campaigns you’ve worked on, as you don’t want visitors losing interest reading through dozens of projects.
If you’re stuck on what campaigns to include, consider campaigns that include one of the following 3 things:
- The best results
- A mix of marketing channels
- Showcases your innovative ideas
Don’t forget your contact details
Push visitors to get in touch with you by placing your contact details across the site. Think of all the usual places you would look for contact details and place them there. This includes the About page, footer, as well as a contact page.
A great tip is to include a contact form on your website, this will make yourself even easier to contact as the visitor won’t have to leave the site.
5 of the Best Digital Marketing Portfolio Examples
Let’s have a look at what all of this looks like when put into practice, with some marketing portfolio examples that we think are shining examples of one or more aspects of a perfect digital marketing portfolio.
1. Daniel Foley: A masterclass in selling your service
Daniel Foley is a specialist SEO Consultant that offers a variety of SEO services, from technical SEO, to On-Page and Off-Page.
What’s great about this marketing portfolio?
Daniel helpfully starts off with a video explaining the benefits of SEO and his services for people who may not be aware of the ins and outs of SEO. Once you’re educated he sells his owns services with:
- Reviews from satisfied customers.
- Case studies from successful clients.
- Name brand clients he works with.
- The publications he’s been featured in.
- The services he offers.
- And client testimonials.
And of course, the fact that Daniel ranks #1 on Google for “SEO Consultant”, is a testament to his work.
2. Ryan Scollon: Selling your niche and speciality.
Ryan Scollon is a Freelance PPC Consultant, specialising in Google and Bing Ads and lead generation.
What’s great about this marketing portfolio?
Ryan’s portfolio is clean and clear and sells himself and his services. He evidences his expertise with publications and testimonials, before delving into his niche and the problems you may be facing. Ryan demonstrates his expertise and sells his service with:
- Publications he’s been featured in.
- Testimonials and reviews from satisfied customers.
- The results he’s had, with percentages to evidence his expertise.
- And the common problems his clients have.
3. Murad Murad: Bright and bold marketing.
Murad is a freelance Digital Marketing Consultant and a generalist, offering support across the range of marketing services.
What’s great about this marketing portfolio?
While some prefer a clean and quiet marketing portfolio, Murad’s website jumps out of the page with bright, bold colours, and images and avatars. Which also helps the website stand out and fun in comparison to other marketing portfolios out there. Some other highlights of Murad’s portfolio include:
- His list of qualifications, across the range of digital marketing practices.
- The services he offers and industries he works in.
- An easily downloadable portfolio, giving further insight into clients, work, and expertise.
4. Lizzie Davey: Selling your niche, in a vibrant and bold way.
Lizzie is a content writer and strategist specialising in SaaS, with a wealth of industry experience.
What’s great about this marketing portfolio?
Similar to Murad’s, Lizzie isn’t afraid to be bold with colour and it works. Her website stands out, and she uses that colour to direct your attention to her selling points: Experience and testimonials. Additionally, what we love about her portfolio is:
- An extensive menu and website, with dedicated pages showing specialist services and testimonials etc.
- The effects of her work for herself and her clients.
- Testimonials and client examples.
5. Victoria Nikolaeva: An artistic, modern portfolio.
Victoria is an all-round digital marketer, specialising in the gaming industry and working across the full range of digital verticals.
What’s great about this marketing portfolio?
Victoria opts for a modern portfolio that perfectly encapsulates and reflects her specialism: the gaming industry. Her website and portfolio is immediately eye-catching, and starts with an attention grabbing headline, over the usual introduction.
- Great use of colour and segmentation helps to make Victoria’s portfolio interesting and makes you want to read more.
- The portfolio section of the website has clickable links to previous projects, providing an in-depth view of multiple different client projects.
A few extra tips for your portfolio
Show your personality
If you aren’t a designer, don’t worry. You don’t have to be able to build a website to create a marketing portfolio. Websites like WordPress, Wix and Squarespace offer a variety of templates to help you showcase your work. Keep the layout simple, clear and easy to navigate, but also try to show some personality and originality with the design.
Because while you’re trying to showcase your work and your expertise, people buy from people, and they hire people. It’s your personality that you want to shine through and that will make a connection with people.
Organize your content
A portfolio of carefully organized content will highlight that you understand the importance of producing for a specific audience. Reserve lists of every project you’ve worked on and details of your career history for your CV.
For example, if you’re applying for a content role at a company where the blog consists entirely of SEO-driven short-form articles, you should leave out your lengthy features and focus on providing examples of your best easy-to-scan pieces.
It’s also worth categorising your content if you’re a multifaceted marketer, into subsections such as ‘Social Media’, ‘Email Marketing’ etc.
Organizing your content can be difficult, especially if you have lots of experience in different areas. Time is of the essence for managers, so listing your key skills is a great start. You can always go into more detail in your interview.
Be easy to contact
Recruiters and potential employers are blown away by your marketing portfolio because you’ve organized your best content and chosen an attractive, user-friendly way to display it… Now you need to make sure they can get in touch.
Make it easy for people to contact you by providing up-to-date information and a variety of ways for them to find out more about why you’re the Digital Marketer they need.
It’s really important to include clear links to your social accounts, an email address and a telephone number. Information about your availability is also important, especially if you’re a freelancer or professional interim.
FAQs About Marketing Portfolios
When you’re putting together your digital marketing portfolio, you’re bound to have a few questions about the best way to sell yourself and your service.
Do Marketing Professionals need a portfolio?
It’s very likely that yes, you will need a marketing portfolio if you want to have a successful career as a freelance digital marketer. The majority of businesses and prospective clients will want to see examples of your work as evidence of your skills and experience.
Strictly speaking, no, you don’t need a marketing portfolio. You can have a successful career as a freelancer without one. It can, however, be much more difficult.
The websites we have shown above are again, optional, but certainly helpful. Many freelancers choose not to have a website, due to the extra responsibility and work it entails to maintain an optimised and up-to-date website. And if they are busy with clients and customers from other avenues, there can be a lack of need for a website portfolio.
So again, a marketing portfolio in the form of a website isn’t an absolute necessity. But it can help when people are considering working with you, or searching online for the services you offer.
How many examples should be in a marketing portfolio?
Your marketing portfolio should contain multiple examples of each service you offer, showing successes and details of clients you have worked with. For example:
If you offer SEO services including blog writing, site audits, website optimisation, digital PR and link building, then you would want to show examples of each of these services.
Additionally, you should have examples on a variety of clients you have worked with, to show your adaptability. You don’t need to have examples of every client in your portfolio, but a range.
Looking for your next role? We can help. Find your next Digital Marketing job with us.
