5 Steps to Take When Building your Online Marketing Portfolio

As a marketeer, we are always trying to sell something, whether that be a product or a brand. One thing a lot of us struggle to do and one of the main focuses in your marketing career is how best to sell yourself. Marketing roles are extremely creative, more so now with the rise of Digital Marketing. Companies are always on the lookout for that unique factor.

If you’re looking for the best way to market yourself, what better way to do that than creating an online marketing portfolio. It’s a great way to showcase and offer your services, particularly if you are looking at a marketing career in freelancing. If you’re just getting started out in the marketing industry, it can also be a great way to show how much you’ve got to offer.

There are many sites you can use to build an online portfolio. These include websites like Squarespace and Wix. Here is my guide on the steps I would take to help set up your online marketing portfolio. 

1. Curate your best work

Whilst you may have reels of great content or creations you’ve designed, don’t create your portfolio with the intention of displaying everything you’ve ever made. Look through what you’ve done and pick out your best and most important pieces of work. Focus on the type of work you would most want to create in a professional environment. Designer and type artist Sasha Prood explained to Creative Bloq, “The work that you choose to showcase should be the type of work that you want to be hired to produce.”

If you’re right at the beginning of your career and are yet to build up a portfolio from work you’ve done from being in a professional environment - get creative and start designing! If you’re wanting to get into a field in marketing where you’re creating content, create some visuals or write up a new article from some imaginary clients.

2. Think about what makes you different

When you’re marketing a product or a brand, you’re often looking for a USP (unique selling point) that makes your product or brand different from others. Marketing is such a varied role and there are so many qualities that you may not realise you have that makes you stand out from someone else. 

My background before starting in my first marketing role was being a graduate from a Film Production degree. My first job in the industry was in Digital Marketing and a large aspect of that role was to create and implement videos into their marketing strategy. In a similar way, if you’ve graduated from a degree in Graphic Design, use your knowledge of design and branding to help sell yourself through an online marketing portfolio.   

3. Think about branding 

As you would with a product or brand, make sure you have clear branding across your site. If you don’t specialise in a visual medium, this may not seem as such a straightforward step but think about the fonts and colours you use across your website. If you have multiple pages for clients and employers to view they will be looking for consistency. 

4. Call to action

Whilst the largest part of your portfolio is to showcase what you’ve done or what you have to offer, remember the reason you’ve made it is to sell yourself to impress an employer or a client if you’re looking for freelance work. Call to actions when creating anything for digital platforms are a must, just as they are when thinking of creating a portfolio. Why are you wanting people to visit? To essentially get more work in the long run. Your call to action would be your contact information so they know how to get in touch with you. Make sure that it is easy to find on your website. Make sure you have a contact me tab on your homepage or somewhere easily accessible from your homepage. 

5. Make sure it’s mobile friendly

As we are right in the middle of the rise of digital marketing, we know how much content is consumed on a mobile phone. With this is mind, when creating any content online, make sure it’s accessible in every way it can be viewed. There’s a way you can preview your content when you’re building it up, so always double check that the design and content is displayed in an easy-to-follow way.

Just like a CV isn’t ‘one size fits all’, neither is an online marketing portfolio. There are so many ways to showcase yourself, what one person may like, another may not.

Go with your gut and trust your own capabilities.

Written by Bethh Oliver