You wish to get a break as a marketer working with your favorite brand or learning from mentors you look upto. But whenever you approach someone for a project or a role, you get stuck when they ask for your portfolio. You don’t have one because you there’s no or little experience to show yet.

But unless you get a job or project, you won’t be able to build a portfolio. It looks like a gridlock. But the good news is, you don’t need a job at a fancy company or do projects with famous brands to build a portfolio that shows your skills.

In this post, we’ll explore 7 ideas on how to create a portfolio that makes people say ‘yes’ to you when you approach them as a marketer.

What is a Marketing Portfolio?

A marketing portfolio is a digital collection of your best work that can assure a potential employer of your capabilities. You can create a dedicated website demonstrating all your previous stints, or you can include the link to web pages of your work.

You can include ad copies, blogs, landing pages, designs, or social channels in your marketing portfolio as proof of work.

Here is Gill Andrews’s marketing portfolio as an example to get inspired. The portfolio is concise and clear, with no room for confusion. It offers a value-based service answering visitors’ what, why, and hows.

Why is it Important to Have a Marketing Portfolio?

To win your clients, you will have to give them a reason to trust you. That’s where a handy marketing portfolio becomes a goldmine. Investing in one will reap great benefits for you along your marketing career journey.

1. Rev Up Your Career

A well-designed marketing portfolio introduces you to the right opportunities. Potential clients can refer to your portfolio to get a glimpse of your working style and reach out to you quickly.

2. Promote Yourself

You can’t walk around with your happy customers promoting your work.

But that shouldn’t stop you from publicizing your success. Client testimonials can fit perfectly in your portfolio to build trust among the audience. You can even leverage social media to boost the reach of your portfolio.

3. Showcase Your Skills

Portfolios are the simplest way to tell your target market about what you have to offer.

What makes it even better is that it’s a visual representation of your skills, making it easy to glance at and digest.

4. Build Your Brand

Tired of chasing clients?

If you want more prominent clients with better returns, creating your brand is the way to go. Once your work has credibility and people can trust you for their work, then high-value clients will reach out to you proactively.

How to Build a Marketing Portfolio (Without prior experience)?

Now comes the million-dollar question of how to build a marketing portfolio, especially if you are just starting out and might not have any sample work to add.

1. Choose an Online Platform

Not just what but how you choose to share the information plays a huge role in getting the right attention.

That’s why before anything else, choose the right platform to engage your audience.

You can build a website through online tools like WordPress or Wix and buy a domain to get started. The biggest advantage of such platforms is that you get ready-made templates, saving time and effort. Whereas a custom domain name makes your portfolio look more professional and polished.

2. Determine a Layout

Your website visitor will take only 10-20 seconds to decide whether they want to stay or leave. It can be too much pressure to catch and hold their attention.

But if you know what you are doing, it’s easy to get past this problem.

Start with decluttering your website. Too much information, too soon, can confuse the audience and make them walk away. Instead, use a simple layout that relays the necessary details without overwhelming them.

Here are some must-haves on your website.

• A name and professional headshot for instant introduction
• A short biography that tells the reader more about you and your motivations
• A business or personal statement to signify what services you offer and how you can help the visitor

• Some sample work– blogs, copywriting, landing pages
• Client reviews or awards to induce trust
• Your contact details with a CTA to close the deal

3. Leverage Pet Projects

If you can follow the structure mentioned above, it’s great. If not, don’t worry. We have got you covered.

It’s not necessary to have impressive client reviews or awards to bag the clients. The main thing is to get your work out in public, irrespective of for whom you have done it.

So, you can fill the gap with your personal projects too. It could be an SEO-optimized blog you are running or a social media channel you started from scratch.

Include the links to those on your website for people to see your skills. Ensure that the blogs are related to your niche or skills. For example– if you specialize in email marketing, write more about it to come across as a subject matter expert.

Also, work with social media channels that are popular and relevant in today’s digital era.

4. Browse Through College Assignments

Even the college assignments which most students dread can be used to add substance to your portfolio.

If you have worked on some exciting projects during your college time, polish them up and include them on your website.

The assignment doesn’t even have to be elaborate. Even small but meaningful work will be just fine. And you can always switch these with better projects you will get along the way.

5. Volunteer For Free Services

It’s understandable if you don’t have any project or assignment to show on the website in the beginning.

You can start by offering free services to clients as a limited-time deal to get the initial momentum. Reaching out to your local non-profit organizations is also a big opportunity to build your customer base.

You can ask these clients for their reviews or referrals instead of money.

If working for free seems like a stretch to you, charge a nominal fee for your services.

Remember that it’s just a temporary tactic to gain clients and credibility. After getting a few projects, you can start with the full charges.

6. Get Your Skills Certified

You can get certifications from verified institutes to assure people that you know what you are doing.

Choose a skill that can be translated to a paying service and enroll yourself in that suitable course. For example- video marketing is a booming skill businesses demand growing on social channels.

You can add the certificate to your portfolio to convey authenticity and trust.

7. Engage With Your Existing Audience

Word-of-mouth is hands down still the best form of marketing.

But you need to do something to convince your audience to root for you.

Instead of hard-selling, shift gears and work your way smoothly into the client’s inner circle.

Build a mailing list and engage with your audience through relevant content. You can do so by sending weekly newsletters. Keep a share option in your emails to grow your contact base.

Reaching out to them on direct messaging platforms like WhatsApp is also an effective way to keep yourself fresh in the client’s mind.

Also, provide a subscribe button on your website and interact with your subscribers through appealing transactional emails.

Treat Your Portfolio Like Business Card

Building a portfolio worth a client’s time can seem like a huge challenge. Fairly so.

But it’s nothing you can’t beat with the correct information and tools. Even if you don’t have too much to add to your portfolio, you can still hold your audience with your presentation. To impress the employer, you can combine your resume and portfolio with a cover letter, written keeping the particular client in mind.

Adopt a conversational marketing style to connect with the audience and make them feel at ease. Research the cost-effective or free tools to boost your marketing efforts.

And most importantly, remember that you won’t get your hands full of opportunities overnight. It will happen eventually, but before that, you must keep learning and unlearning to enhance your services.

Stay consistent with your efforts and keep updating your portfolio with the latest information.

Wouldn’t it be nice if customer data management were easy? Are you longing for a world where your contact’s email, conversion date, and who on your team spoke with them last are readily accessible?

What do you think is the best, i.e. most useful marketing model? Download our free RACE Growth System guide and learn the skills and techniques you need to boost your marketing strategy

You may have noticed we’re fans of using practical models as tools to support marketing strategy development. We believe a clear, simple model gives us a framework to assess how we’re doing things now compared to our competitors and plan growth strategies for the future. They’re also great for communicating the purpose and reason behind a strategy you are pursuing.

But there’s a problem – over the years, the number of marketing frameworks available has increased. Some are academic, based only on theory but have no “real world” credentials. Whereas others have been developed with no consideration of universal marketing strategy and planning fundamentals.

So many marketing models have been developed over the years that it can be overwhelming to know what to use and when. That’s where our RACE Growth System comes in.

Our RACE Growth System is our easy-to-use, easy-to-follow, strategic marketing framework that’s been proven to get results. Our practical, data-driven, marketing framework empowers marketers and business owners to use customer insights and analysis to prioritize marketing strategies for rapid growth.

Which are the most popular marketing models?

Since I’m a digital marketer, I have my own views on the relevance of these, indeed in my books, I have often included them. In fact, most are included in my Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice book.

Our top 12 marketing models

1. The RACE Framework
2. 7 Ps of Marketing
3. USP
4. BCG Matrix
5. Brand Positioning Map
6. Customer Lifetime Value
7. Growth Strategy Matrix
8. Loyalty Ladder
9. PESTLE
10. Porter’s 5 Forces
11. Segmentation Targeting Positioning
12. SOSTAC

1. The RACE Framework

Our RACE Framework is a popular marketing structure framework for Startups, SMEs, and international corporations, since it can scale up or down according to your short-term and long-term objectives.

Marketers love using RACE to structure their marketing strategies, since the framework guides marketers through each stage of planning, reaching, acting, converting, and engaging.

Smart Insights Free Members can also download an editable version of our popular RACE Growth System, a simple structure to put your plans into place using our Opportunity > Strategy > Action model to identify marketing activities for growth at each stage of the funnel.

2. 7 Ps of Marketing

The 7P’s of the Marketing mix model are Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process, and Physical evidence – these elements of the marketing mix form the core tactical components of a marketing plan.

I think it’s right this is at the start of the list since it’s still widely used and I think is a simple way to think through how a company markets its products. A good model to explain marketing strategy to someone who isn’t a marketer. But it suffers from a push mentality completely out-of-keeping with modern digital marketing approaches of listening to and engaging customers, such as through social media marketing.

3. USP

Unique Selling Proposition is the concept that brands should make it clear to potential buyers why they are different and better than the competition.

This is a simple concept and an essential message to communicate online since the core brand message often isn’t clear. Digital websites need to define their digital value proposition well.

4. Boston Consulting Group Matrix

This well-known, essential MBA model categorizes products offered by a business in a portfolio based on their performance rating them as Stars, Cash Cows, Dogs, and Question Marks as below.

• 1. Dogs: These are products with low growth or market share.
• 2. Question marks or Problem Child: Products in high growth markets with low market share.
• 3. Stars: Products in high-growth markets with high market share.
• 4. Cash cows: Products in low growth markets with high market share

I find this isn’t so applicable in the online marketing world for small and medium businesses – it’s more of a Big Business corporate strategy model.

See Annmarie’s post on the BCG Matrix model for more details.

5. Brand positioning map

This model allows marketers to visualize a brand’s relative position to competitors in the marketplace by plotting consumer perceptions of the brand and competitor brands against the attributes that drive purchase.

This is a great concept for understanding how customers see a brand. I can’t recall many descriptions of this being applied online. I have seen it used as part of user-testing though in comparing different websites?

The creation of an engaging online brand is so important to success in digital marketing, that’s why we created our brand positioning template for Business Members.

6. Customer Lifetime Value marketing models

Customer Lifetime Value is the concept used to assess what a customer is worth, based on the present value of future revenue attributed to a customer’s relationship with a product.

A different class of models to others, this is more of calculation model – covered in Chapter 6 of my Internet Marketing Book. CLV is mainly important online for transactional sites and certainly investment decisions like allowable cost per acquisition (CPA) must be taken with future customer purchases and attrition rates considered.

7. Growth strategy matrix

The Ansoff model is a matrix that can be used to identify alternative growth strategies by looking at present and potential products in current and future markets. The four growth strategies are market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification.

Ansoff’s model dates back to the 1960s, but I still cover it in the books to show how companies should “think out of the box” with new opportunities for their digital strategies by considering new opportunities for market and product development rather than simply market penetration which misses the opportunities of digital marketing for me.

8. Loyalty ladder marketing models

Loyalty models show the steps a person takes before becoming loyal to a brand as they move through the stages of prospect, customer, client, supporter, and advocate. There are a number of different loyalty models, taking slightly different forms, but the key element of loyalty ladders is the demonstration of the value of engaging and retaining current customers.

Loyalty models are useful as a way of thinking through the opportunities to generate lifetime value.

Loyalty ladders are due credit for their focus on the customer journey before and after their first purchase. Our customer lifecycle model charts the customer experience across each stage of RACE: Reach > Act > Convert > Engage.

As you can see, engagement activity helps move lapsed customers back through the cycle to repeat purchases.

If you’re looking to perfect your customers’ experiences of your brand, our RACE Growth System has a step-by-step checklist to help you plan, manage, and optimize the right marketing activities to engage, convert and reach new customers.

Through RACE, you’ll set goals, prioritize strategies, and optimize the marketing models and techniques you need to achieve growth. Download your free guide today and start seeing results in less than 90 days.

9. PESTLE

As an extension of the traditional PEST model, this analysis framework is used to assess the impact of macro-environmental factors on a product or brand – political, economical, social, technological, legal, and economic.

TBH PESTLE/PEST/DEEPLIST make me groan – to me they’re a text book approach which is far removed from improving results. I find students tend to review these in-depth at the expense of creating innovative strategies.

However, PESTLE is still widely taught and Annmarie Hanlon is a fan so to explain it’s value to me and others she has this in-depth post on how to use the PEST or PESTLE model.

10. Porter’s Five Forces

The Five forces in Porter’s model are Rivalry, Supplier power, Threat of substitutes, Buyer power, and Barriers to entry and are used to analyze the industry context in which the organization operates.

Yes this one features in my books and I reference a classic 2001 paper by Porter on applying the Five Forces to the Internet. But, I personally think it has limited practical value – yes we know customers have more bargaining power online. So what?! I also think it under-represents the power of intermediaries like comparison sites and publishers in the online world.

11. Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning

This three-stage STP process involves analyzing which distinct customer groups exist and which segment the product best suits before implementing the communications strategy tailored for the chosen target group.

As a model which is focused on delivering relevant products, services and communications to the customer and so generating value for an organisation, this is essential for every marketer to understand and apply in practice.

12. PR Smith’s SOSTAC® model

This acronym stands for Situation, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Actions, Control and is a framework used when creating marketing plans.

I’m a big fan of using PR Smith’s SOSTAC® model as a way of planning and implementing strategies. It features in all my books and I know Paul Smith, who created it well – he’s my co-author on Emarketing Excellence.

Marketing models and references

Our RACE Growth System was created by Dr. Dave Chaffey and Stuart Miller the co-founders of Smart Insights.

This brand-new resource responds to the real marketing challenges our members are facing today, and provides Free Members with tools and advice to rapidly create a 90-day marketing plan. Anybody can join Smart Insights as a Free Member, you’ll get access to the RACE Growth System plus other recommended free guides and templates to upskill your marketing.

PR Smith (2011) The SOSTAC ®  Guide – to writing the perfect plan  by PR Smith (2011),  published by www.prsmith.org and available at Amazon.

PR Smith (2020) SOSTAC® Guide to your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan, Amazon.

Finally, I wanted to thank the Chartered Institute of Marketing who prompted the idea for this post when they were celebrating their centenary and they ran voting around different models.  It also prompted the idea for a free guide to help explain the value of models for planning.

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

I often say knowing your customers well is a marketer’s superpower. To articulate how well you know your customer requires the development of buyer personas, which take a deep dive into the interests and traits of your target audience. To get started, identify whom you will market to.

Buyer personas touch on everything you do, from optimizing the functionality of your website to creating a product design to developing creative concepts, appropriately casting your ads, and anything in between – well-written personas will guide you through it all.

If you’re curious about how to create them, look no further. I’ll cover the ins and outs of what they are, as well as some tips and tricks for developing them in a DIY format.

Buyer personas are the foundation of all things marketing

Let’s start from the top. Buyer personas guide marketing campaigns, messaging development, and content creation. Building personas is a typical part of the web or user experience (UX) customer journey design in the digital world. Many teams utilize buyer personas. Therefore, many elements should be included.

I’ve discovered that a persona is also essential for content planning, especially global content planning. Content is never one-size-fits-all, so you need to be able to predict what will interest the buyers you’re hoping to attract.

Marketers, copywriters, designers, and even media planners need to have a solid handle on the purpose of what they’re building and, thus, must possess a strong understanding of the target customers it will attract and serve. This is where personas come in especially handy.

What I’ve noticed working with different clients is that a typical buyer persona won’t be able to serve every team’s needs. So, I often encourage my clients to take buyer personas that corporate has created and add additional layers of details as they see fit per the marketing function they work on.

Here is a great example: copywriters often ponder which words they should choose to resonate with their target audience.

The word “awesome” is more consumer-centric, yet a similar word, such as “superior,” is more appropriate for business professionals. Copywriters and web designers can take the high-level buyer persona and incorporate more details through AB testing to help agencies and freelancers to design creative concepts and write customer-centric copy.

A well-developed persona provides insight and direction for wording, images, content, tone, and design. For example, what matters to a Gen Z male living in an urban environment will likely differ immensely from a female Baby Boomer living in a rural area.

It’s vital to consider these differences, even if they are nuanced, to zero in on potential buyers’ specific wants and needs. Then, you can name your personas to reflect their traits and give them a bit more of a personal touch and three-dimensional feel.

There are plenty of templates you can find online. Here is my one-pager template.

Is it possible to create a global persona? The answer is yes, but it requires some work

Depending on your industry (be it manufacturing, healthcare, skincare, banking, or anything in between) and products (homogenous or highly localized across regions), it may require the development of several personas to satisfy different geographies’ needs based on audience segmentation.

The general rule of thumb: less persona is more.

To create a global persona, focus on commonalities in your audiences across regions

It’s common to include demographics such as age group, gender, and other factors, but things become even more nuanced when examining similar demographics around the globe.

For example, a cishet male 20-year-old living in Beijing may not listen to the same music as a cishet male 20-year-old who lives in Munich. However, their love of music and the constant use of a headset are common threads.

Another example is that IT managers in Brazil and Russia may have different network infrastructures but are likely equally concerned about security threats.

Zoom in on common challenges, pain points, needs, and desires that people share and pair that with the products and services you offer. Then, you can find your throughline to connect the dots.

Again, you may need to create several personas to serve different regions, so be very rigorous about it. Communicate with your geography or country managers to determine if it’s necessary to develop geography or country-specific buyer personas.

Do I need to market to every persona we created?

The answer is NO. Many of my clients have 15-25 personas, but their marketing divisions have finite resources and budgets. Therefore, there is no way that they can market to all personas in all countries and be effective.

You need to prioritize!

The way to prioritize is based on projected revenue by region, future growth, and even on-the-ground marketing headcount. First, you must determine how you will allocate your budget by personas and regions. In a corporate setting, this usually plays out during extensive discussions between sales, corporate marketing, and marketing; sometimes, product teams are involved as well.

To scale content across regions, it’s crucial to have a global persona to rally headquarters and geographic teams; that way, they have a baseline understanding of how to target their ideal customers. I often find that if headquarters and geographies can’t agree on the target audience, it’s almost impossible to move on to the next level of planning and execution.

Large enterprises have dedicated marketing research departments that work closely with research agencies to conduct quantitative and qualitative research from multiple countries to create one or several global personas. However, small and medium companies don’t typically have a budget to create a formal global persona. That’s OK. Suppose no one in your marketing organization owns the persona creation or discussion. In that case, you can start one yourself by talking to your sales representatives and conducting phone interviews with customers in multiple countries.

Create an informal slide or document with your findings to include:

• Demographics
• Behavioral attributes
• Target audience budget range
• Preferred devices
• Peers and influencers
• Communications preferences
• Content format preferences
• Job description
• Keyword search on pain points

It seems like a lot, but don’t stress out; you don’t necessarily need to incorporate all the above criteria. Instead, tailor your areas of investigation as you see fit, but make sure you conduct a thorough analysis for the best results.

For global content planning, at a minimal level it’s essential to dive into these four areas:

• Job description
• Pain points, challenges, needs, and desires
• Communications preferences
• Content format preferences

Essentially, what you need to know about your audience is: what are their challenges, needs, and desires, as well as where they go to find content.

Flesh out the persona as much as possible and share it with key stakeholders. It’s OK to create an informal persona and validate that with key relevant stakeholders. This persona will serve as your basis for content planning and agency briefings.

A persona is a living, breathing document. The way your persona prefers and consumes content will change over time. Think about how people consumed content before smartphones and how much the landscape has changed. Device usage and technology play important roles that should be reflected in your persona description. Ultimately, that insight will help build your content planning and creation, especially mobile phone consumption content. You need to be cognizant of formats, images, font sizes, and lengths when it comes to optimal formatting on devices.

Please bear in mind that a persona is a compass, not a panacea:

• It’s a tool to help you and your team understand your audience
• It will help guide editorial and content planning
• It’s a living document that will change and evolve over time
• It can be created formally or informally and can be top-down or bottom-up driven

A good persona provides insights into your audience’s attitudes, purchasing behavior, thought processes, challenges, and desires. In addition, it gives you guidance on what content to create and where to syndicate it.

Do you already have a persona for your content or marketing effort? If so, do they have a name(s)? I always get a kick out of hearing what people choose to call their personas, so don’t hesitate to share. And if I can help clarify any of the points above, please reach out; I’m happy to answer your questions.

Confused About ICP and Buyer Persona? Here’s A Crash Course

The Myth of the Empowered Buyer

It’s Time To Crush Your Marketing Campaign Plan

How to Create Scalable Global Content Marketing Strategy: A Guide for B2B Marketers (+ Templates)

Two Ways to Get a Clear Vision Statement From Your Management

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn