It’s a thrilling journey starting a new career in digital marketing, but one challenge that many beginners face is the “I have no experience so I can’t get a job!” excuse.
You don’t need years of work experience to build a killer digital marketing portfolio! You can create your own projects to showcase your skills and give employers concrete evidence that you know digital marketing works.
Your portfolio basically screams, “I may not have a title, but I get things done.”
What is a Digital Marketing Portfolio?
A digital marketing portfolio is a collection of your work that demonstrates your digital marketing abilities. These projects can include:
- SEO projects
- Social media posts
- Blog articles
- Email campaigns
- Ad campaigns
- Keyword research
- Website analysis
And a range of other work related to digital marketing.
You don’t necessarily need an actual client or employee to do so, but you do need to do some work that represents how you work with digital marketing principles.
For example, perhaps you could create a sample SEO project where you improve the visibility of a made-up clothing brand on Google.
1. Pick Which Digital Marketing Skills You Know Best
Before you go about creating a full portfolio, first consider what digital marketing skills you want to use and demonstrate. You can still get hired as a beginner by focusing on a couple in the areas you are most comfortable with:
- SEO
- Content writing
- Social media marketing
- Keyword research
- Email marketing
- Google Ads
- Canva design
- Basic analytics
- Content strategy
Don’t feel like you need to include all of the skills that you have mastered – one that works on all of your projects is much better than ten that show unfinished work.
2. Design Your Own Website or Blog
Building your own website or blog is a great way to start learning on the fly in the digital marketing world.
Think of a topic you are passionate about that’s worth an ongoing article series, such as tech gadgets, travel adventures, fitness, learning, food, or money. Post articles and build up your website and knowledge about your subject with SEO strategies.
This can show employers:
How you would research keywords.
How you would write optimized content for your website.
How to use proper page title & meta descriptions.
How to structure website content to best inform the user.
How to track website performance.
All this is a good example of how you can do so without an established brand name behind you.
3. Create Samples for SEO Projects
You can build SEO projects for example clients without necessarily having one. The best way to do this is by picking a business idea and building a basic SEO strategy around it using keyword research.
For example, imagine that you were to showcase how to promote a new neighborhood bakery. In this scenario, you’d search up the keywords such as ‘bakery near me’ or ‘birthday cakes in [cityname]’ then write about how you would use those keywords on the website and in blog posts. You can then include these examples and potential results in your portfolio.
4. Try Making a Social Media Campaign
Social media is another simple way you can create a digital marketing portfolio piece. You can use any fictitious brand or your own personal brand, then develop seven or thirty days of posts for that brand.
Make sure to include:
- The plan or idea of the post
- Captions & hashtags
- Images and or designs
- The target audience
- Content goals
And the schedule for when posts would go live.
Many free design software such as canva can help you create good results to use within the social media plan. You’ll show employers that you are able to grasp both creativity and strategic thinking for marketing, which are both vital components for any digital marketer.
5. Write SEO-friendly blog posts
Content writing is a major component within the digital marketing universe, and you may need to include 3-5 engaging blog posts within your portfolio.
When writing blog articles for your portfolio, make sure you use the relevant keywords and topics that someone searching for a professional will be looking for related to your desired career. For each blog post you write, be sure that you demonstrate knowledge with search intent, keyword selection, good formatting, on-page linking and the ability to clearly transmit information with good readability.
Make sure not to just simply write generic content, in order to take part in the creation of it, make sure it conveys the real purpose of what it should accomplish.
6. Conduct Small Personal Projects
You can use some smaller personal projects as portfolio pieces. For instance, set up an Instagram profile, a YouTube channel, a small personal blog, or an e-shop. Follow through by trying to promote them as best you can and keep track of every bit of the progress you have in different key digital marketing metrics (website visits, social media shares, keywords ranks, email sign ups etc.) Even though these results may be small, they can present valuable insight to employers as they’ll want to know whether you are able to measure results and use them for improvement.
7. Display Your Workings Not Just Your Results
Too many beginners in digital marketing forget to present their thought process and simply display the end result of a completed piece of work. Instead, an explanation of how a finished product was created is key to showing you can handle the entire digital marketing process effectively.
For every digital marketing project shown, try to explain how you reached its goal using its various steps:
- Goal
- Research
- Strategy
- Action
- Results
- Lessons
The purpose of the work can also be stated as something like “expected result” if real results haven’t been documented yet. This displays your understanding and thought process to any employer who may look at it.
8. Keep Your Portfolio Streamlined and Professional
While expensive or complex design is absolutely not necessary for a digital marketing portfolio, simplicity and professionalism is.
You could use an online tool, a website template, or even an online document to compile everything together. A short description, skills page, portfolio pieces (with their respective descriptions), contact form and other related work should then be organized and easily accessible.
Spelling errors or broken links should be avoided at all costs. Your portfolio doesn’t have to represent every job and task you have done, it has to demonstrate how valuable your current work is.
Final Thoughts
It is in no way impossible to make a digital marketing portfolio that demonstrates your skills even if you do not have professional work experience. All you have to do is continue to start small, do more work and practice it regularly, document everything you learn and eventually present these findings and samples in an effective portfolio for others to see.
SEO projects, social media campaign creation, blog posts, personal websites, and result analysis – these are all capable of proving your capabilities in the field even if they aren’t tied to a real employment opportunity.
Do remember, every successful digital marketer began somewhere.
Therefore, stop waiting for someone to hand you experience, take it yourself and use what you acquire to create a portfolio with tangible results and begin that journey as a digital marketing professional.