A digital marketer is often torn between ‘Should I promote my work?’ or ‘ Should I let my work promote my expertise?’
If these questions also trouble you, here’s what you can do. Combine both approaches by creating a comprehensive digital marketing portfolio.
A digital marketing portfolio promotes your services without selling them to your prospects hard. A marketing portfolio includes your best work, value proposition, results, and what your clients say about you.
Consider the marketing portfolio your one-stop (reusable) resource that showcases your expertise to the target audience.
This article walks you through some of the best marketing portfolio examples and what you can replicate from them.
What is a Marketing Portfolio?
A marketing portfolio compiles a marketing professional’s (consultant, independent contractor, agency, or job seeker) past work, marketing skills, and achievements to help them attract valuable prospects and land exceptional opportunities.
Here’s what a typical marketing portfolio should look like:
Content writer and social media marketing expert Sarah McCain’s portfolio (her site) showcases everything potential clients would look for, including her skills, portfolio, brands she’s worked with, and client testimonials. The homepage features all these details, and each section has a separate landing.
There’s no hard-and-fast rule to building your marketing portfolio. To break free of the clutter, you can experiment with how you showcase your skills, work samples, services, and results you’ve achieved for clients.
Importance of a Marketing Portfolio
The portfolio website gives a potential client an in-depth view of your expertise and solidifies their trust.
Focuses on your niche-focused experience
Suppose you are a social media marketer and add that information to your portfolio. But is that sufficient information for a prospect to assess your experience?
Not really.
Your prospects want to know:
- Which social media channel are you most confident about?
- What kind of posts do you create?
- Are you a copywriter, a graphic designer, or both?
- What kind of metrics do you track?
- What kind of results have you achieved in your past projects?
Answering these questions shows prospective clients whether you are an expert in a particular social media platform or an all-rounder. This information convinces them of your expertise as opposed to a generic portfolio.
Builds trust with case studies and social proof
It is hard to believe when you make a simple claim of helping the ABC brand grow organic traffic by 25% in 6 months.
But, if you explain in detail how your content strategy helped the client increase their organic impressions and traffic by 25% and back it up with a client testimonial and anecdotes of working with you, your prospective client will trust you.
A marketing portfolio breaks down your achievements through case studies loaded with social proof and adds more credibility to your marketing expertise.
Helps you stand out from a large talent pool
If you are seeking a job, submitting your resume is not enough. Hiring managers receive a pile of resumes every day. Your resume should be linked with your marketing portfolio to stand out from this crowd of talent. Show tangible evidence to back your skills and work experience; a marketing portfolio helps you do that.
Benefits of a Marketing Portfolio
Briefly, a marketing portfolio helps you to:
- Showcase what you do best and build trust
- Gives an idea of who you are and what your journey has been like
- It helps potential clients or hiring managers to assess your skills better and understand what kind of budget they should allocate based on your expertise
Elements of a Marketing Portfolio
As a marketer, consider highlighting two core elements in your portfolio—digital marketing and social media marketing.
Digital Marketing
A digital marketing professional’s standard services are Search Engine Optimization (SEO), content marketing, Pay-per-Click Marketing (PPC), and email marketing.
Accordingly, your digital marketing portfolio should include the following elements to showcase your expertise:
- SEO: An SEO portfolio website must include services like keyword research, on-page/off-page SEO achievements, innovative SEO strategies previously implemented, and relevant results (leads, traffic, conversion, etc.)
- Content marketing: A content marketing portfolio website should include content writing, strategy, optimization, types of content campaigns and their executions, and best writing samples published on relevant websites
- PPC: A PPC portfolio website should have a detailed breakdown of the types of accounts handled, budgeting plans, and number of leads generated via campaign management and spending, ad copywriting, and creative samples
- Email marketing: Ensure your email marketing portfolio page includes email copies for target industries, the number of calls booked from email campaigns in a particular time frame, and email analytics like open rate and engagement rate
Social media marketing
The social media portfolio should have platform-based segregation, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media links, and what is included in these services.
- LinkedIn: Past work samples related to content creation, strategy, LinkedIn links to engaging posts, engagement, results generated for personal brand and company brand, and if design is included in your package
- Twitter: Showcase work samples related to copywriting, strategy, and engagement, along with relevant results like leads, impressions, and clicks
- Instagram: Best samples of reels, creative designs, captions, and the results achieved for individuals and brands
If you’re a generalist social media marketer, in addition to all the above samples, include social media ads and the results they generated for the brand.
Importance of Web design in the Marketing portfolio
Traditionally, digital and social strategists use Google Drive or a PDF to showcase their best work. This doesn’t create a lasting impression from the prospect’s standpoint and fails to build immediate interest because portfolios are messy and confusing.
By creating a simple website marketing portfolio:
- Set a lasting first impression as a portfolio website includes your best work; it showcases your eye for details, how aesthetically you present your work, and a cleaner representation of your brand
- With a portfolio website, you have the opportunity to generate leads with organic and paid marketing initiatives such as SEO, blogs, and paid advertising to reach your target audiences
- Add trust-building elements to your web design, like case studies and testimonials from your happy clients on your portfolio page, to win more projects
- Add a meeting scheduler to your portfolio website to encourage potential clients to book calls frictionlessly via the website
Including a marketing strategy in a digital marketing portfolio
As an online or social media marketer, your strategy differentiates you from the crowd. But should you add strategy elements to strengthen your digital marketing portfolio?
Sure, strategies differ client-wise and depend on goals, current situation, industry, and market size. We often find digital marketers in a dilemma about whether they should include strategies in a marketing portfolio.
You should, but briefly. When writing a case study, explain the challenges that particular client faced, how you approached them, and the strategy you adopted to solve their pain points.
This way, a prospect will better understand your expertise and ability to develop strategies for specific use cases and decide if your approach fits their requirements.
Importance of search engine optimization and page layout
Both search engine optimization and page layout matter in a digital marketing portfolio.
If you follow an audience-centric SEO strategy for your portfolio website, publish relevant, well-researched content regularly, and focus on on-page and off-page SEO best practices.
This helps you increase your website traffic from relevant prospects, have more potential customers discover your services organically, and win more projects. In short, it is a consistent source of lead generation.
Pay equal attention to your portfolio page layout. Make it compelling by adding your brand colors, a uniform font, and CTAs, breaking down the sections with dividers, and making the navigation across the full-service design easier.
Marketing Portfolio Examples
Let’s look at some examples of digital marketing portfolios for more inspiration.
1. Hive Creative Group
Hive Creative Group, a Virginia-based marketing agency, stands out instantly for its interactive portfolio and authenticity.
Why we like this portfolio
- The interactive, animated elements and icons make this marketing portfolio highly responsive
- This digital marketing portfolio is an excellent compilation of social proof and one of the key examples of authenticity. We love how they showcase client logos and introduce the viewers to their team members
- The simple navigation helps you locate their contact details quickly through a dedicated page
2. Jordyn Brenner
Jordyn Brenner is the Senior Art Director at Amazon Studios. Her portfolio instantly convinces you she’s the mind behind the artwork of all our favorite Amazon Prime shows, including The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Homecoming.
Why we like this portfolio
- While there are fewer sections in this digital marketing portfolio, we love how it focuses on showcasing Jordyn’s best works and does that beautifully
- The grid style helps in executing the image-led case study framework with high-quality images
- The ‘About’ section does a great job of narrating Jordyn’s story in the most precise way possible
3. Alaina Thomas
Alaina Thomas’s portfolio website is one of the most compact digital marketing portfolios we have encountered.
Merging all in the services portfolio can get messy if you offer all digital marketing services. We added this example to show you how to make the design cleaner and the marketing portfolio easy to understand.
Why we like this portfolio
- Alaina provides content marketing and social media services. She has different marketing portfolios for each service to help the reader skim through the offerings and understand her expertise
- The minimalistic digital marketing portfolio layout catches our attention. The portfolio accommodates different sections like services, best works, and a dedicated page for contact details without going overboard and uses color contrast to separate them
4. Michael Antalok
Michael Antalok’s digital marketing portfolio is dark-themed and responsive. With each scroll, you come across a new case study, which opens in separate pages.
Why we like this portfolio
- Michael goes by the saying ‘more the merrier,’ and his portfolio simplifies decision-making for prospects as it is easy to find relevant use cases
- The quotes catch your attention. For example, the hero section says, ‘Good design is good business.’ With each scroll, he keeps adding more quotes to bring forward the significance of his services
5. Kate Dunham
Kate Dunham’s digital marketing portfolio is simple and is segregated for her two groups of target audiences—freelancers and organizations. This means less confusion and helps the reader find the necessary information faster.
Why we like this portfolio
- You learn much about the marketer in terms of who she is as a person, her goals as a marketing professional, and what it’s like to work with her. This personal touch humanizes the experience and builds an instant connection with the reader
- Kate, the marketer, talks about how she gives back to the community and the causes she cares about. She gives you one more reason to start a conversation with her
6. 345 Marketing
The next name in our list of marketing portfolio examples belongs to a branding and marketing agency called 345. As odd as the name might sound, their marketing portfolio is solid, with a good balance of stories, services, and work samples.
Why we like this portfolio
- This design and marketing agency dedicates a section of its digital marketing portfolio to telling the brand’s story, which resonates with the reader
- They have a ‘Story Time’ section that engagingly showcases their expertise with crisp takeaways at the end of each story
7. Denise Rick
Denise Rick is a content and branding professional serving multiple industries. We love how she has used colors to differentiate different portfolio sections.
Why we like this portfolio
- The uniqueness of her portfolio is that it gives an overview of all her projects and also takes you to her three different client-specific pages to read a detailed case study
- Each image, GIF, and reel in her best works section has a context. She explains the purpose of the creatives instead of just leaving the prospects to figure it all out
8. Jaxon Curtis
Jaxton Curtis is a LinkedIn marketer who writes social media posts for sports brands. This becomes apparent when you look at his portfolio, even though no services section exists.
Why we like this portfolio
- The portfolio is a grid of some of Jaxton’s most successful LinkedIn posts. For the social media posts, he adds the impressions, inviting the visitors to click on them
- The author, Jaxton, uses the show-don’t-tell approach and prioritizes examples over lengthy text
9. McMath Creative
The next digital marketing portfolio on our list belongs to a content and marketing agency called McMath Creative. The portfolio’s simplistic design stands out.
Why we like this portfolio
- They have three dedicated pages for three service areas—branding, management, and content. On each page, you’ll find details about their services and customer logos
- There’s an overview page called ‘All Things Branding & Marketing,’ which works as a portfolio management page. You will find a sneak peek into all of their designs in one place
10. Kathryn Hall
Kathryn Hall, a freelance writer, showcases all her work samples, segregating them according to service areas in her marketing portfolio website.
Why we like this portfolio
- The portfolio gives a quick overview of Kathryn’s diverse writing skills
- Her biography page details her journey and has a testimonial to add credibility
How do you create a marketing portfolio in ClickUp?
If you want to create your first marketing portfolio, here’s how to start.
- Pick a website builder (Webflow, WordPress, or Wiz) to host your portfolio
- Add content and visuals to showcase your offerings
Next, use portfolio management software like ClickUp to plan your portfolio development tasks.
- Get started with the ClickUp Portfolio Management Template to build your digital marketing portfolio from scratch and showcase your best work, and use list views to track multiple marketing portfolios based on various digital marketing services like SEO and PPC in one place
- Create a standard operating procedure for each project using SOPs
- Use the ‘Getting Started Guide View’ feature to set up your portfolio management process and store reference guides to easily access required resources
- Once you start working with the client, use ClickUp as your project management tool to streamline your standard operating procedures, collaborate with the client’s team members, and streamline your communication with stakeholders.
- Keep tracking the project’s progress on the ClickUp Dashboards. As you keep changing status, it will give you an idea of whether the project is moving as expected or if there are any roadblocks
- Use ClickUp for Marketing Teams to plan and execute your marketing programs—from multichannel marketing campaigns to successful rebranding and campaign management
A Strong Marketing Portfolio is the First Step to Showcasing your Expertise in the Industry
As a digital marketer, you create content, perform SEO, market social media, and engage in paid marketing. Your marketing portfolio compiles and categorizes all these services narrate your professional and personal journey, builds trust with social proof, and helps you land more projects.
Whether you are building your portfolio as a marketing consultant or collaborating with clients, ClickUp helps you at every stage of the project lifecycle.
Start by using ClickUp to create an attention-grabbing and high-converting portfolio. As you start working on marketing projects, leverage ClickUp’s project management tool to help you manage your freelance and consulting digital marketing projects end-to-end.
- Centralize your project details on ClickUp Docs
- Use ClickUp Whiteboard to ideate and plan your marketing campaigns
- ClickUp Brain serves as your creative brainstorming partner, helping you automate time-consuming tasks such as writing progress reports and summarizing meeting notes
- Set timelines, assign tasks to the team, add comments, set priorities, and visualize the project’s progress over ClickUp Dashboard. Get started with ClickUp’s Marketing Campaign Dashboard!
- Lastly, get rid of scattered conversations by bringing the team communication under one roof with ClickUp Chat—to coordinate with team members in real-time, share updates, and share project details with the organization
Sign up on ClickUp for free to create high-converting marketing portfolios.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What does a marketing portfolio include?
A marketing portfolio includes your past works, case studies, approach, services, and a contact page.
What should be included in a content marketing portfolio?
The must-haves in a content marketing portfolio website are top-ranking articles, case studies, relevant content strategies, contact pages, and client testimonials.