Marketing Officer

The Internet has given customers a voice but has also given rise to self-entitled griping. With this question, the interviewer is trying to ascertain how you handle bad press. First of all, you need to show that you’re comfortable with negative feedback and know how to turn it into positive branding.

For instance, you could say that as a representative of the brand, you would use the feedback as an opportunity to address the customer respectfully. You would also assure them that the brand wants to make the customer happy and discuss how to accomplish that goal best.

This is a question where the research you’ve done in advance of your interview will really pay off. You should be able to get a good idea of the company’s products, services, and target market from looking at their website, social media feeds, and recent news releases.

From my research, I understand that your target market is primarily young females. I can tell from your social media feeds and website that you’re really focused on offering them a unique shopping experience and that you have some great influencers on Instagram.

As a social media marketing manager, interviewers will expect you to be familiar with all major social media channels. If you have experience with more obscure platforms, this is the time to highlight those as well.

The potential hire's answer will show their capabilities and experience.

Your ability to evaluate a situation, problem or opportunity and understand the action that needs to be taken is key to success as a marketing manager. Gaining a clear perspective is necessary before deciding on the focus of your innovation.

Taking into consideration the available resources and how they can be best used is important in determining the best course of action. Your ability to capitalize on the situation should be highlighted.

This question closely relates to behavioral interview questions that explore your creativity and persuasiveness

This is the marketing question equivalent to ‘what is your greatest weakness?’ The hiring panel wants a candidate that knows they have flaws but is prepared to take responsibility for their failures and shows a desire to learn from past errors.

First of all, don’t be conceited and claim you’ve never had a failed campaign. Even if this is the case, there is certainly a project that wasn’t as big a success as you had hoped. In any case, explain what you believe caused the problem and focus on how you learned from the campaign. Above all, do NOT directly blame anyone else!

Focus on your ability to co-ordinate and delegate activities in an efficient and practical way. Detail how you defined and divided project roles and responsibilities, kept personality clashes and conflict to a minimum and monitored and fed back to the project team.

The marketing brief can be viewed as a planning tool for designing and implementing a marketing program or project. Writing a brief is about clarifying the outcomes of the campaign or project and providing focus on what needs to be achieved.

Common elements include marketing objectives, primary audience and target market, attitudes and behavior of the target market, influencing the target market's behavior and the key message of the initiative.

In answering this marketing manager interview question focus on how detailed and specific the brief was and the research it was based on.

Listen carefully. The potential hire needs to show the ability to change this negative into a positive.

Be specific when answering questions about your accomplishments with other companies. By simply stating, “I ran several online marketing campaigns” does not adequately show what you can do for the company.

A more appropriate answer would be: “I started a social media campaign that used targeted advertising systems to market the company’s services to youth in North America.” In order to elaborate - this will further project your knowledge of different campaigns - use numbers that support the project such as, “Within three financial quarters, sales increased by 427% and brand recognition vastly improved by 10% within the target demographic.”

To start off, I would determine the launch date and work backward to establish a schedule and timeline. I would look at what resources and people the launch needs to be successful and establish a project team that would meet regularly throughout the launch process.

This is a tough question because the sales sector is outside of your comfort zone. Whatever you do, don’t say that selling would not be a good use of your abilities because it makes you seem arrogant, and also that you’re not a team player. Instead, emphasise that you would learn everything possible and try to bring that knowledge to the table. This shows that you are prepared to sacrifice for the team and also displays an enviable work ethic.

☛ Are you familiar with SEO best practices? What are some common SEO mistakes in digital content production?

☛ How do you structure a marketing budget?

☛ What marketing software (e.g. CRM) do you use? What other productivity tools do you use, and why?

☛ What is your experience with paid advertising, like PPC or sponsored content campaigns?

☛ Have you used performance appraisal methods? Which is the most effective and why?

☛ Who do you think is our biggest competitor? What differentiates our companies?

☛ Describe your experience with mobile marketing.

☛ What metrics would you use to understand why a campaign failed? How would you use those findings to inform your next campaign?

☛ What social media channels would you choose to increase our brand awareness?

☛ If senior executives (or the Marketing Director) don’t approve of your new campaign idea, how would you persuade them to get onboard?

☛ We are launching a new product in [X] months. What offline marketing activities would you pursue to boost the product’s success?

☛ Describe a time when you worked with a team to create a campaign on a tight budget. What did you have to prioritize?

☛ Describe a time when you gave constructive feedback to a team member. How do you deliver negative feedback?

☛ What’s the most effective campaign you’ve run so far? What made it successful? What was your role in the campaign?

☛ Describe an integrated marketing campaign you recently worked on. What channels did you use and why?

☛ Have you ever faced a conflict of interest on a team project? If so, how did you handle it?

Key marketing manager competencies that this question explores include accurate research and analytical skills, the ability to develop realistic and workable objectives and the ability to initiate and monitor strategies and activities that support these objectives.

Efficient utilization of resources reflects sound judgment, planning and organizational skills. Use this question as an opportunity to highlight your strengths as a marketing manager.

The company is exploring your ability to influence and persevere.

Highlight your ability to:

☛ connect with the customer

☛ to identify the customer's real needs

☛ to persuade the customer that your product can satisfy these needs

Creativity can manifest in many different ways. For guidance on answering interview questions about your ability to come up with new ideas and solutions go to behavioral interview answers