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A marketing portfolio is a collection of marketing work that shows your skills and builds your professional brand, whether you’re a freelancer or a 9 to 5 employee. Having a compelling, easy-to-find portfolio to showcase your work and client reviews can build your authority as a marketer and open new work opportunities.
Creating a digital marketing portfolio takes a little time, but with a good website builder and an idea of the work examples you want to share, you’re well on your way to a finished site.
1. Decide on your website goals
Setting goals for your site is about deciding what you ultimately hope someone will do after visiting your online portfolio. A digital marketing portfolio is designed to showcase your expertise and past marketing campaigns to potential clients or employers. But knowing who you’re trying to attract will help you make decisions about your website design more quickly.
A freelance marketer, for example, will want to attract potential clients and lead them to contact them for work. Maybe they want to target independently owned businesses instead of larger companies. Their design should highlight how their marketing skills can support this type of business and include a custom contact form to help them vet new leads.
Learn more about setting your website goals
2. Choose a template that fits your work
Website templates are pre-designed layouts that you can customize to fit your needs. Even though templates are fully customizable, choosing one that’s already set up for the type of projects you want to share can save you setup time.
Remember, a portfolio website isn’t just about what you’ve done, but how you created the final product and its successes. If you’re trying to show off a design portfolio, you’ll want something that puts the visuals front and center. A copywriter or content marketer will probably want something text-forward with clear categories.
On Squarespace, you can also design a custom website template with Squarespace Blueprint AI. The design system asks you a few questions and you choose only the pages you need to get started. Once you’re finished, you can use Squarespace AI to help draft some of the copy for your different template pages.
Decide which template experience is best for you
What to include in your portfolio website
Your website pages are your opportunity to market yourself. Think about the story you want to tell your visitors and what you can share to support that story. On top of your best work, highlight achievements or key business results you supported.
Every digital marketing portfolio should have at least four pages:
Homepage
Portfolio page
About page
Contact page
Depending on your goals and work examples, you can add other tools and pages as needed. For example, you can connect to Acuity Scheduling to offer client appointments. Or add separate portfolio pages for different types of marketing campaigns and specialties. Looking to get more job opportunities? Add your resume or CV. If you don’t feel confident about what to include, look at other marketers’ websites to get some inspiration.
See portfolio website examples
3. Highlight your skills and experience
The priority of your website will most likely be showcasing your skills and strongest work.
On your homepage, start with a one- or two-sentence summary of your skills. For example, you might add a headline to the top of the page that says: “Hi there. I’m John Doe, a brand marketing strategist based in Chicago.”
Your bio is an opportunity to go into more detail about your work experience. Here you should try to mention:
How many years of work experience you have
Which industries you have experience in
Notable companies you’ve worked with or for
Awards or recognition you’ve received
If you want to go into more detail, consider adding a resume or CV page. You can hide it from your navigation bar and password-protect it if you’d only like potential employers to have access.
Your portfolio page is where you can show how your skills shine in individual projects. Treat each one like a mini case study. Highlight any notable results from each project and your role in contributing to those wins.
Learn how to promote your new website
4. Add your best work
How you choose your best work is up to you. You could pick projects where you got to work with a recognizable business or public figure or won an award, work that shows off your creativity or integrated marketing skills, projects with great business results, or a mixture of all three. Make sure the projects highlight your strengths and the type of work you want to do going forward.
If you’ve worked on multiple types of marketing campaigns, it makes sense to split your portfolio into different categories. For example, you might have separate portfolio pages to showcase:
Brand marketing
Email marketing
Social media marketing
Just make sure you link to each of your different portfolio pages in your header navigation and a portfolio landing page. Limit the number of projects you share so you don’t overwhelm a potential employer or client.
A good rule of thumb is to include three to 10 projects per portfolio page and focus on recent projects whenever possible. If you have more than one portfolio section, it’s probably safer to feature fewer projects per category.
If you’re short on projects to feature, try creating a case study based on how you would have handled a brand’s marketing campaign instead. Or try starting a personal project or volunteering to support another person’s project.
5. Back it up with data and storytelling
Even if your work looks creative and professional, a potential client or hiring manager will want to see measurable proof of your successes. That could be hard numbers, like increases in traffic, conversion, or awareness. If you don’t have access to performance data, you can include testimonials from happy clients or colleagues.
Add context to your data by telling the story behind the numbers. What was your role in the project? How did you contribute to its goals and were there any challenges you navigated in the process? Try following a Problem > Solution > Execution > Results format if you’re feeling stuck.
This is another place where knowing your target audience will help. A hiring manager will probably want to see how your work impacted business metrics. But a client looking for freelance graphic design might want to see that other people enjoyed working with you and were happy with what you produced for them.
6. Make it easy to contact you
Assuming you want to hear from potential clients or future employers, make sure it’s easy for someone to contact you from anywhere on your website. First, create a Contact page with a contact form. Include an email address or contact form as well as links to any professional social media profiles.
Then, think about where you naturally look on a website when you want to contact someone. Add a link to your Contact page from those places. Common placements are your:
Homepage or portfolio landing page
About page
Site header and footer navigation
That might seem excessive, but if your goal is for people to contact you, then getting to that step should be as easy as possible.
Get tips on designing your website navigation
7. Customize your web design
The design for your portfolio website doesn’t have to be too complex. Choose fonts and colors that suit your tastes or reflect the energy you want to communicate to site visitors. Bold fonts and colors will feel strong and high-energy, for example. If you find the design feeling a bit flat, try adding graphic elements like section dividers or licensed stock photos for more energy or visual interest.
Your website goals can help you here too. Think about what work samples you want to put front and center, then build your web pages around those things. Imagine it like decorating a wall: Once you have your focus pieces, you can decide to leave the remaining space blank or add text to create visual balance. If it helps, try sketching a page design out on paper or in a design tool.
When in doubt, put yourself in a website visitor’s shoes or ask a friend to look through your site. Do you get confused or overwhelmed with information at any point? When you look at a page, does it feel cluttered? Does the site work as well on mobile as it does on a desktop browser?
See Squarespace’s guide to web design
8. Keep it updated
You don’t have to update your website every time you complete a new project, but it’s worth refreshing your portfolio at least once or twice a year. Of course, if you’re extremely excited about a recent project, there’s no harm in adding it right away.
As a best practice, try to keep your portfolio projects current within the last three to five years. Make your work samples representative of the work you’re doing now and what you’d like to do more of in the future. If you don’t have new projects to add, you can always refresh your design or ensure your copy is still optimized for SEO.
Marketing portfolio examples
Your digital marketing portfolio will be totally unique to you and your work, but it’s helpful to have some reference points to start with. Here are four marketing website examples from Squarespace to help you get inspired.
1. Hawley
Hawley’s clean design makes this a great portfolio template if you want to keep your site to just a few standout projects or want to split your portfolio into multiple marketing categories. Since it’s less visually focused, this might be better for a marketing generalist with different types of projects or brands to highlight, or a copywriter.
2. Suhama
This template is designed to put your experience at the forefront. The colors and font are attention-grabbing, though both could be dialed back to suit your preferences. This may be a better starting point for an agency or in-house marketing professional.
You could treat this as a one-page website and link each project on the homepage to a finished product, like a video, landing page, or PDF. Or add pages to your site for each project you feature and link them from the homepage list.
3. Otto
The Otto template is another good option for an individual’s marketing portfolio. It’s pre-designed to showcase both your experience and web or graphic design work on the homepage. And the simple, one-page layout keeps your portfolio skimmable and concise.
4. Agaro
Whether you’re a freelancer or run a small marketing agency, the Agaro template is a dynamic site design that lets you share a strong headline and show off your work and skills, all on the homepage. The clean font adds an air of professionalism, but the text effects, small animations, and image shapes add a sense of creativity and play. The design leads visitors down the page, eventually leaving them in a perfect position to explore your services or get in touch.
Making a portfolio that stands out comes down to emphasizing what you bring to the table and what makes you unique as a marketer. Pull together projects and a site design that feels true to you and how you want to represent yourself professionally. With those as your guideposts, you can create a site that builds your professional brand, reflects your personality, helps you make connections, and adds credibility to your expertise.
Want to build a custom template instead?
This article was updated on April 18, 2024.