Transcription
Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years? Are you a real team player? No, this is not what marketing leaders ask today in your job interviews.
I prepared a few real tricky and uncomfortable questions that you're going to be getting in your next marketing job interview, the psychology behind them, and how to craft an answer that really helps you stand out. So, if you're a marketer prepping for your next job interview, or you're just looking to level up your career and just casually attending some interviews, this video is for you. I'll show you both weak and strong answers. I've been through dozens of marketing interviews myself, both the good and the horrible ones, and my videos already helped some of you land their dream job. Subscribe to this channel for more marketing tips. And let's go.
And the question number one is, walk me through a campaign that did not meet expectations and what you learned. This might surprise you, but marketing leaders deliberately ask you about your failures cuz they want to see your attitude to failure. They want to see your analytical approach and they're simply looking for honesty and self-awareness. A weak answer could be, you know, our email campaign actually had very low open rate, so we just tried a few different subject lines. A strong answer could be, so we launched a LinkedIn ads campaign to sealevel decision makers in the legal space and even though the CTR was quite high cost per lead was three times higher than expected. So I dove into our targeting messaging landing pages and I realized that the CPL was inflated due to poor messaging alignment. So, I sat together with our sales team and nailed down the ideal customer profile. Made sure that it's communicated clearly across all of our lead magnets and landing pages. And uh as a result, cost per lead decreased by 47% in the course of six weeks. This taught me about the importance of analyzing your customer and nailing your ideal customer profile before launching any campaign. And that's why I developed my own 20page customer research template that I've been using for years now. Remember that marketing leaders are looking for real problem solvers. They're not looking just for perfectionists who never admit their mistakes.
By the way, if you're serious about advancing your marketing career, subscribe to my weekly newsletter where I share my own learnings and my own failures, some templates and strategies that helped me and helped other marketers land marketing roles. So, just click the link in the description to get this insights directly to your inbox every Monday.
The next one, how would you allocate a $50,000 marketing budget for our new product launch? So, obviously, this question is testing your analytical thinking, your familiarity with at least the basics of unit economics, and simply how you balance risks versus rewards. So a weak answer could be, you know, I split the 50k across Google ads, LinkedIn ads, and uh maybe we can also throw the remaining ones into Facebook because I've heard that Facebook usually has a good reach. A strong answer could be, of course, first I need to understand your sales cycle, your customer acquisition costs, your conversion rates across the funnel, and of course, what channels have worked in the past. But given that it looks like you are aiming for a direct customer acquisition, I would just put 60% to the channels that have already worked in the past, 30% to a few test channels with defined success metrics and the remaining 10% to some analytical tools to help us measure and optimize accordingly. You can then even, you know, share your screen and open an empty Google sheet file where you can show some specific calculations that come to your mind, conversion rates across the funnel that might work for them. It doesn't have to be pretty. The idea is to show your strategic thinking and to show your thinking process. So, marketing leaders are looking for team members who are thinking about ROI and not just thinking about channels that are, you know, easy to set up.
What metrics would you use to measure success for this specific role? Of course, it depends on your marketing role, but overall, this question reveals your understanding of the modern marketing measurement and analytics. It also helps to reveal whether you're focused on vanity metrics or on real business impact. And of course, it helps marketing leaders understand your ability to link any marketing campaign to the actual revenue. A weak answer could be you know I would track social media follower growth and our website traffic and you know overall if our brand awareness is getting stronger. A strong answer could be, well for this demand generation role I would focus on pipeline metrics like the number of qualified leads, cost per lead, conversion down the funnel and of course marketing generated revenue. Remember that marketing leaders are looking for team members who are eager to measure what actually matters to the business, not what is easiest to track.
Tell me about a time you had to work with a difficult stakeholder to complete a marketing project. This isn't just a behavioral question. Marketing leaders understand that you're going to be interacting with a lot of different stakeholders and you're going to be navigating this organizational complexity between different departments be it sales product sea level executives etc. So a weak answer could be, yeah you know we were actually about to launch this one feature and uh we had everything prepared for marketing but our head of product said that the deadline is going to be missed and I sent them a few emails you know because I really wanted to communicate that we have our own deadlines and the budget approved. They didn't really reply. So I just went ahead and launched the campaign. In a few days, they actually approached me and we looked at the results together and it looked like the results were kind of okay. A strong answer. I once had to convince our CFO to change our LinkedIn ads consultancies and agencies because I wasn't happy with the current one. But I couldn't prove the ROI of the new agency very fast because showcasing an impact of LinkedIn ads is not as straightforward. So I realized that the main language that our CFO speaks is everything having to do with saving business costs. So I went ahead and I created a 20page audit for our current LinkedIn ads account and I added just two slides where it is clear that the current agency is wasting our budget and I only presented this two slides to the CFO and I got the buyin in less than five minutes.
How do I stay current with the AI trends in marketing? Obviously this question is testing first of all your learning habits. It is also testing your critical thinking around the entire AI hype especially in marketing and they also want to simply understand whether you are eager to go the extra mile to constantly improve your knowledge or you're just you know happy to do any task that gets thrown on your desk. So a weak answer could be, yeah you know I actually follow a few influencers on LinkedIn who just occasionally write about AI. A strong answer could be, I actually have a systematic approach here. First of all, I'm subscribed to a weekly newsletter called AI for work. Then every month I'm trying to analyze the latest AI tactics our competitors are implementing in their marketing campaigns. And thirdly, most importantly, throughout the last year, I created a network of senior marketing leaders. And once a quarter, we gather together where we share real knowledge, not just theories. For example, as a result of our last meeting, I realized that using Chad GPC is best for brainstorming, but everything that is having to do with the content creation is now done better by cla.
Subscribe to this channel for more marketing tips and more career tips in general. And by the way, in the comments, feel free to let me know what was the trickiest question that you got in some of your marketing job interviews. And if you're looking for more guidance on your marketing interviews, this playlist is for you. So continue watching this one.