Whether you are applying or hiring for a marketing manager position, knowing about common interview questions for marketing managers will help you identify essential things to take note of for the job.
In any job application process, the interview plays a crucial role as it not just gives the employer an impression if you are fit for the work or how you can assess someone qualified for the position.
A marketing manager’s role in the company is to develop and execute strategic marketing plans to attract potential clients, increase sales, and grow the business. Thus, the interview questions for marketing managers will always connect to these critical aspects.
Here are the eight common interview questions for marketing managers used by different companies to give you ideas.
Interview Questions for Marketing Managers (and How You Can Answer Them)
There are a lot of most frequently asked interview questions for marketing managers. But we listed below the most common ones that are often asked.
1. Have you already thought about a new marketing strategy you like to implement in our company?
One of the most popular interview questions for marketing managers is to test applicants if they did their research about the company’s current marketing strategies and campaigns.
To come up with a good answer when asked about this question, consider naming an innovative marketing tactic and how to implement it per the company’s current marketing strategy.
Sample answer:
“I plan to conduct a new marketing strategy that I have been researching since the initial planning of the campaign. The method will focus on brand activation in the channels or platforms where most of our target customers are found.
I researched several marketing tactics we can adopt in the latest campaign the company will launch and seek more effective ways to market the product to our target consumers.
One of the things I want to use as an example is a vegetable company. In an event, they brought out trucks carrying their products to promote their brand to health-conscious attendees in the venue.”
2. How do you respond to negative customer reviews?
A marketing manager’s job is to build a good customer connection. But it can be a bit complicated when dealing with negative reviews.
In this industry, it is customary to receive such criticisms. Thus, these types of interview questions for marketing managers can guide you on how to develop an effective strategy for negative feedback.
Sample answer:
“I understand that as a marketing manager, I am also the brand representative. Thus, I will respond to customers respectfully and assure them that we will do things to make them happy and satisfied with our products or service. We will use every criticism as an opportunity to improve our work.”
3. Share about a product or brand that you marketed successfully.
As a marketing manager, you should have already created notable accomplishments in your experience from previous jobs. It only proves that you are worthy of the position and makes an impression that you can still do the same excellent work in the new company you are applying to.
However, answering this question might make you sound too proud. To balance things out, you should focus more on sharing the strategy you follow and not just highlight your ability alone.
Sample answer:
“In my previous work, I was in charge of introducing a new brand for an upcoming conference. Our team conducted a strategy of using physical signages, giveaways, and other merchandise to advertise the brand at the conference. In addition, since social media is also widely used, we will also post on our Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts with the official hashtags of the conference and our brand to boost social engagements.”
4. How do you create campaigns to ensure the success of the product you market?
One of the most common interview questions for marketing managers is focusing on campaign creation and strategies to make it work. The interviewer wants to see how good you are to ensure the success of every campaign you will handle if ever they hire you for the job.
Sample answer:
“To ensure the success of the brand campaign, our marketing team tracked every key performance indicator we used, such as social media engagements. We need to keep up with the mentions of our product, especially those we had from the conference. That way, we can see if we have engaged the attendees with our product campaigns. We also tracked hits to our website and other channels or platforms to compute other metrics.”
5. Do you experience any failures in your marketing campaign?
Failures are part of success. Thus, the new company you are applying to will also be curious about how you handle setbacks and resilience during challenging times and learn from your mistakes as a marketing manager.
Sample answer:
“I marketed a brand, and unfortunately, it did not have any high engagements online from our target customers. It is not how I imagined it since I ensured to follow every strategy we did in our previous campaigns that worked. But the results did not turn out great.
I learned that there are inaccuracies in our customer’s identities. If we want to engage new customers with our product, we should have come up with a different approach, unlike what we did before, since trends are constantly changing.
As we relaunched the campaign, we adjusted our marketing strategy and came up with a different approach to our ads and campaigns. After that, we see improvements with the results.”
6. How do you work with your team members who have different ideas and values from you?
As a marketing manager, you must deal with your team members with different personalities, ideas, and perspectives when creating effective brand campaigns.
The question will help the interviewer know how you deal with other people and your open-mindedness in your job. Aside from that, your answer may also reflect how you bridge the gap between your team members.
Sample answer:
“My previous marketing team consisted of several people with different personalities, backgrounds, and ideas. It is usual for us to disagree as we plan every campaign we need to launch.
The good thing is that we only differ on work-related agendas. Every time we plan a new campaign, we must sort things out first and focus on our product and its development rather than on our differences. Fortunately, we overcame every tough job together.”
7. How do you improve a failing branding campaign and make it a success?
Launching branding campaigns does not always guarantee success. That is why the job of a marketing manager is challenging, especially if they need to revive a once failed campaign.
You may encounter this question during interviews as it measures your creativity and ideas. You need to prove how you can come up with a feasible solution, especially in situations when the interviewer may ask you to sample scenarios. If you have a similar experience in the past, you may also share it with the interviewer.
Sample answer:
“I once worked with a failing brand. It gained a lot of negative reviews and feedback from customers. I was assigned to rebrand it. I made a new logo that will work better with the product and also signaled the changes we have made to our customers. Because of the rebranding, our customers started to try our products again.
We can say that it became successful, and we continue focusing on improvements to avoid repeating the same mistake again.”
8. What marketing channels do you usually use for your marketing campaigns?
One of the main factors that a marketing manager focuses on in their work is the location of the target customers. With the rise of digital marketing, the marketing team needs to familiarize themselves with how digital platforms such as social media work.
This question will help you study more marketing channels and elaborate on which ones you have experience using in your previous jobs or campaigns.
Sample answer:
“Before deciding marketing channels on where to promote the new campaign, I research and study first the demographics of our target audience.
I need to collect all the essential details, such as the most common social media platform they use, the time they spend browsing online, their location, and many other factors, to ensure that the strategy I want to execute will work.”
Final Thoughts
As you enter a new venture into your career as a marketing manager, we hope that the following questions we have listed here can give you more ideas about how to prepare for your interview.
You may encounter one or two of these questions, but it will expand your knowledge of what to expect. The sample answers will also help you improve your response so that you can have more advantage over the many other aspirants for the marketing manager position.
Even though you have the skills and confidence to ace the interview, do not forget to show a good attitude. Marketing Managers position are great to start a career; If you are also interested in administrative jobs, you can learn interview questions and answers for administrative assistant jobs. Good luck!
