Top 50 marketing interview questions and answers

Introduction:

When talking about jobs and internships what comes to our minds first is about the interviews and the marketing interview questions. These question and interview rounds are planned in order to assess the candidate not just for their marketing talent but also to assess for who they are as an individual.

We need to remember that the perfect candidate you want to hire for the role is not just the one with all great qualifications but also the one with extensive passion about the marketing. The candidate should also fit in with the culture and should contribute with full potential towards the growth of the company.

Interview Approach:

During interviews, interviewers stress on understanding each candidate as an individual. His goal is to find someone with long-term potential. Sometimes when the candidate is talented and promising, it does not matter what they are currently doing in their career as their qualities and determination can lead them to great successful paths.

The interviewer tries to know how you think about things in particular, how you plan to do and achieve tasks in the real world. These questions are then balanced with the case-style questions. The case style questions include hypothetical business related situations, as they give the candidate the opportunity to show how they react to different situations, and at the same time it gives the interviewer a chance to be sure if the particular candidate’s approach will benefit his company or business.

Below are a few marketing interview questions listed which are commonly asked in any marketing interview. It is supposed to be kept in mind that not all the marketing interview questions are asked at the same time. In Fact it has been observed that hypothetical marketing interview questions can last upto 10 to 30 minutes of discussion, so mostly the interviewer can cover only 2 to 3 marketing interview questions at a time. One can decide the question accordingly. Analysing a candidate and the responsibilities of the role marketing interview questions frame for a marketing manager can also be asked to a marketing coordinator candidate as well.

Case – style marketing interview questions:

Q1. Make a diagram of a funnel on the board representing 20,000 visitors, 1000 leads, 500 opportunities and 20 new customers ( you may change the figures as per your choice ). Now, suppose you are the appointed CMO of the company and you are supposed to make decisions about what and how should your marketing team improve on these metrics ? Which particular section of the funnel would you focus on ? and what would you do to make a profitable difference between them ? [case study marketing interview questions]

Ans. Follow up – the follow up for this question is simply focusing on the candidate’s answer. Mostly the candidate will pick up any one part of the funnel to give his/ her answer. (if they do no then the interviewer may like to push them to do it.)

As soon as they pick up one focus area the interviewer may continue to take follow ups from that particular area. The follow up can be “what plans would you think about this?”, “What have you done in the past to suit this role?”, “What unique advantage do you see to work in this company?”

If the interviewer has more time, he may ask to go back through the funnel and explain what changes have happened?

What to look for specifically –

Everyone in the marketing field needs to know and understand how to think and plan to optimize the funnel. Here is where the candidate’s thought process is assessed.

Q2. We have two capable designs for the homepage of our company website, but we are confused about which one to use. The COO likes the one whereas the CEO likes the other one. Also half of the company likes the first one and the rest half likes the other one. Which one should we use according to you? [case study marketing interview questions]

Ans. The Follow up – This kind of problem can raise up many ideas in the candidate’s mind like who is the target audience for the company, what is the product the company wants to deal in. And if the candidate is moving in this direction then either he/ she does not know about the main areas to focus on or he/ she does not know how to address the issue. The interviewer may take follow ups with hypothetical situations and observe how they put through the problem.

If the candidate picks any one side and gives reasons supporting it , the interviewer may ask them “how would you make sure that the homepage they choose meets the goals set by the company?”.

Further interviewer may mention some imperfect distinguishing features of both the home pages, this way he will be able to do 100 % accession of how the individual is reacting to two imperfect choices.

What to look for specifically – however at one point you may feel it is a question completely about design, but it also explains the candidate’s approach towards conflict of interest. Do they care and pay attention to what other people think, whether they go deep to get the answers of why for their choices. The best answer to these marketing interview questions includes logic and marketing methodology in it, keeping aside the opinions. Also, the best answer includes a suggestion that “ the company should keep revising and updating the homepage, rather than just preparing a new design every 6 to 9 months.”

Q3. “ for suppose we are given a spreadsheet of 10,000 leads from 5 months back records, long enough that the lead’s sale cycle has been lost. The sheet contains information about each lead like the industry, company size, title, and why they converted into the lead (efforts to get them as client). The file also tells whether they converted to be regular customers or how much was their order. Can you use this record to create a lead score, if yes how would you do the same? [case study marketing interview questions]

Note- The same answer could be for the questions like “How to calculate the lead score from a lead record?”

Ans. These marketing interview questions work as a way for the interviewer to sort out the candidates who have a data-driven approach. Most candidates answer that “We can create a lead score by having a conversation with the sales team and assigning 5 or 10 points to each field.” which is actually wrong as this is not a data-driven approach to calculate lead score. Also, it is too simple to work efficiently and yield useful results.

Follow up – Most of the times people answer by starting as “looking at the data” and “after sorting the data”. If any candidate says this the interviewer can ask about how to do the same in the excel sheet or any other program as preferred by the interviewer. It is obviously not possible to look and do the analysis for 10,000 records at a time, you definitely need to do some statistical operations.

The candidate is not supposed to be cornered to only one side, that is the industrial side, if it happens the interviewer may ask the same question for the small businesses. In the end the interviewer will try to push until the candidate feels like being at a loss for what to answer next.

What to look for specifically- these types of case specific marketing interview questions are made purposefully to judge the candidate’s quantitative abilities. Also, this type is suitable only for marketing roles like operations. Here it is being attempted to know the candidate’s thinking and analyzing data ability along with their sophistication level around data and statics.

Most people either would not pay attention towards other variables or will be unable to do so. They will try to analyze the simplest way to do this. Well in the end, being an interviewer you need to a candidate who :

Compares the successful leads from one project with the unsuccessful leads from the other project.
Look and analyze multiple variables at the same time.
Is capable of using excel spreadsheet or any other programming skill to perform statistical analysis like pivot tables, summary tables, and many more.

Internship Marketing Interview Questions :

Q4. “What are your hobbies and how do you manage to carry on with them?” [basic marketing interview questions]

Ans. Motive to ask such marketing interview questions: These marketing interview questions help the interviewer to analyse the candidate for the questions whose answers he is intimately familiar with and how he manages to explain it to some stranger. If the candidate’s hobby is something related to training or teaching, the interviewer can ask them to give some advice about it for if you suddenly plan to learn that particular skill. This way the interviewer can check if the individual is able to communicate properly or not.

Q5. “Which brands do you follow on social media and why?”

Ans. This might sound like a casual question but it is very useful, as this answer conveys both the candidate’s personal interest and also how they perceive marketing content in the outside world. Further, the answer gets stretched by telling which brand he/ she likes, what makes him/ her trust that brand, and what strategies do appeal to him/ her.

Search Engine Optimization Marketing Interview Questions

Q9. Mention a few differences between Dofollow and Nofollow.

Ans. Dofollow : These are links which permit search engine crawlers to follow a link to support a boost from search engine response pages and pass on the link juice to the target site. Eg: <ahref=”http://www.XYZ.com/”>XYZ</a>

Nofollow : These are links which permit search engine crawlers to follow a link but do not allow any link juice to the target domain. Eg: <ahref=”http://www.XYZ.com/” rel=”nofollow”>XYZ</a>

Q10. What do you understand by 301 redirect? How is it different from 302 redirects?

Ans. The 301 redirect indicates the user and search engine bots the original page for their specific search has been permanently moved to some other location. Whereas, 302 redirect is a temporary redirect and does not let link juice pass to the new location.

Q11. How are backlinks important in SEO?

Ans. The external links to the website are known as backlinks. They are important to serve the following purpose:

Enhance the credibility for the website
Gain organic search ranking
Increased domain authority
Increased referral traffic

Q12. What are your practices to improve the ranking of youtube videos?

Ans. Few practices to improve the ranking of youtube videos are :

Create informative and engaging content
Be correct with the information conveyed

Few more ways to Optimize the videos are:

Choose titles having high search volume and low difficulty
Be relevant with the description, being relative to the title of the video
Be accurate and relevant with the video tags used in the video.
Do not exceed the word limit of 100 characters in the title
Use relevant hashtags and a captivating thumbnail
Do not forget to promote the content on other social media sites.

Q13. What do you know about mobile-first indexing?

Ans. For better indexing and ranking of the website Google uses content that is mobile friendly. Google will rank up higher in the search engine results, the website having higher responsive design. It’s ranking is based on how well the website performs on mobile devices. This is known as Mobile-First indexing.

Q14. List down some most popular local SEO ranking factors? [advanced marketing interview questions]

Ans. Few most popular local SEO ranking factors are mentioned as below:

Creating a dedicated webpage for every product and service.
Choosing for a business listing on Google My business page.
Keeping updated NAP citations on the website and ensuring consistency.
Linking a google map for better clarity
Optimizing meta tags and content
Adding the business to local libraries.
Taking care of reviews and ratings.

Q15. How can you avoid the content penalty for duplicacy?

Ans. Some of the ways to avoid content penalty for duplicacy are :

Use 301 redirect leading to the original page
Use a rel= canonical attribute to the original page. It conveys the search engine that a particular website represents the original webpage.
Opt for a preferred relevant domain in the Google search console. It can redirect spiders to crawl web pages in different ways.

Q16. Mention some ways to increase web page speed? [advanced marketing interview questions]

Ans. some ways to increase web page speed are :

By Using simple website layout and design.
Optimizing images.
By improving server response period
By reducing redirects
By enabling browser caching
By opting for a content delivery network (CDN)

Q17. When should you target Short tail and long tail keywords?

Ans. Short tail words should be used when the objective is to drive many visitors and the public and the website. Long tail keywords, on the other hand, should be used only for targeted pages and articles.

Q18. Mention some important elements to keep in mind while working on to develop a website?

Ans. Mentioned below are some important elements to keep in mind while working on to develop a website :

Website layout and navigation – A perfect site layout is important for bots to access and index the content easily. Easy navigation making it easy to search the website easily and comfortably.
Responsive architecture – responsive architecture makes the website more easy, attractive and mobile-friendly. It will also contribute to increasing the amount of time a user spends on the website. Moreover it will also improve the website’s ranking.
Creating sitemap : creating sitemap helps search engine bots to understand the structure of the website.
txt :This command instructs the search engine crawlers to differentiate the pages that do not need to be indexed. It is further added to the website’s root directory.

Search Engine Marketing Interview Questions :

Q19. Explain Ad Scheduling. [advanced marketing interview questions]

Ans. Ad scheduling allows marketers to set up a few dedicated hours or days for which they show advertisements to the audience. It can make bid adjustments also for a few days or some time.

Few Advantages of Ad Scheduling are mentioned below :

It makes sure that the ads are not running in those hours during which they gave bad outputs earlier.
It makes sure that the customers are served even when you have less client hours.
It makes sure that customers demand and supply is addressed and maintained properly.

Q20. What are the various ad formats available on Google ads? [advanced marketing interview questions]

Ans. Mentioned below are few of the various ad formats available on Google ads:

Text ads: these are the ads having only the text content and are available on Google’s SERP.
Responsive display ads: these ads are self adjustable according to the size and format depending on the space available. They can be text or image or video ads.
Image ads: These are the ads which use static or interactive images. They usually have formats as – .gif, .jpeg, flash, etc.
App prompting ads: These are the ads used for drive app downloads.
Video ads: these ads run stand-alone or are inserted into other video content that’s already streaming.
Product shopping ads: These are the ads that show / promote products with details like title, price, brand name and store name.
Showcase shopping ads: These are the ads that have images and descriptions that expand on being selected/ clicked, displaying the entire product details.
Call-only ads: these are the ads that allow users to connect to the business displaying the ad, directly using the phone number displayed/ mentioned.

Q21. What do you know about RLSA, and how it works ? [advanced marketing interview questions]

Ans. RLSA stands for Remarketing Lists for Search Ads. It allows us to customize the search ad campaigns for the individuals who have priorly visited the website. Bids and ads can be tailored to extract these visitors when they are on Google or with other search partner sites. This helps optimizing the keyword search for visitors and to id on keywords that are rarely kept on bid.

Q22. What types of audiences can be used in GDN? [advanced marketing interview questions]

Ans. *source: simplilearn.com

Email Marketing Interview Questions

Q23. What are the differences between hard and soft bounce emails? [advanced marketing interview questions]

Ans. Soft Bounce: These are the emails that had reached the receivers email server but bounced back because of some issue. The reason for this can be any of the following:

Chances of Being blocked by the recipient
The inbox of the recipient is filled
The recipient’s server might be down

Hard bounce: A hard bounce mails occurs when the email has been permanently blocked for some reason. The reason for this can be any of the following:

Invalid email address of the recipient
The reply-to-address is blacklisted for your mail

Q24. What can you do to enhance the click-through-rate of your email? [advanced marketing interview questions]

Ans. One may take following steps to enhance the click-through-rate of your email:

Try creating an interesting and appealing subject line
Try using the previous text efficiently.
Trying to make your emails mobile friendly
Trying to create engaging email content
Trying to segment and personalize the emails
Trying to make the emails visually appealing / interesting and do not forget to include relevant images.
Remember to place the CTS where it is easily noticed by the visitors.
Trying A/B testing of the emails.

Q25. What are your ideas for informing your customers about the company news and establishing a healthy relationship with them? [advanced marketing interview questions]

Ans. The best way to inform the customers about the company news and establish a healthy relationship with them is by creating an interesting newsletter. Few ways to enhance your newsletter are:

Try to create your newsletter with 90% of educational and 10% of promotional content.
Focus more on creating an attractive subject line.
Make sure to use the correct/ appropriate email template.
You may try using compelling images.
Adding clear CTA.
Always remember to add your contact information in the newsletter.

Q26. Explain the below mentioned metrics – [advanced marketing interview questions]

Open Rate
Response Rate
Click-through Rate
Forward Rate.

Ans. Open Rate: It refers to the percentage of the total number of recipients who have opened an email campaign.

Open rate = opened Emails / sent Emails – bounced Emails

CTR: It refers to the percentage of recipients that have clicked on the CTA of the email.

CTR = No. of click-throughs/ No. of emails delivered

Response Rate: it refers to the percentage of total recipients who clicked on your email campaign link and completed an action.

Response rate = No. of actions taken/No. of emails delivered

Forward Rate: the forward rate refers to the rate at which the subscribers have shared your emails with others.

Forward Rate = No. of clicks on a share/No. of total delivered emails * 100

[*sources for the formula: simplilearn.com]

Common Marketing Interview Questions

Q27. Tell me something about yourself?

Ans. Most people do not prepare for this question thinking it to be a very simple and common question. Rather than explaining the entire journey you may give a pitch, a concise and compelling one.

Q28. What attracts you the most for this job?

Ans. The working environment and the working conditions. Further, talk about how you have seen the company grow. Focus on organization’s opportunities for future growth.

Q29. Why should we hire you for this post?

Ans. This is the perfect opportunity to elaborate your skills and talent. Talk about how well suited you are for the job. Talk about your qualities and strengths.

Q30. Mention some of your strengths?

Ans. Here you may directly talk about your strengths and skills.

Q31. Mention some of your weaknesses?

Ans. Be smart while answering this question. Though it asks for your weakness, still mention only those qualities which in some way bring something good only out of it.

Q32. Describe any of your toughest tasks yet?

Ans. Here you may comfortably talk about any of your challenges in your job.

Q33. If you were working already, why are you leaving that job?

Ans. Here you can talk good about the company. How you feel this job and company can improve your future and lead you on a better road to success.

Q34. Have you applied to any other company as well?

Ans. It depends on you if you want to talk about your other applications or not. Still it is considered better to talk about it if you have chances to get selected in other companies as well.

Q35. What do you think are the three positive and 3 negative things your previous boss may say about you?

Ans. In this answer you mention your boss’s Leadership skills and efforts to keep the work enjoyable. Be very careful while talking about his negatives, do not use harsh or rough tones.

Q36. Apart from work, what other things do you like to do?

Ans. Here you may talk about your hobbies and other interests apart from your job profile.

Q37. How do you think your friends will describe you?

Ans. You can bring a bit of humor but smartly. This offers you another chance to talk good about you and tell your skills in the public field communication and management.

Q38. Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?

Ans. Here you may talk about your future goals and your final destination.

Q39. What is your greatest achievement ever?

Ans. This is a one time great opportunity to tell about your greatest achievement and make a long lasting fantastic impression.

Q40. Describe an incident when your work was criticised?

Ans. In this question, apart from telling the incidence for the asked question, you may further talk about how well you handled all the criticism and how you did not let it hamper your work efficiency.

Salary related marketing interview Questions

Q41. What are your salary expectations from this job?

Ans. Be precise and to the point with this question.

Q42. What is your salary history?

Ans. For this question as well, be precise. Do not try to exaggerate your answer.

**Personal Job marketing Interview Questions (interview questions answers)**

Q43. What would you say about your previous boss?

Ans. It is a very common question but mostly people fail to prepare for it. You do not need to

Elaborate your entire job history rather try to be concise and to the point.

Q44. What is an ideal work environment as per you?

Ans. Here you can talk about the working environment you like. Be specific.

Q45. Mention some of your long term career goals?

Ans. Here you may talk about your career and job plans in short. Do not elaborate too much.

Q46. Why should we consider you for this job/ why do you think you are suitable for this job?

Ans. This question might seem to be too forward but you can make the best out of it. It is the best question to sell yourself and out show your skills.

Q47. What good can you give to this company?

Ans. When you are asked this question, the interviewer wants to know the problems and challenges you are facing. He wants to know whether you will be able to fit in the company or not.

Q48. Tell me how you started your career in this field?

Ans. Here you may mention about your educational background and your journey from your first job.

Q49. What do you know about our company?

Ans. For this question you are suggested to do a bit of research about the company before going for the interview.

Q50. Do you have any questions for me?

Ans. Here you may ask any questions if you have. Else you may simply say no, thank you.

Conclusion

Marketing gives both sellers and buyers the full benefit of the internet and the digital marketing services. For an interviewer, one should choose marketing interview questions on the basis of his previous marketing experience and accomplishments. And being a candidate, one should prepare himself/ herself by brushing up all his/ her knowledge before going for an interview. He/ she should be confident and knowledgeable in the field.

More resources : Marketing Assistant Job Description | Digital Marketing Manager Job Description | Common Sales and Marketing Interview Questions | Digital Marketing Resume Examples

Best Marketing Interview Questions