To find the right candidate to join your marketing team, you need to ask specific questions and listen for answers that demonstrate the candidate’s knowledge about the marketing field. When assessing these marketing interview questions and answers, however, you must bear in mind that the candidate’s past performance is not necessarily an indicator of how well they might perform in the future.

You should also consider the candidate’s background, their knowledge of the specific marketing role that they are interviewing for, and how they communicate with team members. You need to ask questions that require an in-depth lengthy explanation, not just yes or no answers.

What is marketing to you?

Marketing is about anticipating what the customers want and need and strategizing how to keep the customers satisfied more effectively than the competitors. It involves identifying a product, determining the demand for it and its price, deciding on how to distribute it, and how to promote it to customers. The candidate should be able to elaborate on how the practice of marketing came about and how it evolved over the centuries, from word of mouth to the use of newspapers, radio and TV to various digital marketing strategies.

How did you get interested in marketing?

This question is to judge a candidate’s passion for the job. You want to know why they chose marketing over another career. You want the candidate to tell you specific things such as their discovery of how marketing is vital to practically every business, and the amount of creativity that goes into producing marketing campaigns. They may have been drawn to marketing since it fosters opportunities to connect with a lot of different people and encourages the use of the various media for the promotion of products and services.

What are the essential elements of a marketing campaign?

You want the candidate to explain in detail what the essential elements of a marketing campaign are.  For instance, the target customer and the value the products or services can bring to them, giving them a reason to ask for more information about those. It also includes the use of different media to promote the product or services and following-up on customers to know their opinion of purchased products or services.

What are the marketing channels that you have experience working in?

While there are hundreds of marketing channels, both offline and online, it is not practical to manage all of them. You want the candidate to state this and explain why they chose to focus on specific channels. You want them to tell you why and how these channels can give the best returns on investment. The candidate should be able to describe how they used these marketing channels to deliver successful marketing campaigns.

Do you know of any customer trends currently in style for our industry?

It is a quick way to test the candidate’s readiness for working in your industry. You want candidates who read industry news and have developed an understanding of current trends. They should be knowledgeable about customer insights and how these are likely to change. The candidates must demonstrate that when they create marketing strategies, they keep these trends in mind.

How do you measure the impact of a successful marketing campaign?

Marketers can use various tools to define metrics, to collect them, and to measure and analyze those metrics to discover how successful and impactful a marketing campaign was. The candidate must demonstrate a strong familiarity with these tools.

What are the things that you consider when launching a product?

It is necessary to consider if the public needs the product and to make sure that nobody else is launching other similar products concurrently. The candidate must know that timing is a very important aspect of product launches. They must have various workable ideas about how they intend to promote the product to gain and retain consumer interest.

How do you handle conflicts with team members or managers?

Given how competitive marketing is, things can get intense within a team during marketing campaigns. It is essential, however, for team-members to resolve conflicts as amicably as possible.

If the candidate’s responses reveal a calm, level-headed personality at such times, they are most likely a great fit to be in marketing.