Ultimate Cover Letter Guidance

If you decide to apply to companies on job boards such as Indeed and Linkedin, they might ask you for a cover letter so I’m going to help you out with how to create a great cover letter here. Please note, if your intention is to be a freelancer where you’re working part time for that company and this is for a full-time role, you might want to just skip applying as cover letters can take time to write and then, on top of that, they still might not even hire you since they are likely looking for a full-time person. So, that’s something to consider so you’re spending your time in the best places possible when trying to get clients. .

Before diving into how your cover letter should be structured and look specifically for marketing jobs, I want to first discuss how cover letters are used by us Marketing Hiring Managers as I want to make sure you’re spending your time in the right place so that you can get interviews as fast as possible.

Cover letters will NOT get you interviews. Let me say that again. Cover letters will NOT get you interviews. By far, and I mean by far, the most important thing that’s going to determine if you get an interview or not is your resume! 85% of your focus should be on your resume and the remaining 15% should be on your cover letter.

So, don’t spend tons of time trying to perfect your cover letter. Cover letters are more often than not used as a way to weed out non-serious candidates as it’s so easy to apply to jobs nowadays that us hiring managers get bombarded with hundreds of applications as many jobs allow you to immediately upload your resume and click submit and people do this without even reading the job description. So, by requiring a cover letter as part of your application, this helps us substantially weed out those that are just submitting their resume to every job opening they can find and hopefully limits the amount of applications we get to only those that are serious about this job opening.

Also, it’s important for you to understand how Recruiters and Hiring Managers look at your job application so you can further understand why Cover Letters aren’t the end all be all of getting an interview as some people wrongly think. If we’re getting hundreds of applications for every job post, do you think we start off by reading a resume or a cover letter? Remember, we have to do this on top of already doing our day-to-day tasks at our job. We of course start by reading resumes. We spend a couple of minutes on each resume quickly scanning if you have the right work experience or not. If you have the right work experience, you’ll get an interview. If you don’t have the right work experience, we move on and your cover letter will never be read.

Assuming you had the right work experience and you’re getting an interview, most hiring managers won’t even read the cover letter until right before your interview as this might give us a little more to talk about during your interview. Like I said, cover letters are much more of a way to keep non-serious applicants from applying rather than used to help you get interviews or job offers. We just don’t possibly have enough time in the day to do our job, read all these resumes, and then read page after page of cover letters. Remember, at the end of the day, we want to hire someone that has the right work experience for the job as that means they won’t need to be trained as much and they have already proven that they can do the job. We aren’t hiring someone because they have a good backstory or they can write a good cover letter.

Bottom line, yes, you’ll want to create a cover letter template and each cover letter needs to be personalized to some extent, but please, don’t spend a ton of time on each cover letter as your resume is WAY MORE IMPORTANT in getting you interviews. I can’t stress this enough and I want to make sure you’re spending your time in the most efficient way possible.

Alright, so, let’s now work on creating your template for a marketing cover letter. Remember, each cover letter needs to be personalized, but you’ll want to have a template so that you can just plug in the personalization. This will work for 95% of the cover letters you send out. If your dream job is requiring a cover letter, you could spend a bit more time on this and add some extra personalization. If the job isn’t requiring a cover letter, personally, I wouldn’t bother spending time creating one for the job.

Template Cover Letter 

I’d recommend your cover letter just being written in Microsoft Word and saved as a PDF without any fancy formatting (your resume and cover letter should always be saved as a PDF and not any other file type). However, if you really really want to use a template with special formatting, you can go ahead and Google “Marketing Cover Letter Template” and get one there as there are tons of free ones online. But, this really is not necessary and I’m providing one down below for you.

Format

Your cover letter really comes down to 7 sections and you don’t want it being longer than 1 page. Let’s go through each of these sections below so you can formulate your template cover letter. For your convenience, I’ve provided a template Cover Letter below with numbers on them so you can see each section I’m referencing. Once again, please don’t spend too much time on your cover letter as 85% of your focus should be on your resume.

1. Header

Make sure you put your name, address, and the date just as seen above.

2. Greeting

If you know who is going to be reading your cover letter and job application, definitely address them by name. I’d recommend addressing them by “Mr./Ms. Last Name” rather than “Mr./Ms. First Name Last Name”. This will usually be the hiring manager or the recruiter who posted the job on the job board. If you’re unsure, then just use “To Whom It May Concern”.

3. Intro Paragraph

Your first paragraph should get straight to the point about why you’re excited to apply for this job and how you’d bring value to the company if hired (similar to your profile section on your resume). Keep this opening paragraph to 3 sentences maximum and keep your focus on this as opposed to where you saw the job listing or who you know at the company.

4. Paragraph 2: Why You’d Be a Great Fit For The Job

This is the most important part of your cover letter. This is where you sell why you’d be the perfect person they should hire. How do you do this? Talk about your work experience that’s relevant to this job listing and most importantly, make sure to tie in how this prior work experience will help you provide immediate results for their company. If you have any impressive numbers, stats, or accomplishments to share from your work experience, add this here. Your main goal is to not just talk about what you did in the past, but most importantly, connect it to how you’d help their company become better. Don’t be too braggadocious here. Just make sure you’re clearly tying in that you’ve done this type of work before and you’re excited to use your past experience and success to help the company you’re applying for grow even more.

5. Third Paragraph: Why This Company Is Perfect for You

Use this paragraph to show that you’re actually interested in the company and what they’re doing. Us hiring managers don’t want to hire someone who doesn’t have a real interest in working there because we then know it’s only a matter of time before you leave. Additionally, if you don’t really care about the company’s goals, you probably aren’t going to be giving your best effort. So, use this paragraph to show you’ve actually done some research on the company and that you have a passion for what the company is trying to accomplish as this will show that you aren’t just pumping out job application after job application as well as you’ve actually spent time to determine if the company is a good fit. For example, maybe the company’s product seeks a way to improve the environment. This would be a great place to mention how important that is to you and possibly mention any work experience or personal activities that you’ve participated in to help protect the environment.

6. Closing Paragraph 

Be clear about your interest in the position and show your enthusiasm for an opportunity to discuss why you’d be a great fit for the role. Let them know that you’re available to talk about the position at any time and make sure to include your phone number and email address in this paragraph. Make sure you end this paragraph by thanking them for their time and consideration.

7. Signature

Use a formal sign-off like “Best,” “All the best,” or “Sincerely,” and finish by typing out your full name.

Here’s An Example of a Marketing Cover Letter (Feel free to use this as your template)

Jay Balco
222 Ninth Street
Los Angeles, CA 91038
October 29, 20XX


Dear Mr. Gladwell

I’m really excited to apply for the SEO Specialist opening at Fresh Lights. I believe I can quickly add a lot of value to your company as my past work experience in SEO coupled with my Lead Generation background using automation tools seems to fit your job description perfectly. Additionally, I absolutely love your product and I want to do whatever I can to make more people aware of it as protecting the environment is a key passion of mine.

Over the past few months, I was tasked with a few challenges that are very similar to what you’re looking for in your new hire: double the number of leads generated from our blog, create new SEO optimized blog content while expanding our backlinking strategy, and implement inbound marketing within a company that has always depended on outbound marketing tactics. Within a few months, we’ve doubled our blog’s lead generation and created a growth machine centered around inbound marketing with a successful backlinking strategy in place. Based on my Ahrefs research of Fresh Lights and your competitors, I feel very confident that I can bring this same type of success as your SEO Specialist and help grow your inbound program from the ground up in an efficient manner.

Furthermore, I absolutely love Fresh Lights’ mission to help save the environment and I want to do whatever I can to get this in front of more people as protecting the environment is a key passion of mine. In fact, I’ve actually worked with 2 other companies in marketing roles that were also trying to improve the environment with their products and I volunteer twice a month for beach cleanup. So, not only do I strongly feel as though I can provide an immediate impact to your company, but I’m very passionate about the work your company is doing and I’d love to do everything I possibly can to help grow this company so that we can protect the environment in a more sustainable way.

I’d love to further discuss my experience and qualifications for the SEO Specialist position at Fresh Lights. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or require any additional information at 555-123-4567 or jay.balco@gmail.com Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and for your consideration.

Best,
Jay Balco