Marketing as a concept is shapeless and the definition of marketing is so broad that everything that goes within the company comes under the marketing fabric.

To make things easy for you, we have compiled a list of seven toughest marketing job interview questions that you should ask every potential candidate.

1. What Kind of Marketing Is Needed to Build My Company’s Image?

The right answer is Institutional marketing. Besides giving the correct answer, the candidate should be able to explain institutional marketing in detail. The answer should contain the following information.

Institutional Marketing refers to the creative use of the company’s assets to create awareness, energy, and enthusiasm around the organization. Also known as image marketing, such kind of marketing does not attract leads but works to improve the image of your company.

2. What Is Your Marketing Background?

It is one of the toughest marketing job interview questions that would put many candidates in a fix. Many people like to be involved in marketing, and several candidates would not hesitate to fabricate marketing experiences. Remember, there are no recognized certifications or licenses for marketers, and all you need is a visiting card to call yourself a marketing consultant.

There are many job profiles that have a positive effect on marketing results, but they cannot be actually called marketers. Some of them are writers, public relations people, production people like graphic artists, video, and TV production artists, computer artists and many more.

Some of the people mentioned above may have some marketing knowledge, but their digital marketing skills are limited. These people may explain the marketing concept comfortably but are less likely to know several marketing channels, skills, and judgment required to create effective marketing strategies.

Such people know the methods of communicating with customers but may not have the skills and knowledge to deliver a persuasive marketing message to prospective customers. You need to look for candidates who have in-depth marketing experience. It’s good that candidate has required qualification, but that does not cover for the lack of real marketing experience.

3. What Is Your Biggest Marketing Failure?

It is quite common that many candidates would not be willing to speak about failures. Almost all marketers might have faced failures at some point in their career, and there is nothing wrong to accept it. Only with acceptance and realization, you can ensure you do not repeat the same mistakes.

The candidate should be able to explain the reasons for failures and the steps he/she took in later stages to make things right. No two marketing campaigns are the same as the market conditions change rapidly. Hence, it would be unwise as an interviewer to compare two failures and judge the candidates on its basis.

The purpose of asking this question is to know how the candidates look at his/her failures and learn from it. So you should not get judgmental when candidates are telling about their marketing campaigns that failed to achieve goals.

4. What Part of Marketing Program will Help Me Win over My Competitors?

Today’s customer is more informed and many times sales focused marketing does not work. You need to embrace education based marketing where the campaigns are designed specifically to educate customers about the advantages of your products.

When the customer learns about competitive advantages of your products or services, they know why they should choose your company over someone else’s. One of the benefits of education based marketing is the customer makes an informed decision which he/she might not regret, and it will lead to referrals, customer loyalty, builds your authority and helps you win over competitors.

5. How do You Measure Marketing Campaign’s Performance?

There are different ways to measure a marketing campaign’s performance. Some of the KPIs that are used to measure performance are lead generation, brand awareness, engagement, thought leadership, customer acquisition, customer retention, website traffic, sales, repeat clients, and lead management.

This list of toughest marketing job interview questions can uncover a host of problems in the candidate you are interviewing and take you closer to selecting right marketing talent. Do you’ve any questions? Please feel free to comment.