Marketer’s portfolio 2026: what to show to get people to invite you to an offer

Once every two weeks they send me a portfolio with the words “look, is it okay?” In nine cases out of ten, this is a PDF with twenty slides, where it is written “set up advertising”, “increased sales”, “managed social networks” - and not a single number by which you can understand what a person really knows. A marketer’s portfolio leads to an offer not when it is beautiful, but when it shows: you count the money and bring it to fruition. Below I will discuss not “how to make a portfolio,” but specifically what should be in it so that they invite you and not politely refuse you.

I've been in digital for 9 years. I rewrote my portfolio five times and each time I removed more from it than I added. The numbers and examples in the article are my hiring experience from both sides of the table: both when I was looking for a job myself, and when I was looking at candidates for the COLIZEUM and EZ KATKA teams.

A portfolio is not a showcase of what you can do. This is proof that you have already done and can repeat.

1. They value cases with numbers, not a list of skills.

I open my portfolio and the first thing I see is the “Skills” block: Yandex Direct, VK Ads, GA4, Metrica, Tilda, amoCRM. Everyone has this list. It does not separate a strong marketer from a weak one - both will write the same thing. The “know Direct” skill costs nothing. The result you received with this Direct is worth it.

Compare the two formulations. “I set up contextual advertising and increased the number of applications.” And: “In the Eighteeth Russia case, the number of applications increased by 25% with the same budget, CPC decreased by 20%.” In the second, the project, units of measurement and comparison condition are visible; The period and initial values ​​should be added from the report when available.

The number doesn't have to be gigantic. In NEMIFIST, a custom PC project, the Telegram channel grew to 50 thousand subscribers, and a separate Senler funnel collected 1,022 leads at 12.56 rubles. For a full-fledged case, these numbers require a period and a definition of a lead. No one is expecting a “billion reach”; it is important to honestly show what was measured.

I have discussed how to assemble and submit the cases themselves separately - case as a product. One thing is important here: the portfolio is supported by cases, everything else is a wrapper.

2. Format is secondary: website, Notion or PDF

The “site vs. Notion” debate is almost always a way to put off working on content. I have seen strong portfolios in all three formats and weak ones in all three. The format will not pull out empty cases. But each has its own pros and cons, and you should choose for yourself, and not “like bloggers.”

I chose a site and made it myself - dpustovalov.com, with cases and the blog you are reading now. For a marketer, this is a separate argument during an interview: you don’t just say that you know how to attract traffic and calculate unit economics, you show a live project that you yourself designed and are leading. I call this marketing sovereignty - when your channel and your platform belong to you, and not to a platform that will change the rules tomorrow.

If you are not ready to tinker with the site, get Notion and don’t apologize. Good cases in Notion beat a weak site dry. The format is the packaging. Inside, everything is decided by numbers.

3. Structure: resume, cases, public footprint

The working structure of a portfolio is three layers, and they appear in that order.

The first layer is a short summary. One page or one screen. Who are you, what are your strengths, what niches did you lead, link to cases. The summary should not retell the cases; its task is to quickly make it clear whether it is worth reading further. For me it’s a couple of paragraphs and then immediately moving on to projects.

The second layer is the cases page. This is the core: a story from a task to a measurable result. At COLIZEUM, I managed SMM: the total coverage of publications in VK communities for 01/01–12/14/2023 was 82.4 million with an ER of 2.6%; online collected 1,100 reviews on Yandex.Maps. At EZ KATKA, he led the marketing of a network that reached 19 arenas and a base of 120 thousand customers; the turnover of the entire network for 2024 is 124 million rubles, and the summary separately indicates a decrease in CAC by 15%. These are different types of indicators and tasks.

The third layer is the public footprint. Blog, Telegram channel, speeches. Cases answer the question “what did you do.” The public trail answers “what do you think.” For hiring, the second sometimes weighs more than the first: the result can be explained by luck, but a coherent train of thought in twenty posts cannot be explained by luck. I don't write this blog for the sake of SEO - it shows my logic before I open my mouth on a call. More details about this mechanic - marketer's personal brand.

4. Which 3-5 cases to take and how to submit

The main mistake is to shove everything in a portfolio. Ten cases “about everything” are less readable than three deep ones. Take on different roles and different niches to cover the range.

My set is usually like this. One performance case with hard numbers - leads, CPL, ROAS. One is about reach and brand - where the KPI is not in leads, but in awareness and ER. One about a team or a process - where I didn’t press buttons, but built a system, CRM or analytics from scratch. And one case with a failure, where the hypothesis did not work, but I understood why. The latter scares many, but in vain: the ability to understand one’s own mistake is valued higher than ten successes in a row.

I present each case with one skeleton: context and pain, hypothesis, what I did, numbers before and after, which of these is repeatable. Without “set up, managed, optimized”. The verb must cling to the number. Not “improved conversion,” but “raised landing conversion from 1.2% to 1.9% in a month by removing three extra screens.”

If the result is under NDA, show percentages. “Reduced CPA by 30%” does not reveal either budget, turnover, or client. Hiding the entire case because of an NDA is a cop-out. Dynamics as a percentage are not disclosed as a trade secret almost anywhere.

5. What to avoid

A list of what resets a portfolio the fastest. I met each point dozens of times.

Water. “Set up advertising,” “engaged in promotion,” “managed social networks.” These are not cases, these are job descriptions. It is impossible to understand either the scale or the result from them. Replace the verb with a number or delete the line.

Screenshots of offices without context. A bare screen from Direct with a graph up does not prove anything. Up - for what period, from what start, at what cost? A screenshot without a caption and numbers before/after is noise, not an argument.

Dead links. The link to the case leads to a remote site, the PDF does not open, Notion is blocked by access settings. I close such a portfolio right away - this is a signal that the person does not check his own work. Before each sending, click everything manually.

“Integrated approach”, “360-degree strategy”, “channel synergy”. These words don't make sense. They take the place where specificity should be. The more such formulations, the stronger the feeling that there is nothing to show behind them.

6. How does a portfolio work during an interview?

A weak portfolio forces you to make excuses. HR asks “what exactly did you do?”, and you figure out on the fly how to turn “led social networks” into something significant. A strong portfolio works the other way around: it sets the script for the conversation.

When the cases are specific, the interview is based on them. The recruiter comes with the question “how did you cut CAC by 15% on EZ KATKA?” - and you don’t make excuses, you tell your story with your numbers. This is a completely different position. You lead the conversation, not fight it off.

The portfolio also saves on the first call. If a person has read my cases and blog before the meeting, we don’t spend half an hour on “tell us about yourself” - we go straight to the point. This is especially important for an AI-native marketer; I discussed why in an article about job search as a marketer. A good portfolio does half the recruiter’s work for him, and this is read as respect for other people’s time.

Separately about freelancing and consulting: the portfolio is generally the main asset, because no one looks at the resume, they look at the cases and the salary. How one is connected to the other - in materials about marketing consultant rate and choosing between agency and freelancer.

Conclusion

A portfolio that leads to offers rests on three things. Cases with numbers instead of a list of skills. The format is your own - website, Notion or PDF, and the format is secondary here. A public trail that shows how you think, and not just what you did. Everything else is decoration that will not save the empty content.

In short: not “show what you can do,” but “prove what you did and repeat.” One honest case with a specific metric is stronger than twenty lines of “configured and optimized.”

If you want, I’ll sort out your portfolio and tell you which three cases to leave, which ones to rewrite, and where the numbers lie or are missing. Write to Telegram @dipustovalov or fill out form. Starting consultation - 0 ₽.