POSITION SYNOPSIS:
As a key member of the senior leadership team, the highly entrepreneurial Head of Marketing will drive the development and execution of a comprehensive marketing plan and growth strategy to align with the company’s objectives. The position oversees the organization’s branding, digital & traditional marketing, partnerships, event planning, public relations, community outreach programs, and customer experience group.
Key qualities for success include:
● Entrepreneurial
● Can get things done tactically while moving a business forward strategically.
● Has successfully built a team, in a phased approach.
○ Balancing readiness for the investment against spend for agencies.
● Understands and believes in holding consultants accountable via contracts with performance metrics.
● Understands that a budget is a guideline, everything must be evaluated as time and direction change.
● Is fanatical about the numbers — especially about CAC and conversion
● Ability to shift between tactical and the strategic
● Has managed an e-commerce DTC brand – either someone from food
delivery or someone who comes to the table with great ideas on how to
apply their experience to food/meal delivery.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
● Work collaboratively with other members of the leadership team to define objectives, KPIs, develop budgets, strategies, and achieve targets in line with founders’ vision and the company’s mission
● Lead development and execution of a differentiated, consumer insight-driven brand strategy.
● Diversify the mix of digital and analog acquisition channels to more effectively target prospective higher affinity customers, increase conversion and LTV, reduce CAC, and scale.
● Monitor and optimize the payback period of each cohort of users making the necessary adjustments in the quality of acquisition.
● Set up frameworks to create successful funnels. Design an acquisition mix that is truly user-centric and leads media buying to bring traffic that converts to new users that meet our growth targets.
● Design, develop and execute formal customer retention strategies and programs.
● Identify and engage key strategic partners to increase brand awareness and drive growth.
● Develop and manage the consumer-facing digital and offline experiences.
● Oversee the company’s customer experience group
● Develop value-add presentations to engage key internal stakeholders, investors, and partners.
● Drive company vision, messaging, and brand consistency; instill a growth-minded culture.
● Full P&L responsibility for the marketing department
● Recruit and lead talented internal and outsourced teams
QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS:
● Minimum 10 years of marketing experience, and a successful track record formulating and leading marketing strategy, implementation, and team building for direct-to-consumer e-commerce companies.
● 5+ years of marketing experience driving customer acquisition across marketing channels (PPC, Display, Paid Search, Paid Social, Retargeting, etc) – startup experience preferred.
● 5+ years of marketing leadership experience
● Subscription experience is preferred
● Experience working with ad-serving platforms and digital monitoring tools, as well as offline marketing tools and strategies as well.
● Experience in leading and managing A/B testing, embedded media, and marketing program optimization
● Demonstrated data insights (KPI’s, traffic, revenue, conversions, ROI) to improve marketing efforts
● Demonstrated interest and/or experience working with or coaching a fast-growing company.
● Excellent oral and written communication skills with the ability to effectively communicate with and influence colleagues at all levels.
● Excellent eye for design and can understand and interpret design language (digital and analog), experience managing designers, developers, and agencies.
● Sense of urgency in assisting the brand to navigate the ever-changing landscape to commercialize opportunities.
● Strong leadership, talent mentoring, and talent development skills.
● Enthusiastic, can-do approach, with the ability to prioritize effectively in a rapid-paced environment.
● Self-motivated with critical attention to detail, deadlines, and reporting.
● Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Communications, Business Administration, or related field of study. MBA Degree preferred.
Compensation and Benefits
● This position is an “at-will”, full-time, salaried, exempt position. The salary will depend upon the candidate’s relevant experience
● Competitive benefits are available – medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and 401k
Location
We work in the East Coast Time Zone. The majority of work is remote. Available for periodic meetings – after the pandemic in greater NYC. Relocation expenses are not available.
The Company is an equal opportunity employer. We value a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture. We encourage applications from all qualified individuals without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, marital status, disability, and veteran status.
Ideal Candidate Profile
-
- Who comes from a Tier 1 D2C Meals Company that has grown to become a market/sector leader:
HelloFresh
Freshly
Factor
Tier 1 D2C Consumer Brands:
Magic Spoon
Stitch Fix
Allbirds
Warby Parker
Away
Bonobos
Glossier
Casper
Harry’s Razors
Dollar Shave Club
- Who comes from a Tier 1 D2C Meals Company that has grown to become a market/sector leader:
Or Tier 1 Early Stage Branding Agency who has helped companies like the
above ideally early on that led to a growth inflection point: e.g. Red Antler.
We need a marketing person who can do this:
https://prezi.com/2mcy25316bkn/factor-75-marketing-overview/
Speaks like this (regularly in podcasts and interviews):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CAe2X65Wfg
And who has the creative foresight and nuts and bolts e-comm
experience to create this: https://www.needleseyemedia.com/
And who comes from an e-comm business that we aspire to
emulate.
For more information, contact Jim Weber, President
NEW CENTURY DYNAMICS EXECUTIVE SEARCH
JimWeber@newcenturydynamics.com
Large consumer companies like Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, and Frito-Lay spend millions of dollars each year on marketing research to gain an edge in a competitive market. They have a large staff of people with PhDs, MMRs, and MBAs creating and managing complex research studies to provide data and insights to support business decisions.
Is there enough time to conduct the research? Sometimes you just don’t have the time you need to conduct the research that is necessary. Early in my career, a product manager asked me to provide a proposal to research a new product innovation that was under development. It was the end of March. I was excited by the chance to build a comprehensive research program to assess the feasibility of a product, not only new to the company but a true innovation in the industry. I wrote a proposal that included secondary research, qualitative research, and a number of step-wise quantitative studies, all culminating in an estimate of demand for the new product. The whole program would take 12-15 months, which I felt was pretty efficient considering the scope. But the product manager rejected my plan, not because of the expense, but because of the timing. You see, the product under development was already scheduled to be launched on November 2 of that same year. The launch was on a published schedule at a major industry conference and the company CEO was already slated to make the announcement. So, there was no time to execute any research to support the development and launch of the product.
Are you blessed with too much time? I once rushed a research project into the field at the end of the year to make sure that we used up the money that was in our budget. It was a prudent thing to do from a budgetary standpoint, but it wasn’t effective for the business. I presented the results of the research in January of the following year, only to find that the insights were no longer relevant because the entire marketing program upon which the research was predicated was to be radically changed in the next month.
Do you need to have measurements before and after an event or campaign? If you are conducting a Pre-Post study, you must be sure that the Pre phase of the research is completed before the event that you want to measure in the Post phase begins. If you are measuring the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, the Pre phase must be completed before the ad campaign is launched. Sometimes, it’s impossible to conduct a Pre phase. For example, last April, I was asked if we could compare attitudes of people about healthcare before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, without a 1985 DeLorean equipped with a Flux Capacitor, it was impossible to conduct a Pre COVID-19 survey.
Can your timing be interrupted by external forces? I was managing a packaging test for a brand of fruit juices utilizing personal interviews in three cities. We had a tight timeline to finish the research to provide input to the manufacturer to coincide with the completion of the packaging production facility. Everything was right on schedule until the interviewing facility outside of Los Angeles had to evacuate due to out-of-control wildfires. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but external forces beyond our control delayed our project by a full week.
Is this a good time to be conducting any research? There may not be a “Right” time to conduct a research project and perhaps the best decision is to delay or not do any research. For example, you shouldn’t be testing a new technology before you have a working prototype. I once tried to test a new smartphone concept in focus groups when we only had a wooden model to show respondents. They could not understand the concept at all. Delaying the research until we could better demonstrate the product led to more useful insights.
