Vice President, Marketing – Marketing Services Provider
Client Background
Our client is a specialized marketing services company founded in 1995. They have historically focused on customer acquisition for companies in the financial advisory and legal fields, and are growing their business in the medical services and senior living space. The company deploys a variety of acquisition methods using digital (SEO, SEM, social media, display, video, paid and earned media, email and webinars) and traditional (direct mail and phone) methods that are supported by proprietary technology and advanced data analytics. The company has approximately 160 employees with offices in Tampa, Fl and Dallas/Ft. Worth. The company is very profitable and is growing quickly. Longer term it is expected there will be a significant increase in growth as they enter new markets through organic growth and acquisition. The company is backed by a well know PE firm that has been investing in product development, executive talent and analytics. In the past the company has operated as 3 business units, each with its own brand name. Two of the companies have focused on direct mail and seminar event marketing that successfully drives business for the financial advisory clients. The third firm’s go to market strategy has been focused on digital lead generation for law firms. Recently the company has expanded by offering all solutions to all clients and has expanded to new markets such as the elective medical services providers and the senior living companies. Longer term the company will operate under one brand name and will deploy “best practices” to increase lead generation for all clients to assure long term growth for our clients and our company.
Job Location: Tampa, FL HQ and Frisco, TX (Dallas)
Title: VP, Marketing – Job description: Responsibilities
Key Duties:
- Brand Stewardship: Understand the current brand positioning and help integrate the sub-brands into a cohesive whole that is worth more than the sum of its parts. Collaborate with the sales and leadership team to ensure programs differentiate and enhance the brand’s strategic position and support the longer-term growth initiatives.
- Marketing Strategy and Planning: Utilize and compile market data, customer insights, competitive intelligence, and sales insights to identify new opportunities to grow the business and build long term profitable account relationships. This might include strategic partnerships, sponsorships and co-development efforts.
- Marketing Communications: Responsible for building the brand’s creative strategy and working with the internal team and outside vendors to bring the strategy to life in creative briefs, that lead to compelling, brand building advertising, direct mail, events, PR, and digital communications (display, web, video, email, social, blogs, webinars). Articulate the message to employees, customers and partners. Review marketing materials to assure consistency of positioning and voice across all products/services and customer types.
- Manage Marketing Budgets: Develop and manage the $700,000 marketing budget. Use metrics to optimize the ROI-balancing short-term revenue goals with longer term customer value goals. Work with the key functional leaders to leverage their expertise to deliver a holistic business plan to drive new business and deliver a positive ROI.
- Leadership & Talent Management: the VP of Marketing will work closely to build, shape and lead a highly effective marketing organization by hiring and training talent. They will seek to review and enhance the marketing processes, measurements, information systems, which enable the marketing organization to function and operate efficiently and effectively. This includes assessing the agencies, suppliers, consultants and employees who are engaged with the company to meet their marketing needs. The inhouse marketing team is currently 5 people.
- Segmentation and Targeting: Identify with research and data the high potential clients and prospects within our target audiences (legal, financial services, estate planning, elective medical, senior living and home services). Develop strategies to engage and support account growth by segment. Work with sales and the account team to confirm the strategies that will drive meaningful interactions with consumers that lead to increased client utilization.
- Product Marketing: Build a product strategy to unify the existing technology, process and talent to create customized “product/service” offerings that appeal to key market segments (financial services, estate planning legal. elective medical, senior living and home services). Where needed make recommendations for new products/ or services that would complement our existing offerings and help grow our market share.
- Acquisition/Demand Gen: Develop an omni-channel plan to drive profitable traffic to the website, call center, sales teams etc. in order to maximize conversion and increase revenue. Establish acquisition spend and ROI by channel. Use a combination of online and offline channels (SEO, SEM, Display, search bidding, mobile, email, direct mail, webinars, trade shows, events, inside and outside sales etc). Influence the website design, social media and online media spending. Make recommendations for future investments in technology needed to increase customer acquisition.
- Insights and Analytics: Establish KPI measurement frameworks to track success. Oversee the testing protocols and analysis to assist in the delivery of the right content and message to the right targets/segments at the right time. Ensure effective testing protocols and analytics are effectively deployed to improve profitability.
- Drive Customer/Prospect Engagement: Develop a plan to engage customers and prospects across the customer journey. Work with the sales teams and account managers to build the customer journey by segment and identify the customer pain points and moments of truth. Use this information to drive conversion and LTV. Establish the net promoter score and customer satisfaction scores as a way to benchmark current state and drive improvements. Focus on the top 50 key accounts.
- Innovation: Work with the product development and sales teams to help identify, evaluate and execute innovative marketing ideas and partnerships to increase the brand reputation, and create differentiation in the marketplace. Use customer insights to help inform and educate business decisions on which initiatives will have the best outcomes.
- Change Management: The VP Marketing must help the current marketing and sales team transition to a new more robust organization. The company is integrating the various brands and acquisitions and trying to create a new “one company” approach with a focus on data driven innovation and building employee engagement.
Performance Measures:
- Expand partners and resellers
- Increase brand awareness
- Increase revenue
- Grow market share
- Increase lead quality ( better conversions)
Staff & Reporting Relationships:
The VP of Marketing with report directly to the CEO. They will manage an internal marketing team of 5 and work the VP of Sales who supports an internal team of 55.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in marketing, business, or communications-related field
- At least 10-12 years combined experience in B2B marketing, product management/service management with progressively advanced levels of responsibility; at least 5+ years spent managing small teams (3-5) of marketing professionals, generating and carrying out B2B go-to-market plans with excellent outcomes
- Traditional and Digital Marketing-experience with results in Positioning, Brand Management, New Products, PR, Advertising, Media, B2B customer marketing, Promotion, Local events, digital marketing (display, SEO/SEM, web, video, email, affiliate, social, mobile)
- Multi-channel B2B lead gen. Ability to work directly with sales to support enterprise sales opportunities.
- Ability to synthesize and package managed service offerings to appeal to various target audiences.
- Detail-oriented, as well as insightful about how specific information can be synthesized into a game-changing plan of action
- Fluent in tracking industry trends and competitor activities and utilizing that insight to create new opportunities.
- Entrepreneurial mindset, inclined to act quickly, thriving in a fast-paced environment, embracing the fact that change is the only constant. Ability to function effectively with limited budgets and people. The ability to stretch headcount, dollars while compressing timelines and process to compete effectively against other more heavily resourced brands.
- Strong analytics and data orientation to help drive and measure marketing effectiveness.
- Hands on experience with Salesforce.com reporting and analysis.
- Experience hiring training and developing a high performing team of less experience talent Motivating and inspiring the team and other functions with the voice of the customer and other data insights.
- Able to influence others, and particularly skilled at senior-level communications, understanding and responding to departmental needs, and creating advocacy for marketing
Contact
Executive Connections LLC is handling this retained executive search on an exclusive basis.
For additional information, please contact:
Jeff Gundersen – CEO
941-323-8300
jgundersen@executiveconnectionsllc.com
OR –
Darcy Bevelacqua – Managing Director
917 520-0261
DBevelacqua@executiveconnects.com
OR –
Chris Hendren – Managing Director
630-561-1434
chendren@executiveconnectionsllc.com