Head of Marketing

About the role

At SearchPilot, we're on a mission to prove the value of SEO for the world's biggest websites. Organic search is the biggest source of new revenue for almost all the largest websites in the world, yet Google's rules are opaque and ever-changing, and worthwhile verticals are incredibly competitive. As a result, it is typically the least well-understood of all the digital channels. We're changing that with SEO testing.

And it's going well. We are powering SEO experimentation for Marks & Spencer, Skyscanner, Petco, and more, turning organic search into the high-performance channel retailers, travel companies, and other large websites always wished it could be. But we have big ambitions, and (in our opinion) too few companies are approaching SEO the way we think they should.

That's where you come in. Before our wonderful professional services team can help more customers use the great product built by our engineering team, we need more visibility, credibility, and interest among our target market of large enterprises. We need to spark their desire for a better way and drive them to action.

The Head of Marketing will be accountable for marketing outcomes. This will mean being the person who understands what the business needs, drills into the goals and plans enough to know what marketing needs to deliver to hit them, sets appropriate targets, and then does the work to understand and explain any discrepancies in performance vs. expectations. We will expect you to work closely with sales, be commercially aware, focus on the business needs and carry a quota of leads and pipeline created.

Overview of responsibilities

In order to be able to deliver accurate and compelling accounts of marketing performance, you will need to be intimately familiar with all the activities - whether they are completed by you, other members of the team, or by outside agencies, consultants, or contractors.

You will need to report accurately and regularly on performance, as well as doing ad hoc deep-dive analyses to understand and explain any differences versus expectations.

SearchPilot, through its founders and its longevity, has an extremely strong reputation in the market. A large number of SEO professionals are aware of us. The trick is to drive this underlying level of awareness into a strong stream of incoming leads, backed up by impressive brand recognition.

Specific responsibilities

• Ownership of the marketing budget - working with finance and leadership to set and agree the plan, delivering to the plan, and tracking and reporting on financial progress.
• Ownership of the marketing plan - designing and executing a plan to achieve goals within budget.
• Driving a high-quality standard in ways that are both subjective ("work we are proud of") and objective ("achieving targets").
• Responsible for drafting marketing targets (including WIG and lead measures) for sign-off by leadership.
• Responsible for collaborating with sales to tie sales and marketing targets together to set goals that support and achieve the overarching company goals.
• Responsible for giving an account of performance, issues, and plans - in weekly meetings, where it's working and if things go wrong, and providing information for company updates.

At our current scale, you will need to be hands-on with marketing execution. This means being responsible for:

• Management of outside partners and agencies, contractors, and freelancers - including managing their costs as part of your budget.
• Management of marketing activities carried out by other SearchPilot team members along with support and facilitation and execution of surrounding tasks.
• Execution of your own marketing activities including potentially personally managing media spend, executing email marketing, and running the content calendar (with freedom to outsource or use agencies within budget constraints).
• Maintaining the administration and project management tools needed to keep track of our efforts.
• Driving the volume and cadence of activities SearchPilot needs to hit our goals.

Initially, you will be the only marketing professional in the company. However, if we are successful, you can make the case to bring on additional professionals, possibly starting with a junior marketing executive.

Values and attributes

Our expectations around behaviour and attitude are high. In particular:

• We expect the wider team to enjoy working with you ("enjoy the journey"), believe that you are doing and leading great work ("be surrounded by a strong team") and see the results you are driving ("value ownership and results").
• Working to targets and quotas can be demanding, but it's important to maintain an optimistic attitude even on occasions when things don't go to plan.
• On the flip side, building a strong team requires hard conversations and accountability for other members of the team and for outside partners and you must handle these effectively.
• You should remain curious about the SEO industry, our product, approach and solution, and our customers' needs.
• You play a key coordinating role in extracting maximum marketing value from other team members' day-to-day work (whether it be product development, professional services, or sales) and from their specific marketing support activities - you will build the trust needed to demand high-quality work and insight from the broader team.

Linking to people pathways (our framework for managing progression), this level of seniority means, in particular:

• You may support the pre-sales process.
• You will be expected to show high-quality decision-making when problem-solving, consistently demonstrating commercial understanding and implications.
• You will be expected to have influence and impact across teams.
• You will take a more proactive approach and will be able to measure the impact of your decisions over the long term (12+ months).

Application Process

To apply for this role please complete the form below.

We anticipate the interview process will include a short qualification call followed by two remote video interviews with different members of the team.

How we work

We want our people to be happy and healthy - at work and outside of work. We generally work 35 hours a week, with the opportunity to take advantage of 'summer hours' from June to August, which means you can work an extra hour Monday to Thursday and take Friday afternoon off if you're up to date with your work. You'll get a choice of working equipment and an annual £600 happiness budget to buy stuff to make you happier at work such as a new flashy monitor, a new office chair or training. Other benefits include:

• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays.
• Subsidised private healthcare.
• Life insurance.
• We will match up to 5% of your pension contributions.
• A monthly wellness allowance.
• A choice of working equipment.
• 12 weeks fully paid leave for new parents (moms & dads).
• A Kindle with pre-loaded books.

About SearchPilot

SearchPilot is a fully-bootstrapped, profitable and growing startup currently made up of 24 people in the UK and US. We spun out of an agency called Distilled in early 2020, with the whole team becoming part of the new company. At Distilled, the product was called DistilledODN.

At SearchPilot we are passionate about our team, and we want that to be more than just words. We want to continue to build a team of people who can thrive and succeed, as well as feel valued and welcomed, at all levels.

As part of that goal, we are trying hard to actively build a diverse team, as we believe diversity is a necessary component to building the strongest company possible. To this end, one of the steps we have taken is committing to an annual report assessing how we are doing on this front - all of these reports can be seen here.

SearchPilot does not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, marital status, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion, or any other characteristic irrelevant to an individual's ability to fulfill the relevant role. We are committed not only to meeting our legal obligations in this area, but also to the positive promotion of diversity in our teams.