Campus Sonar Needs A New Marketing Director: Are You The Next Sonarian?

Do you want to be the marketing director for a small (12-person), fully remote, early-stage startup (almost five years old) offering innovative, expert consulting services to the higher education industry? Now’s your chance.

I didn’t think I’d be hiring a marketing director anytime soon. I’ve only had one. Bri Krantz has been with us since the beginning of our company in one way or another. She’s doing a great job, and her team adores her. When she and I talked about her career, she always told me one of her professional dreams was to work with Ann Handley. She’s got the chance to follow her dreams, and that could be an opportunity for you. Bri’s leaving us this month to work with Ann and the rest of the team at Marketing Profs, and now I’ve got an unexpected opening for a marketing director. It’s happening at a pretty pivotal moment in our growth, so I’m glad that it gives me the chance to frame the opportunity so clearly.

I’m the CEO and founder of Campus Sonar, but I’m also a career marketer. I know what it’s like to take a marketing job where you have to build everything from scratch, or teach your boss what marketing actually does. This is not one of those jobs. We’ve built an inbound marketing machine that works. The contact records in our CRM are well-maintained, and categorized by persona and job function. The depth and breadth of our content library is pretty amazing. The brand is strong. The team knows what they’re doing. We have priority strategies that are tied directly to our business goals. We need a leader to execute our established strategies. Someone who excels at the strategic thinking required for business growth and can also translate strategic goals into action plans, engage and align a team to make measurable progress towards established targets, and make adjustments if expected outcomes aren’t met will be key to success.

Will we need you to come up with new ideas, evolve our current strategies, and build new things that don’t already exist? Yes, definitely. But you’re not starting from a blank slate, and your key priorities for your first few months will be clearly defined.

The full posting is available on the Ascendium Education Group careers site (that’s our parent company), and linked directly from https://www.campussonar.com/careers. The rest of this article focuses on the job’s largest priorities, who you’ll work with, and what I’m looking for in a candidate.

Purpose of the Position

The Marketing Director is responsible for brand management, achieving the revenue goals of our STREAM business line, and inbound lead generation and nurturing for partnership services. They oversee a small team that supports the company’s strategic pillars (i.e., build audience-centric organizations, prepare the next generation of higher education leaders) by demonstrating relentless empathy for our audiences via inbound marketing and networked growth strategies.

Brand Management

Brand is a business’s personality, and Campus Sonar has a big one. The Marketing Director is responsible for managing all aspects of our brand, including reputation, perception, market positioning, awareness, equity, and loyalty in alignment with our business goals.

STREAM Business Line

STREAM, our syndicated research and education business line, prepares the next generation of higher education leaders. It’s uniquely positioned within the higher education market, blending professional development and community benefits found through free and paid digital experiences with unmatched social listening industry insights. You are the visionary leader who sets its direction: deciding what topics will be researched, how to grow revenue, defining service delivery, and developing new revenue streams. You’re accountable for STREAM revenue goals.

Lead Generation and Nurturing

The Marketing Director is responsible for creating, managing, and executing the Campus Sonar marketing strategy to generate and nurture quality inbound leads as well as the building, monitoring, and nurturing of our brand. In conjunction with the marketing team, the Marketing Director oversees the planning, creation, promotion, and measurement of all content, email, and event marketing activities aligned with key conversion paths in the marketing funnel to generate partnership sales opportunities and convert STREAM membership sales.

Who You’ll Work With

You lead a talented marketing team who supports you in these efforts. Each of them brings prior experience from other marketing-focused positions, as well as a year or more on staff at Campus Sonar. Here’s who they are and a very brief summary of what they do.

Michelle Mulder is our Senior Content Strategist. Her primary responsibility is to develop and execute a brand-aligned content strategy that attracts and converts customers. She loves a good to-do list or project plan, and wrote the first-ever marketing copy for Campus Sonar.

Loren Branch is our Demand Generation Strategist. His primary responsibility is unifying our inbound marketing strategy with our sales processes and pipelines to qualify and nurture right-fit leads into opportunities. He is our go-to HubSpot expert and MQL whisperer.

Rebecca Stapley is our STREAM Product Marketing Manager. Her primary responsibility is the success of STREAM. She’s the first person to hold this new role, created in February, and transitioned from our Client Services team. She loves to nurture communities and build relationships.

I truly think we have the best B2B marketing team in our industry. They deserve a human-centered leader who recognizes and grows their talent, pushes them to achieve their best, and allows them to try new things even if that means failing sometimes.

You’ll join Amber Sandall, Director of Client Services, and I on our leadership team. You’ll work closely with her, and as a group we have weekly business strategy discussions and quarterly day-long retreats. Amber was the first employee of Campus Sonar and knows the business inside and out. She also has a marketing background, which you’ll find is a common trait of Sonarians (that’s what Campus Sonar employees call ourselves).

What We Can Offer (Salary + Benefits)

The starting salary for this position is $95,000. There are opportunities to grow your salary over time, and we can discuss those in an interview. Once hired, you'll have access to my compensation philosophy which will describe in detail how salaries are determined, how we calculate raises, when we might get bonuses, etc. I'm not afraid to talk about money with our staff.

The company will match your 401K contributions up to 4%. Educational benefits up to $5,250 per year can be used for tuition/certificate reimbursement (whatever you want to study) or student loan repayment assistance—that's up to $437.50/month to student loans. We also offer $400 in wellness incentives each year. Since all our staff work remotely, you’ll also receive a $60/month internet stipend.

Paid time off starts at 22 days per year and increases with seniority. The company observes 10 paid holidays. We offer 8 weeks of paid parental leave for all new parents (eligible after one year of employment).

Our health insurance is good and affordable. Our dental insurance covers 100% preventative.

Our parent company, Ascendium Education Group, prioritizes philanthropy and community service, and extends that to employees through the Ascendium Cares program. Here are a few of the features.

• Volunteer Time Off (VTO): Every employee has 8 hours of paid volunteer time off each year to work with a non-profit.
• Dollars for Doers: When Ascendium employees use at least eight hours of VTO at a nonprofit that provides services to directly meet the needs of underserved people in our community, that nonprofit is eligible to receive a $25 match per hour donation.
• Triple Your Impact: This employee benefit seeks to elevate opportunity by amplifying your personal donations to local nonprofits you trust to make your community a better place to live. With Triple Your Impact, Ascendium will match $3 for every $1 donated by employees to eligible nonprofits within 75 miles of Ascendium’s new Madison headquarters. For remote employees, organizations can be located anywhere in the employee’s state of residence.

These are summary points. There are others, like legal insurance. Honestly our benefits package is fantastic. If you’re selected for a finalist interview, you’ll receive a full benefits overview with an HR representative as part of the interview process.

Make Your Application Stand Out

Here’s what I’m looking for in top-tier applicants. Make sure this is clear in your resume and cover letter.

• Strong understanding of the higher ed industry
• Ability to translate strategic goals into action plans
• Experience with HubSpot Marketing Pro and Sales Pro
• Proven ability to lead marketing programs that drive revenue

Yes, a cover letter is required. I know some people hate this, but I promise I will read each one. Be sure to include:

1. What drew you to apply to this position
2. How your previous experience has prepared you for success leading a revenue-generating marketing team

Your cover letter has a purpose! I will use it to help me understand how your background may be applied to the role and to assess your written communication ability. Don’t assume I will interpret your resume correctly; do that in your cover letter.

If you are a Black, brown, Asian, Hispanic, LGBTQ+, disabled, or other historically marginalized person and are wondering if this position is for you, please know that you will be safe and respected at Campus Sonar, and I’d be honored to play a role in your career journey. I strongly encourage you to apply.

Applications for the Marketing Director position are due at 11:59pm CT on July 31, 2022. We’re targeting a late September start date for this position, ahead of our October Sonarian Summit (when we all gather in person in Madison, WI—pending pandemic travel protocols). You can reach out to me with any questions you have. My contact information is in the position posting.