Head of Marketing Job Description

Head of Marketing responsibilities include creating the business’ marketing strategy and developing a brand's presence. It is a role with numerous senior responsibilities, managing lots of moving parts and requiring extensive sector and legal knowledge, especially the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

Skills and expertise gained from within various marketing roles, such as Digital Marketing Manager, Content Manager or Channel Marketing Consultant, could set you on the right career path to become a Head of Marketing.

 

Being a Head of Marketing  

As the Head of Marketing, you will need a proven track record in driving multi-channel marketing programmes and are responsible for developing marketing strategies and initiatives, creating marketing briefs for all key strategies, and ensuring that they are correctly communicated.

You will need to apply strong, inspirational leadership skills to manage and motivate a marketing team to deliver marketing activities, campaigns, and collaborations, and build customer engagement to increase brand awareness and drive sales.

The role will require working closely with the digital team, brand managers, design, eCommerce, social media, copywriters, PR, and executives, to ensure all marketing campaigns are in alignment with the core brand message.

In the UK, the average annual salary for Head of Marketing is £67,000. This varies dependant on the industry, for example within telecoms and IT the salary ranges from £80-£125K, whereas within the education sector it’s more likely to be around £40K.

In response to the pandemic, the marketing sector had to make huge strategic business adjustments when new systems and tools came in to play. There were changes in priorities and projects, budgets and headcounts were reduced, and they may have dealt with stark changes in teams’ structures and priorities.

 

Is a Head of Marketing job a good fit for you?

The Head of Marketing role usually requires at least 5 years’ work experience within a marketing department and at least 3 years in a management role.

Your day-to-day duties will include:  

• Leading the development of all marketing plans.
• Ensuring the implementation of effective marketing strategies.
• Focusing on growing audiences and the uptake for products and services.
• Reviewing and reporting on all areas of the marketing strategies and its implementation.
• Developing the corporate brand identity in consultation with senior managers, executives, and partners.
• Managing creative agencies and retainer partners.
• Collaborating with senior team members across all departments to uncover insights and create innovative marketing and branding strategies.
• Identifying ways to grow the marketing department and secure resources.
• Sourcing talent to ensure the curation and retention of specialist skill sets across your teams.
• Monitoring, reviewing, and reporting on all marketing activities, results, and Return on Investment (ROI).
• Conducting strategic marketing analysis that will help guide marketing messages.
• Overseeing social media planning and execution.
• Consistently identifying new or expanded revenue opportunities and strategising the implementation of plans.
• Conception, development and implementation of marketing plans and strategies, product concepts and promotional programmes to drive interest and sales.
• Working to continuously ensure the company marketing goals are communicated across the entire organisation and improving the company’s marketing outreach efforts.
• Ensuring that all current marketing and copyright regulations comply with accepted professional standards, policies, procedures, and legislation.
• Promoting and embedding strong and inspirational leadership to the entire team by demonstrating the company’s values and championing the leadership behaviour framework.
• Efficiently managing annual marketing budgets.
• Routinely sharing strategies, progress, results, learnings, and relevant industry trends, with the broader team.   

Are you a good fit for a Head of Marketing job? 

To thrive as Head of Marketing, you will need to lead the core areas of the marketing department, including digital marketing, web-based content, offline and online media marketing, social media marketing and direct marketing. It would also be good to have the following knowledge and skills: 

• Working knowledge of search engine optimisation (SEO), lead generation and affiliate marketing practices, techniques, and outcome expectations.
• Experience in leading your teams’ day-to-day duties and responsibilities, as well as project managing larger ad hoc projects.
• The ability to develop strong relationships with cross departmental team members to enable collaboration, advice sharing, and directional leadership where required.
• Excellent understanding of regulations, professional standards, policies, procedures, and legislation.
• The ability to use software packages competently, including Office 365 (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), Dot Digital, Mailchimp, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Google Business Tools, including Analytics, Keyword Builder, Data Studio, WordPress, HubSpot, Salesforce, SEMrush, Adobe Suite and Vimeo. 

 

Qualifications, Licences & Certifications needed for a Head of Marketing job

• A bachelor's degree in Marketing, Psychology, Communications, Advertising, or a Business Management related subject.
• Minimum 5 years’ experience in a marketing role.
• Minimum 3 years’ experience in a management role.
• Fluent level of both spoken and written English.

 Advantageous but not required:

• A Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) professional diploma
• Or a qualification from the Institute of Data and Marketing

To be an ideal Head of Marketing, employers will be looking for those who can demonstrate:

• Strategic thinking and problem-solving abilities.
• Superior interpersonal and organisational skills.
• Confidence to use initiative.
• A positive and approachable manner.
• Good time management skills and the ability to prioritise.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.
• Adaptability to change.
• Willingness to embrace new ideas and processes.
• Interest in developing your own skills and knowledge.
• The ability to be challenged on your advice and to accept criticism.
• Able to make quick but rational decisions when working under pressure.      

Where can a Head of Marketing job take you? 

If you are ready to lead the continuous improvement of a company’s marketing department and can facilitate the consistent communication of their brand values, this role is an excellent opportunity to progress your career and provide professional leadership, support, and development advice to a marketing team.

No matter the industry, the role of Head of Marketing is vital to any company’s brand identity. Evolving and growing within this role will help you find your way into bigger companies and across industries that interest you.

A great career path beyond Head of Marketing, could be to become a Marketing Director or Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

Next steps

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