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We are working with TuneCore in their search for a world-class Director of Marketing Acquisition based in Brooklyn, NY.
TuneCore develops groundbreaking products and tools to help artists distribute their music worldwide, collect their revenue, and reach new fans. The company is the premier digital music distributor with one of the highest artist revenue-generating music catalogs in the world, earning TuneCore Artists $648 million from over 26 billion downloads and streams since inception in 2006.
It’s a Godsend for independent musicians.
HARRY’S COMMENTS: Not everyone knows this, but I’m 52 years old. I started playing the drums when I was 11. I still play today. (A lot.) Between 1985-87, I drummed for the Athens, Georgia punk/pop group Mercyland. It was a blast. During my time with the band, Mercyland played 90 live dates including CBGB in New York and the Rat in Boston. We even opened for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Happy times.
Anyway.
Back in the 1980s, there were hundreds of Athens bands, including REM, Pylon, and The B-52’s. In Atlanta, where I grew up, there were hundreds of others – not including the part-time bands made up of combinations of full-time bands.
Back then every band aspired to the same thing: To land a record deal, no matter how tiny and broke the label. A label was the only way to get a band’s own original music distributed. No label, no distribution. And no distribution, no college airplay — and therefore, no decent out of town gigs.
If you had a record deal, you had a “real” band. Period.
The Internet, of course, has changed all that. Now anyone can record excellent music very cheaply and develop an audience online without the aid of a record label. Case in point: In November 2013, I was bored. It had been decades since I had played any music to speak of, and I thought I’d get back in the game.
Mid-life crisis, I suppose.
Knowing absolutely nothing about how musicians interact with one another these days, I went on Craigslist and answered an ad by a young songwriter who was looking for a drummer. After exchanging a couple of emails, I dragged one of my drum sets to his house for a jam session. The songwriter’s name was Eddie Campbell.
The guy was a regular Thomas Dolby.
Eddie had about $1000 of recording equipment on hand and he knew how to use it. At the end of our third session together, we recorded this song, Passerby, which Eddie had written around one of my drumbeats. By the end of our fifth session we had recorded an EP called “Divide Me.”
The whole process was fun and really easy. To my ears, the music sounded great. And it was a great pleasure to scratch my creative itch. But we never gigged, and nothing ever became of the music. It just sits there online. Lonely. Neglected. Unappreciated, even.
In 2015 Eddie moved to Colorado, and I went back to drumming in my basement. Had we known of TuneCore, who knows what would have happened to Divide Me? Perhaps it would have found an audience …
About TuneCore
TuneCore is based on a terrific concept: Its Music Distribution services help artists, labels and managers sell their music through iTunes, Amazon Music, Spotify and other major download and streaming sites while retaining 100 percent of their sales revenue and rights for a low annual flat fee TuneCore artists maintain complete creative control of their music by deciding when they will release new music, what their fans will hear, and how and where to market it. Additionally, TuneCore gives artists tips to help them be more creative and grow their fan base in ways that make sense for them.
TuneCore’s revenue model is dead simple: Artists upload their music for a fixed price and keep 100% of the resulting revenue. The fees are ridiculously low: Just $9.99 for a single or an entire album for $29.99 for the first year. Creating an account is free — and it’s easy to upload artist information and music to join the hundreds of thousands of TuneCore Artists who share their music worldwide.
As an artist, you can find new fans and built a music career you’ve always wanted.
About the Role
Reporting to the VP of Marketing and Product, the Director of Marketing will drive the marketing roadmap and strategic vision to accelerate TuneCore’s traffic and revenue growth. You’ll build / lead a world-class marketing organization while leading innovative marketing programs that scale and drive ROI.
In this role, you will lead all marketing disciplines, including acquisition (SEM, Display, Affiliates and SEO) plus retention (email, social media, copy and site content/blog). As an A-player who’s passionate about driving concrete results, you’ll be responsible for setting the strategic direction and overseeing execution of TuneCore’s marketing efforts.
To win in this role, it is essential that you be a true leader. You’ll find yourself training and mentoring your team members as well as getting things done through others in a lean, fast-paced environment. You’ll have two direct reports (Manager, Marketing Analytics + Acquisition and Editor, Retention) and oversee a 9 member marketing team.
Naturally, we would expect you to have extremely strong Excel skills. And although we wouldn’t require you to be an expert in statistical modeling using Excel, TuneCore will expect you to have an intermediate understanding of how to leverage Excel for profitable, brand accretive customer acquisition.
In terms of acquisition, you can expect to manage campaigns for search and affiliate, as well as working on an integrated strategy for paid media, owned media, and earned media. We’re looking for somebody who is resourceful and creative, and who knows how to prioritize the most recent, up-to-date issues related to organic search. Accordingly, you can expect to get quality face time with both the tech teams and product development teams.
Great candidates who match this description DO exist.
We know you’re out there — and we’d love to hear from you! As always, my team and I are absolutely swimming in competitive intel and market research for this search. We can give you a complete rundown on the top 5 problems that exist due to the position being open –– as well as the top 5 projects that Management would expect you to knock out in your first 100 days on the job.
You do not want to apply without this intel!
If you’d like to know more about this opportunity, please text your name to Harry at (404) 281-2025. Or simply apply below. We look forward to getting acquainted.
View Harry Joiner’s profile
The tasks and responsibilities of this position include, but are not limited to:
Team Leadership and Management
- Motivate employees and peers and serve as a trusted advisor through a strong/collaborative leadership
- Create a team environment that encourages accountability, high standards and innovation
- Develop and retain diverse talent that makes a strong, positive impact on the organization. Continuously improve team and job structure and ensures clear leadership accountabilities are in place. Identify talent of direct reports and assists with their growth and development plans
- Facilitate regular, ongoing communication with cross-functional teams
Strategy
- Capture, synthesize and distill actionable insights necessary to build a compelling 1-2 year marketing plan
- Balance between short-term lead focused programs and long-term brand awareness/equity/advocacy
- Oversee all paid media budgets and leveraging analytics to implement optimization to meet CPA and spend targets
- Partner with International team on Marketing plans for International markets
Paid Media
- Oversee paid media campaign planning, strategy, execution and optimization including PPC campaigns managing bids and budgets.
- Test and optimize keywords and creative; maintain forecasts and goal metric tracking.
- Manage display and affiliate marketing channels. Devise and execute on strategic channel initiatives to drive efficient growth
- Negotiating terms with vendors, review and finalize contracts, approve invoices, ensuring campaigns stay on budget at target CPA
- Lead discovery and testing of new media and affiliate partnerships to efficiently introduce TuneCore to new audiences
- Manage vendor/agency relationships
SEO/Link Building
- Oversee SEO management through site optimization of META data, headings, internal links and URLs.
- Ensure SEO, paid media and content teams collaborate on initiatives
- Provide inputs to PR agency to drive holistic strategies for content promotion, link acquisition & brand coverage
Analytics
- Understand the target customer and ensure we optimize the online experience to meet and exceed their needs
- Deliver actionable insight to drive continuous improvement, providing operational and strategic insight to inform the product development roadmap and business plans
- Oversee assessment of campaign performance, implementation of testing, evaluation of results and translation to action plans
- Drive the direction and execution of segmented campaigns, using behavioral data to maximize customer satisfaction and response
- Regularly coach to ensure analytics are understood and utilized by all members of the marketing team to drive growth and optimization strategies
Content and Blog
- Lead strategic overall content marketing that not only increases TuneCore’s digital footprint, thought leadership status and brand awareness, but also effectively engages our target audiences
- Own development of “experience building” online and offline content streams that align with the marketing/sale cycle through buyer persona development and segmentation
- Manage email strategy, planning, calendar management, campaign execution, reporting and optimization
- Steer all aspects of email marketing campaigns, from creative brief through deployment, launch and measurement.
- Support strategic initiatives, by ensuring flawless execution of complex audience segmentation, testing and versioning
- Head testing and development of new email capabilities including segmentation, personalization, automation, recommendations, and creative improvements.
- Recommend tests to optimize email results
Social Media
- Oversee engagement and community growth initiatives
- Develop and implement strategies across social media to drive impact across the entire consumer journey, from awareness, acquisition and loyalty to advocacy
- Oversee copywriting. Follow and build upon the copy voice and guidelines for all online and offline visual communication material for key consumer-facing marketing channels including digital, social, experiential, traditional media, partner programs and site content
Skills/Qualifications
Experience:
- 8-12+ years experience in progressively senior management of marketing in a digital focused organization
- 5+ years direct team leadership/management experience having demonstrated leadership capabilities guiding a team with the ability to coach, mentor, direct, and provide feedback to those employees
- International and/or global marketing experience a plus
- Savvy leader capable of leading and influencing cross functional teams without direct report accountability
- Expert understanding of analytics tracking implementation of Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager
- Proven ability to determine a strategic vision and lead its execution
- Experience optimizing email marketing platforms such as Hubspot
- Experience with data manipulation and analysis using qualitative and quantitative research methodologies
- Strong project management skills
Education:
- BS/BA degree in Marketing, Business, Advertising, Communication, Statistics or equivalent experience
- Master’s degree with specialization in Marketing or related field a plus
Knowledge/Certifications:
- Knowledge of ad-serving platforms (such as SteelHouse and Quantcast), affiliate marketing and Google Analytics
- Familiarity with paid social media applications in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and well informed on emerging social media sites
- Thorough understanding of attribution theory and media mix modeling
- Strong analytical skills, with the ability to analyze raw data, draw conclusions and develop actionable recommendations to executive team
- Outstanding critical thinking skills and thought leadership
- Proactive, energetic attitude and desire to work in a results-oriented and deadline-driven environment
- Proven results in creative and strategic content development and optimization
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
UPDATE: THIS SEARCH IS CLOSED.
PS – If you’re thinking about changing jobs this year (though us or anyone else), you might want to check out this post on why even TOP candidates get rejected.
