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One of the coolest Maryland marketing jobs around.
We are working with Music & Arts in its search for an Integrated Marketing Manager based in Frederick, MD. The Integrated Marketing Manager will be located at the client’s Frederick, MD Music & Arts offices.
The Marketing Manager will be responsible for managing, planning and overseeing execution of new marketing strategies that are aimed at increasing traffic, sales awareness and align with the overall organizational goals for Music & Arts. Responsibilities include retail and online promotional planning and execution, ecommerce marketing, including promotion project management and day-to-day implementation of overall marketing plans, preparing key performance indicator and sales reports, managing email marketing campaigns, act as lead for marketing on the acquisitions team and assisting the Director of Marketing Music & Arts with other growth opportunities.
HARRY’S COMMENTS: We’ve been blessed to do a lot of business with this client, and their model is truly multichannel. Their primary business is the sale, rental, and service a band instruments, and the company does a masterful job of using both catalogs and online to drive all of their stakeholders into the stores.
Notice I said “stakeholders” and not customers.
Obviously, Music & Arts has customers, but the typical band instrument rental or purchase decision is influenced by parents and band directors as much as it is the students themselves. Therefore, it’s essential that the interests of each stakeholder is represented across every customer touch point.
Music & Arts operates 130 stores, and the firm needs to develop multiple, rolling monthly national promotions that tie in national marketing to local, in-store marketing. It’s an interesting dynamic: Music & Arts is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Guitar Center, which is basically the Home Depot of the musical instrument space. But unlike Home Depot competing against other national chains like Lowe’s, Guitar Center’s Music & Arts brand competes against thousands of mom-and-pop retailers dotted around Middle America.
Naturally, when leveraging so many marketing channels, it’s essential to be very planful in how one integrates those channels so that the whole effect of the channel mix is greater than the sum of its parts. Each channel should reinforce and amplify the effects of every other channel in the mix.
Easy to say. Hard to do.
First and foremost, it takes a lot of planning and a good head for strategy. The current marketing organization is very good at designing and managing events, such as this in-store appearance by electric violinist Mark Wood …
Currently, the team manages more than 1000 individual events per year, which are very often in store wine and cheese type recital nights where the parents of the kids taking lessons enjoy an evening of music performed by their children. These have been highly successful, and the client would love its marketing team to coordinate every relevant, sensible, brand-friendly, high-ROI marketing tactic available to grow the business.
A while back the Harvard Business Review published a fantastic feature called “The Future of Shopping.” For seasoned multichannel retail executives, much of the article was nothing new. But there were some excellent graphs comparing the advantages of digital with the advantages of physical retail. What follows is a quick breakdown of some of those advantages …
Advantages of digital
- Rich product information
- Customer reviews and tips
- Editorial content and advice
- Social engagement and two-way dialogue
- Broadest selection
- Convenient and fast checkout
- Price comparison and special deals
- Convenience of anything, anytime, anywhere access
Advantages of physical retail
- Edited assortment
- Shopping as an event and an experience
- Ability to test or experience products
- Personal help from highly trained associates
- Convenient returns
- Instant access to products
- Help with initial setup or ongoing repairs
- Instant gratification of all senses
In this role, Music & Arts seeks to seamlessly combine the best of these physical and digital advantages in a way that helps the firm remove friction from how its customers relate to the entire business, across every customer touch point.
One of this position’s primary responsibilities would be to develop national campaigns that have relevance at the local level. Such campaigns would include in-store signage, as well as providing promotional materials to Music & Arts ‘local sales reps who sell to schools. The firm has a number of revenue streams that it must promote, including repairs, rentals, lessons, and retail sales.
All marketing messaging (… from catalog to online to institutional to retail …) must be “on brand” and coordinated with the firm’s promotional calendar. Moreover, all messages must be promoted in the channels that make the most sense to the appropriate stakeholder: Affiliate; Email; SEM; SEO; Catalog; and more. Obviously, this is a lot to keep track of, and …
It’s your job to make the trains run on time.
Naturally, you’ll need to be highly organized and how you approach the role. The good news is that Music & Arts has long-standing relationships with world-class agencies who will be on hand to assist you. However, it will be your responsibility to track each campaign’s success across all touch points, answering for Music & Arts’ executive team questions like …
- Was this campaign successful? How do we know?
- What were the leading and lagging indicators of the campaign’s success?
- Should we do this campaign again?
- And more.
At the end of the day, we’re looking for an experienced multichannel retail marketer who can develop national campaign themes, and drill down the messaging through local media; through place-based and personal media; all the way down to in-store media like floor displays and aisle; to shelf displays like package inserts, channel markers, and end caps.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Major responsibilities of the position are listed below. To perform the job successfully, an individual must be able to execute each essential duty satisfactorily. Other duties, assignments and specific projects may be assigned at the discretion of management.
- Develop, execute and manage dynamically compelling multi-channel marketing and circulation strategies that maximize promotional campaigns to drive traffic, sales, including PPC Advertising, online advertising, social media, internal site campaigns, and circulation campaigns; continually test, analyze optimize targeting, content, landing pages an more to increase open rates, click thru rates, and other key marketing metrics.
- Develop the national promotional calendar for the brand to meet and exceed business performance objectives.
- Plan and execute the rental season campaign and strategies to increase awareness and rentals both in store, in schools and online.
- Oversee the execution and consistency of the brand in all execution mediums both digital and analog.
- Constantly monitor sales achievement both in store and online and recommend strategies to positively affect outcomes and improve efficacy of spend.
- Manage the Retail Communication Coordinator.
- Work closely with teams from marketing, merchandising, IT, creative, operations, sales, and finance to support the brand’s business objectives.
- Report on marketing performance using the internal data warehouse and third-party analytics software.
- Manage supplier relationships by guiding the execution of brand-focused marketing programming.
- Collaborate with the merchandising organization to understand assortment strategy, sales trends and future opportunities.
- Develop the marketing strategy, competitive position and tactics to drive market share growth.
- Oversee all internal project management or vendor management if applicable, price negotiations, project timelines, review schedules, and obtaining budget and content approvals.
- Support key seasonal campaigns, brand launches and growth initiatives.
- Ensure teamwork and collaboration with merchandising and sales teams in connection to the overall company brand strategy.
- Manages internal partners and external agencies to achieve marketing goals.
- Communicate status on all projects and results on a regular basis.
- Other duties as assigned.
Education and Experience
- Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Merchandising, Marketing or related field
- Master’s Degree or Continued Education in Business, Merchandising, Marketing or related field preferred
- 5 years cross-functional brand in a multichannel retail environment required
- STRONG merchandising, branding, and marketing knowledge with experience required
- Strong financial understanding of budgets, ROI, P&L’s and cost analysis required
- Strong branding or marketing eye, with experience executing marketing plans
- Strong project management and analytical skills
- Interest in music and experience working in music industry a plus
Skills and Abilities
To perform the job successfully, an individual must be able to execute each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill and ability required.
- Ability to react quickly and deal within a fast-paced
- Anticipating the needs of the Director and the organization
- Ability to organize and prioritize multifunctional projects
- Strong analytical, quantitative and organizational skills
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
- Must be innovative, proactive and a team player
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.
