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One of the coolest VP Marketing jobs around!

HARRY’S COMMENTS: I am working with an established online retailer of customizable signs and banners in its search for a VP of Marketing based in the Southeast USA.

The company is dedicated to helping retailers, event exhibitors, marketing agencies, and corporations make a memorable impression with printed signage solutions. From custom banners, displays, table covers and throws, to printed Flags — customers can simply state their signage need and this company can turn it into reality.

Like a Vistaprint or CustomInk for banners and signs, the client’s products are completely customizable and personalizable. To place an online order, customers can upload their print-ready personalized design with one click and build their own order based on color, size, and finishing options. The client’s in-house team of design and print experts is at the customer’s service at any point in the order process.

Financially, the company is in great shape and growing like a weed.

As the firm’s new VP of Marketing, you’ll lead all marketing for the company’s FOUR separate sites, including one that produces custom covers, and another that was recently acquired.

Its largest site (banners and signs) is doing $16 million with an AOV of $175 and roughly 51,000 12-month buyers. Interestingly, the firm does not do business through mobile because custom printed products cannot be designed on a mobile site. After doing some digging, I realize this might be a bad thing for the company.

Perhaps you can remedy that.

We’re looking for a PROVEN ecommerce leader who is equal parts analytical and creative. The firm does business overseas and runs the quantitative aspects of its Marketing team in India. But soon it will establish its strategic marketing functions in the Southeastern USA, close to its large format printing machines, fulfillment facilities, and N.A. customer service center. Unfortunately, this is not a WFH or telecommute-type role. As it says on the Little League raffle ticket, “Must be present to win.”

Already, the company has a handful of content and creative types on staff. They’ll report to you.

Early on, you’ll recognize an opportunity to grow the business through 1/ paid search (assuming you know whom to exclude from your campaigns), 2/ improving the top of the funnel with better positioning, 3/ more salient brand messaging, 4/ public relations, and 5/ social media marketing including Facebook. You’ll need a 360° view of marketing with a focus on proper attribution and conversion rate optimization.

To the extent that you get those things right, your fortunes will be improved in SEO.

As the firm’s highest-ranking Marketer, feel free to change the look and feel of the brand. Now, we wouldn’t expect you to perform radical reconstructive surgery on it without the aid of data and testing. But the client will understand if you feel like some changes to the brand will make it look and feel more sophisticated.

You’ll have a lot to do, but it’s all doable.

If you look at the responsibilities section below, it’s obvious that this is a big job. But if you’re the right candidate for this role, no doubt you’ve managed bigger P&L’s. We’re only talking about a $25 million business here. Think of it the same way you would if you were going to buy a similar business through a business broker.

First, you’d make sure the company has a …

• Massive addressable MARKET.
• Big / well-accepted PROBLEM.
• Clear and marketable SOLUTION.
• Highly defined CUSTOMER.
• Easy path to DISTRIBUTION.
• Proven REVENUE MODEL.
• Long term SCALABILITY.
• Access to the right TEAM.

My client’s business checks all of those boxes.

Next, you’d realize that to win with this business, you’ll need to bring an 80/20 mentality to your job. What 20% of your activities drive 80% of your results? Now, do that again: Take 20% of the first 20% of your activities, and you can drive 80% of the first 80% of your results.

This is the essence of 80/20 thinking: Knowing that 4% of the activities can drive more than 64% of the results. I’m not making this up!

80/20 thinking is the only way this is going to work. The role is not a workout or a turnaround. It’s more like a startup, but with cash flow from organic growth. (The good kind.)

There are lots of things the company should be doing now but isn’t.

You’ll need to tackle that first. Much of what needs to be done involves deconstructing and reconstructing the funnel. Tedious but necessary.

In your first 30 days in the role, we’d expect you to tease out:

1. What are we doing right that we should do more of?
2. What we’re doing wrong that we should stop doing immediately?
3. What is our competitor doing that we should copy?
4. What is nobody doing that someone should do?

Simple, but not easy.

Of course, you’ll need to be well-versed in attribution marketing — with team members in the USA and India, along with agencies and (I’d imagine) a few freelancers and remote workers. Did you ever see the Seinfeld episode “The Yada Yada?

Well, you could call this gig The Data Data.

You’ll need to manage your team in a way that’s hard on the issues and soft on the people while understanding the forces shaping modern marketing. Excellent time and project management skills are a must, as is a highly professional demeanor.

You won’t believe how much we know about this search …

I spent a ton of time on the phone with the client teasing out exactly what you’ll need to KNOW and DO to hit the ground running in this role. Some of the things I can share with highly qualified candidates include …

1. The “real” background requirements for this position, along with the top five things all resumes MUST have to be considered for the role.
2. The top five problems that exist due to this position being open. These are the little brush fires you will be expected to put out during your first month on the job. Every ecommerce job has these — and this one’s no different.
3. What your average day/week will look like in this role. There’s what you read in the standard ecommerce job posting … then there’s reality. We’ve got the reality.
4. The leading and lagging KPI’s that will determine your success in this role. In a nutshell: How you keep score.
5. The major projects you’ll need to complete by Day 100 to be considered a home-run in this position. We’ve got the lowdown on how you can plug-and-play and drive REAL value in this ecommerce job.

I have a massive amount of proprietary intel to share with qualified candidates. My industry research for this assignment exceeds 100 pages! Be sure to TEXT me, Harry Joiner, at (404) 281-2025 for this info. Or simply use the email link when you apply for the role below.

View Harry Joiner’s profile

RESPONSIBILITIES

As the company’s VP of Marketing, it will fall to you and your team to GROW the business across all four platforms. Meaning, either you or one of your team members/agencies will perform the following:

• Content marketing: Segmentation, content strategy, content calendar management, webinar, and video management, creative strategy
• Affiliate marketing: Agency management, program/deal structure, partnership development, affiliate marketing, direct affiliate management, program compliance, A/B testing, affiliate recruitment, revenue attribution
• Organic search: Agency management, content strategy, link strategy and partnerships, technical specification compliance, keyword research, industry knowledge and trends, competitive analysis
• Paid search: Agency management, keyword research, campaign structure, budgets, bids, creative strategy, optimization and attribution, mobile, A/B testing, competitive analysis, revenue attribution
• Display advertising: Agency management, segmentation, campaign structure, budgets, bids, creative strategy, optimization and attribution, retargeting, mobile, A/B testing, revenue attribution
• Paid social: Agency management, segmentation, campaign structure, budgets, bids, creative strategy, optimization and attribution, retargeting, A/B testing
• Brand advertising: Agency management, media buying, creative strategy, integrated marketing, localization
• Brand strategy: Positioning in messaging, creative strategy, campaign management, cross channel management, competitive intelligence
• Brand research: Quantitative research, qualitative research/focus groups, voice of customer, personas, net promoter score
• Public relations: PR agency management, positioning, PR campaign strategy, social media, executive preparation, crisis communications
• Email: Segmentation, campaign management and workflow, lifecycle campaigns, conversion optimization, modeling of industry best practices
• Marketing analysis: User segmentation, revenue attribution, lifetime value analysis, spend optimization, customer acquisition analysis, test designed, report design and development, modeling