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HARRY’S COMMENTS: We are working with an established, California-based importer and further processor of herbs and spices in its search for a world-class Director of Digital Marketing. This role is FULLY REMOTE / WFH.

About the Company

The client founded their business in the mid-1990s, marketing bulk herbs and spices to local shops, restaurants, and health food stores. Today, the firm supplies “botanicals” to a wide range of customers, from tea shops to herbalists, to pet supplements and brands of kombucha and skincare (to name a few).

Since its inception, the firm has remained true to its core of helping small- to mid-sized businesses thrive using the power of herbs to impact everyday wellness.

Indeed, my client’s entire model revolves around how best to serve small- to mid-sized businesses: Its product assortment; The fact that it offers wholesale prices without requiring a wholesale account; plus The firm’s commitment to ship all orders from its facility within two days, are all done in the name of helping small businesses WIN in the marketplace.

That focus has paid off.

Currently, my client sells dried herbs, spices, and teas to thousands of SMB customers, including 1/ tea and coffee shops, 2/ health food stores, 3/ herbalists and holistic wellness specialists, 4/ nutraceutical brands, 5/ animal supplements manufacturers, 6/ distilleries and microbreweries, 7/ skincare and beauty retailers, and 8/ food and beverage brands.

All of these companies feel highly confident using the firm’s SKUs as either ingredients, or re-packed as standalone products for retail / wholesale.

Now private equity-backed and transitioning from “founder-led” to a cohesive, world-class senior leadership team, two-thirds of my client’s revenue is generated through a best-in-class ecommerce site.

The firm’s new President is loaded with excellent experience in brand and customer marketing, and the company has an established network of capable agency partners. That’s where YOU come in …

About the Role

Reporting directly to the President, the company is ready to establish a lead Marketing role to GROW the business while serving as a vital part of the Senior Leadership team.

Conceptually, the job is pretty straightforward:

The client’s brand is already effectively positioned as a one-stop-shop for small and midsized businesses seeking herbal ingredients, and the firm’s value prop is justifiably based on a) high-quality standards, b) competitive pricing, and c) a higher in-stock rating than its competitors.

Here’s where things will get gnarly:

There are tens of thousands of small- to mid-sized that match the firm’s target account profile. Many of these are known. Most are not. For example, IBIS World research reports that there are 45,597 Specialty Food Stores in the US. And that’s just one market my client competes in.

How would you begin to assess this market opportunity and triage the accounts? … Who’s your slam-dunk customer? … Are they easily identifiable? … Are they affordably reachable? … Can you deliver superlative value to them? …

… What’s your plan to dislodge those accounts from their current suppliers? … What’s your strategy for growing your share of wallet? … What tools and resources are required? … Who’s involved? … What’s their role? … What happens first? … What happens next? Etc. Etc. Etc.

I could rattle off questions until 10 o’clock tonight.

But you get the point. The client has NINE different markets in which they compete, and ALL of them are currently performing and hold real promise for continued growth. Which is why I’m looking for a MARKETING ARCHITECT and BUSINESS BUILDER.

Yes, we need a first-rate marketer. But the world is full of excellent marketers. I need someone with a PROVEN PLAYBOOK for building a profitable, growing program (repeat) business from which these target accounts buy every week (or month) because you have made the company a TRUSTED ADVISOR and VALUED SUPPLIER to them.

In addition to reporting to the President, you will be a peer to the firm’s CFO, Director of Operations, Sourcing Director, Inside Sales/Customer Relations Manager, and (crucially) the Outside Sales Director. You’ll also be getting serious face time with the firm’s Board, its PE partners, and its agencies.

The agencies will do most of the work, but you know what they say about agencies: They don’t do what you EXPECT. They do what you INSPECT.

Which means you must know the ins-and-outs of B2B lead gen, … landing page creation, … SEO, … paid search, … social media, … email, … newsletters, … loyalty and retention, … reactivation, … conversion rate optimization, … analytics and reporting, … branding and positioning, … promotional calendering, … content, and more.

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 KPIs that will determine your success in this role. In a nutshell: How you’ll 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

• Evolve the value proposition to strengthen it for the small and medium business customer segment
• Evolve our understanding of the customers’ buying journey – pain points, teachable moments, opportunities for impactful marketing touches
• Define the marketing strategy and associated channel program plans to achieve revenue, brand and marketing ROAS targets.
• Lead and manage our marketing agency network to profitably grow and brand the business. Evolve network as needed.
• Refine and manage a suite of web and customer analytics & customer feedback tools to derive actionable insights.
• Drive aggressive, profitable customer acquisition and retention revenue growth through 1/ ROI and CPC channel strategies across the demand generation funnel, including SEM and Retargeting, 2/ Strategies to optimize organic traffic programs, 3/ Email Flows (Welcome, Abandoned, Win Back) and Campaigns; 4/ Web UX programs prioritizing small and midsize customer experience; and 4/ Content creation
• Enable a lead generation program to drive customer acquisition of high-potential midsize business customers.
• Collaborate with the Outside Sales Director to develop marketing materials to communicate our value proposition and product assortment to SMBs.
• Set and drive the strategy for new and different ways and/or channels through which we can grow the business (eg affiliate program, influencer outreach), through an agile test-and-learn methodology.

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of experience and education.
• Minimum 5 years digital marketing experience, preferably targeting small to medium-sized businesses as a full-funnel marketer.
• Experience managing various performance marketing channels (i.e. paid search, SEO, retargeting, affiliate etc.)
• A track record of using customer analytics and Recency/Frequency/Monetary Value (RFM) segmentation to drive profitable growth and retention.
• Demonstrated expertise using web/marketing analytics tools (eg Google Analytics)
• Ability to crank out sophisticated attribution models to assess channel performance and incrementality.
• Experience owning and managing a 7-figure digital marketing budget, creating forecasts, and delivering on program revenue and cost commitments.
• A track record of building a prosumer or SMB customer base in the hundreds or thousands.
• Experience in a similar category or business type (botanicals, dietary supplements, etc.)
• Deep knowledge of B2B lead generation and web user experience/conversion rate optimization marketing programs.

Functional Competencies /Leadership/Personal Characteristics:

• Works both strategically and hands-on – able and motivated to dig into the specifics of a channel or program to understand the analytics and act.
• Strong team player who can lead a diverse, highly engaged team of agency partners. Leads and influences others in a positive manner.
• Has an innate curiosity to understand the customer’s buying journey, pain points, conversion opportunities and opportunities to reach them
• Inspires agency partners to innovate, take risks and continue improving the quality and value of the work.
• Comfortable managing ambiguity, change and multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment. Remains calm under pressure; comfortable addressing difficult situations.
• Demonstrates strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Approaches tasks with optimism and a forward-thinking approach
• Comfortable pulling data, building reports and analyzing large sets of data across website and marketing channels.
• Proven ability to establish a data-driven, hypothesis test-and-learn approach to marketing. Utilizes a structured testing approach to find new wins.

Applications for this ecommerce job are being coordinated by Harry Joiner. To apply, CLICK HERE. Candidates, please be sure to email Harry for additional information that will differentiate you in your candidacy. Due to the intensely competitive nature of this search, thorough preparation for these interviews with this proprietary material is strongly recommended.