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We are working with YLighting in their search for a Marketing Manager based in Walnut Creek, CA. Founded in 2001, YLighting is the leading online retailer of modern lighting, furniture and accessories serving discerning consumers and trade professionals.
The company’s flagship brand is YLighting, which is the leading modern lighting retailer in the USA. Additionally, the company launched YLiving in early 2008 to offer its customers access to modern furniture and accessories. YLighting is about creating lasting brands, delivering an incomparable customer experience and having fun doing it.
Position Summary
YLighting seeks a Marketing Manager who will define and drive the marketing plans for the Y brands, continually seeking ways to optimize how the brand family connects with targeted customers and persuades them to shop, purchase, recommend and return. The Marketing Manager will work directly with the VP of Marketing and have a broad range of marketing responsibilities.
Core Functions of the Marketing Manager Position:
- Marketing planning and oversight: working in close partnership with the brand GMs, develop annual marketing plans for YLiving and YLighting to achieve their respective revenue targets; maintain the marketing calendars
- Consumer targeting: mine customer data to establish baseline measures and performance targets on key segments and behaviors (new vs repeat; trade vs. consumer; AOV; annual spend; etc)
- Effective marketing execution: drive effective execution of the marketing calendar on a quarterly, monthly and weekly basis; take lead role in briefing creatives and reviewing work products.
- Marketing ROI analysis: Monitor and assess results against key performance metrics; continually optimize marketing investments and tactics to improve results and ROI.
- Consumer insights: understand target customers’ wants and needs, particularly as they relate to marketing communications messaging and tactics; stay abreast of changes in target customer behaviors – where they go and what types of information they seek in order to fulfill their interior design visions.
- Category and competitor intelligence: monitor innovations and key competitor moves in the home furnishings category to ensure our brands maintain overall leadership; identify opportunities to differentiate and lead the category.
Responsibilities
Working closely with the GM of each brand …
- Develop the annual marketing plan and update quarterly
- Develop and regularly update the marketing calendar for each brand
- Define the goals, consumer targets and key messages for site and product marketing creative
- Review and provide feedback on creative for websites and promotional campaigns
- Gather and analyze campaign results on monthly basis; distribute topline reports and make recommendations on improvements to approaches and expenditures, as needed
- Mine customer data for segmentation, profiling, targeting and marketing performance metrics purposes.
- Monitor consumer activity (where / how / with whom they engage) and competitor activity (marketing communications, websites, products, partnerships, etc)
- Maintain marketing budgets
Qualifications
- 5+ years of marketing management experience
- Ecommerce marketing experience essential
- Home furnishings / interior design industry experience preferred
- Proven knowledge of wide range of marketing communications tactics, budget, project management
- Experience creating and managing marketing calendars
- Experience working effectively with multiple departments – editorial / copy, merchandising, design, etc.
- Extremely organized and able to juggle multiple projects at once
- Ability to take initiative, generate ideas, innovate, and adapt quickly in a fast-paced environment
- Strong communication skills
HARRY’S COMMENTS: During your interviews for this role, be prepared to …
- Provide specific examples of how you have created, defined, and executed marketing plans for a brand. We would expect you to have a teachable point of view on what makes a great marketing plan, as well as how that POV has informed your own work. Be prepared to share examples of your work.
- Discuss specific examples of marketing and promotional calendars you have created and managed for your brands. Be prepared to share examples of how your calendars supported your marketing plans.
- Tell us about your approach to defining a marketing program, what are the components and how do you ensure successful execution that connects back to the marketing program goals?
- Explain how do you define good marketing creative. Specifically, how do you evaluate if creative is ‘good’ and provide feedback when it is off mark?
More than anything, we are looking for sharp, business-oriented candidates who have an analytical bias to the way they approach marketing. Specifically, I’d like to see a hypothesis-driven approach to marketing that demonstrates a candidate’s knowledge of brand building supported by her/his use of leading and lagging indicators of what is working (and what’s not).
For example, can you demonstrate an ability to say “Based on my own research plus a personal affinity with such-and-such a customer, I bet this customer would gravitate towards a brand that made them FEEL (smarter / safer / sexier / younger / whatever) about THEMSELVES because of their relationship with such a brand. And I bet I could tell if that brand was having the desired effect on the target customer if these 2 or 3 metrics moved in a particular direction (up / down) …”. And then prove it.
You’ll need to be both an artist and a scientist.
Applications for this position are being coordinated by Harry Joiner. To apply, CLICK HERE. Candidates, please be sure to email Harry for a packet of market research and company / competitive intel 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.
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