🟥 EMPLOYERS: Separate from recruiting, I write investment‑grade recruiting briefs that walk A‑player ecommerce candidates through the real business case for your role – the market, channels, KPIs, tech stack, team, and AI issues – before they ever get on Zoom with you. I research / write it. YOU bless it. YOU own it.

RESULT: Your first‑round conversations are with 6-8 highly informed A-players who already understand where/how they can drive EBITDA. To have me write and send your posting out to this list, text Harry Joiner at (404) 281‑2025. Confidential briefs / application process are no problem. ⬇️ SEE EXAMPLE ⬇️

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HARRY’S TEARDOWN: Authority Brands is a PE-backed (no surprise) platform of 15 home services franchise brands headquartered in Columbia, Maryland. If you’ve spent your career optimizing DTC acquisition funnels, managing performance marketing at scale, and thinking about customer lifetime value — you already understand 80% of what this business requires. The other 20% is the franchise layer, and that’s what makes this role genuinely unique.

Here’s the business in plain English:

Authority Brands is a holding company for home services franchise brands. Think of it the way you’d think about a hotel management company: Authority Brands doesn’t send a plumber to your house. It owns the brands — 15 of them — that franchise owners license, along with the marketing systems, technology platforms, training, and operational support that make those franchise businesses work. The brands cover everything a homeowner might need, from the property line to the roof line:

• Mechanical Trades: Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, Mister Sparky Electric, One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning
• Outdoor Services: America’s Swimming Pool Company, Mosquito Squad, Monster Tree Service, Lawn Squad, Screenmobile
• Restoration: DRYmedic, STOP Restoration
• Cleaning & Junk: The Cleaning Authority, The Junkluggers, DoodyCalls
• Care & Pets: Homewatch CareGivers, Woofie’s

Authority Brands grew from 2 brands to 15 in roughly seven years — almost entirely through acquisitions funded by Apax Partners, one of the largest global private equity firms. British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) holds a significant minority stake. A new CEO, Jay Caiafa, came aboard in August 2025 from IHG Hotels & Resorts. A Chief Growth and Transformation Officer, Ryan Bowes, was appointed in February 2026. The company now has PricewaterhouseCoopers as its auditor.

If you speak PE, you know what those signals mean: this is a company being prepared for something big.

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The on-demand home services market is projected to reach $3.64 trillion by 2030, growing at a 14.3% CAGR. The average U.S. home is now 47 years old — old homes break more often, and 60% of millennials and Gen Z prefer outsourcing home maintenance to doing it themselves. Natural disaster frequency is increasing.

Smart home adoption is accelerating, requiring more licensed electrical and HVAC work. The U.S. franchised home services sector alone is projected to exceed $65 billion in output by 2025. Authority Brands’ systemwide sales already exceed $2 billion across more than 2,700 territories operated by over 1,000 franchise owners in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America.

This is a massive, growing market with permanent demand. Homes don’t stop breaking. Trees don’t stop growing. Mosquitoes don’t stop biting. And the fragmented competitive landscape — where most consumers still hire whoever pops up first on Google — means there’s an enormous opportunity to win with better marketing, better lead generation, and better brand trust at the local level.

But understand: Home services marketing is changing at LIGHT SPEED …

The customer here is actually two customers, and that’s what makes the marketing challenge so interesting.

Customer #1 is the franchise owner — a military veteran transitioning to entrepreneurship, a corporate executive who wants to own a business, or a skilled tradesperson who wants a proven system. They pay $10,000 to $100,000 in initial franchise fees plus ongoing royalties of 4–12% of gross sales.

Customer #2 is the homeowner — typically household income $75K+, aged 35–65, suburban, time-poor, and increasingly unwilling to DIY. Average service tickets range from $173 for a cleaning to $12,500 for a full HVAC replacement. The Cleaning Authority alone generates the highest lifetime value in the portfolio because cleaning is recurring — bi-weekly or monthly — while HVAC and plumbing are high-ticket but episodic.

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The VP Marketing’s job is to make both funnels perform simultaneously: generate franchise buyers (new royalty-paying owners who feed the platform’s topline) AND generate homeowner leads for 2,700+ local service businesses (the cost-per-booked-job engine that determines franchisee profitability and, therefore, the quality of Authority Brands’ royalty revenue). Most CMOs have run one funnel or the other. Finding someone who can run both at scale is genuinely rare.

Authority Brands has built real marketing infrastructure to support this:

• ServiceTitan integration across all mechanical trades brands for unified CRM, dispatching, and marketing attribution.
• BuyFin, a proprietary embedded consumer financing platform (powered by ChargeAfter) that increases close rates by approximately 13% and can add $6,000+ to average ticket on major equipment sales.
• BuyMax, a group purchasing platform that reduces franchisee cost of goods. Corporate revenue of $427.8 million with $915 million in total assets and a D&B Spend Capacity score of 97 out of 99 — this is not a startup. It’s a scaled platform with institutional-grade resources.

The leadership team backing this hire has real credibility. The new CEO came from IHG Hotels — a company that understands franchisee relationship management, brand portfolio strategy, and PE-backed operational transformation at global scale. The new Chief Growth & Transformation Officer signals that organic growth — not more acquisitions — is the next chapter. And the VP Marketing (that’d be YOU) is the person who makes that organic growth happen.

Apax’s exit multiple depends on the quality and predictability of royalty revenue, the growth rate of franchise signings, and the unit economics of the average franchisee. Every lead this VP generates, every percentage point they shave off cost-per-booked-job, every point of franchisee satisfaction they improve with the marketing program — it all flows directly into enterprise value.

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About the Role

The VP Marketing leads the marketing organization across Authority Brands’ 15-brand, $2B+ systemwide portfolio of home services franchises. Your mission will be to …

1. Architect and execute a dual-funnel marketing strategy that generates high-quality franchise buyer leads and cost-efficient homeowner service leads across 2,700+ territories
2. Build the attribution and reporting infrastructure that connects corporate marketing investment to territory-level booked-job performance
3. Leverage the company’s technology platforms (ServiceTitan, BuyFin, BuyMax) as marketing force multipliers that improve franchisee unit economics and drive organic revenue growth
4. Report on-site in Atlanta, GA, with close partnership alongside the CEO, Chief Growth & Transformation Officer, and brand-level leadership

This is a local-services demand generation and brand management role where the “conversion” is a booked job in a homeowner’s living room, and the marketing P&L is measured in cost-per-lead, cost-per-booked-job, and franchisee ROI on brand fund contributions.

The job has been open since December of 2025, and it was March 27, 2026 on LinkedIn. More than a hundred applications flooded in. Obviously, these people aren’t seeing what they need in the position. Go figure. 🤔

🟥 JOB SEARCH GOT YOU STUCK? Book an hour with VP/CMO ecommerce recruiter, Harry Joiner, who prepared this analysis. Includes a 3-month membership to NEXTgig™

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Areas of Oversight

Multi-Brand Portfolio Strategy & Lifecycle Management

• Own the marketing strategy across a 15-brand portfolio spanning mechanical trades, outdoor services, restoration, cleaning, junk removal, caregiving, and pet services. Apply portfolio lifecycle rules where growth-stage brands (Lawn Squad, Woofie’s) get penetration-expansion investment, mature brands (The Cleaning Authority, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing) get efficiency and pricing-power optimization, and event-driven brands (DRYmedic, STOP Restoration) get rapid-activation media playbooks triggered by storm and disaster events.
• Define 2–3 signature plays per brand around consumer occasions and seasonal demand patterns (spring pest season for Mosquito Squad, pre-winter HVAC for One Hour, back-to-school cleaning for The Cleaning Authority). Apply stage-gate discipline: trial metrics → repeat booking rates → occasion-share targets before scaling investment.
• Establish and enforce sunset criteria and resource reallocation rules across the portfolio without sentimentality. Knowing when to shift spend from an underperforming brand initiative to a proven winner is the difference between peanut-butter budgeting and PE-grade capital allocation.

Dual-Funnel Demand Generation (Franchise Buyers + Homeowner Leads)

• Architect the franchise development marketing funnel that generates qualified franchise buyer leads — military veterans, corporate executives, skilled tradespeople, and serial operators — through value-first outreach, content marketing, franchise expos, paid media, and referral systems. This funnel has a 6–12 month sales cycle and average franchise fees of $10,000–$100,000 per territory.
• Simultaneously build and optimize the homeowner lead generation engine across all 15 brands and 2,700+ territories, managing a blended digital cost-per-lead of $75–$200 across Google Search, Google Local Services Ads, Performance Max, Meta, email/SMS, local SEO, and referral channels — with the discipline to measure cost-per-booked-job (not just cost-per-lead) as the true north KPI.
• Design omnichannel campaigns that leverage the “share of home” cross-sell opportunity: a homeowner who uses Benjamin Franklin Plumbing today is a warm lead for Mister Sparky, One Hour, Mosquito Squad, and The Cleaning Authority tomorrow. Build the CRM flows and audience segmentation that make cross-brand upselling a system, not an accident.

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Performance Marketing, Attribution & Analytics Infrastructure

• Champion a performance marketing mindset across all 15 brands, ensuring rigorous A/B testing, attribution modeling, and ROI optimization at both the national brand level and the individual territory level. The goal: every franchisee can see — in near-real-time — what corporate marketing spend is generating in leads and booked jobs for their specific territory.
• Build or consolidate the marketing attribution architecture across ServiceTitan (mechanical trades), Successware (legacy brands), and whatever systems the non-mechanical brands currently use — creating a unified reporting layer that flows from corporate → brand → territory and lets the C-suite, brand presidents, and individual franchisees all see the same numbers.
• Own marketing performance metrics including forecasting, attribution, and reporting. Maintain profit-sensitivity models showing how changes in CPM, conversion rate, or close rate at the door impact cost-per-booked-job by brand and by market. Present results to the CEO, CFO, PE sponsors, and franchisee advisory councils in transparent, board-ready formats.

Technology Platform Leverage & Agency Management

• Maximize the marketing ROI of Authority Brands’ proprietary technology platforms: integrate BuyFin financing offers into every consumer-facing marketing touchpoint (ad copy, landing pages, email sequences, in-home sales scripts) to drive the 13%+ close rate improvement and $6,000+ average ticket lift that embedded financing enables on major equipment sales.
• Negotiate and manage the agency and martech partner ecosystem to deliver best-in-class execution and cost efficiency across 15 brands. Evaluate whether the current mix of agencies and internal resources is right-sized, and have the courage to consolidate or restructure where quality or cost is out of line.
• Deploy advanced targeting, attribution modeling, and emerging technologies (AI-powered creative testing, predictive audience modeling, automated bid management) to optimize spend and improve performance. Challenge conventional approaches to media — don’t just buy what the agency recommends; have a point of view on where the next dollar should go.

Brand Architecture, Creative Direction & Franchisee Marketing

• Maintain 15 distinct brand identities under one coherent consumer strategy. Each brand has its own voice, visual system, and customer — the marketing for Mosquito Squad does not look or sound like the marketing for Homewatch CareGivers. Build a creative operating model (hypothesis-driven briefs, rolling creative backlogs, micro-test → iterate loops, canonical asset naming) that lets a lean corporate team produce and test across 15 brands with the speed and precision of 15 separate agencies.
• Manage the franchisee brand fund with fiduciary discipline and radical transparency. Franchisees contribute 1–2% of gross sales to national brand advertising; they expect — and deserve — clear evidence of ROI. Build the reporting, communication cadences, and franchisee advisory council relationships that turn brand fund management from a political minefield into a trust-building advantage.
• Champion innovative creative that resonates with each brand’s target audience and drives engagement across channels. For high-frequency brands (cleaning, lawn, pest), creative is about retention and re-booking. For high-ticket brands (HVAC, plumbing, electrical), creative is about trust, urgency, and financing accessibility. For event-driven brands (restoration), creative is about rapid deployment and community presence when disaster strikes.

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Organizational Leadership & Cross-Functional Alignment

• Lead a marketing team through a period of organizational transformation — with a new CEO (8 months), a new Chief Growth & Transformation Officer (1 month), and now a new VP Marketing joining in rapid succession. Bring calm, clarity, and operating discipline to a function that needs both strategic vision and executional certainty.
• Collaborate closely with operations, technology, franchise development, and brand-level leadership to align marketing strategies with operational priorities and drive location-level impact. Marketing in a franchise system is inherently political — franchisees, brand presidents, corporate executives, and PE sponsors all have opinions about how marketing dollars should be spent. The VP Marketing navigates that with data, transparency, and conviction.
• Build and develop a team capable of executing across 15 brands at scale. Establish revenue squads — cross-functional pods combining growth, creative, retention, and analytics — with shared KPIs and weekly business reviews. Hire for clarity of thought, financial fluency, and intrinsic drive. Protect the team from organizational drag by setting clear priorities and minimal busywork.

🟥 JOB SEARCH GOT YOU STUCK? Book an hour with VP/CMO ecommerce recruiter, Harry Joiner, who prepared this analysis. Includes a 3-month membership to NEXTgig™

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Qualifications

Education & Certification

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, business, or a related field; MBA preferred but not required if the experience speaks for itself.

Functional Competencies — Skills, Knowledge & Experience

• 10+ years of progressive marketing experience with 6+ years in leadership roles, managing teams, agencies, and significant marketing budgets across multiple brands or business units.
• Proven ability to run both brand marketing and performance marketing simultaneously — not as competing priorities, but as complementary levers that compound each other. If your career has been 100% brand or 100% performance, this role requires you to be fluent in both.
• Deep hands-on experience with full-funnel marketing and analytics platforms: Google Ads (Search, LSA, Performance Max), Meta Ads, programmatic, remarketing, SEO (local and national), Google Analytics / GA4, and marketing automation platforms. You don’t need to manage campaigns day-to-day, but you need to know when the numbers don’t look right and why.
• Experience managing large marketing budgets and optimizing spend for ROI — ideally in the range of $10M+ annually across multiple brands or territories. You should be able to build and interpret CAC/LTV/contribution margin dashboards, cohort retention tables, and profit-sensitivity models.
• Prior experience with franchise, multi-location, or distributed marketing models is strongly preferred. If you’ve managed marketing for a franchise system, multi-unit retail chain, or any business where corporate marketing must translate into local-level lead generation, you understand the unique dynamics of this role. If you haven’t, you need to demonstrate transferable skills from DTC acquisition, marketplace, or services marketing at scale. Here’s why that’ll be hard …
• Experience with ServiceTitan, Successware, or comparable field-service CRM/dispatching platforms is a plus — these are the operating systems of the home services industry and understanding how marketing data flows into them matters.
• Nice-to-have: Experience with embedded consumer financing (BuyFin, GreenSky, Synchrony, Affirm) as a marketing and conversion tool; experience in home services, property management, or facilities services; experience presenting marketing results to PE sponsors or institutional investors.

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Leadership & Management Competencies

• Demonstrated ability to lead, develop, and retain A-player marketing talent. You build teams through meaningful problems, growth paths, and autonomy — not perks and titles. You conduct interviews that test clarity of thought and intrinsic drive. You give feedback that is specific, actionable, and tied to outcomes.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills — particularly the ability to lead through influence with franchise owners, brand presidents, and operational leaders who do not report to you but whose buy-in is essential to marketing success.
• Board-level communication skills. You can present marketing strategy and results to a PE sponsor, a CEO, a CFO, and a franchisee advisory council in the same week — and adjust your language, framing, and level of detail for each audience. You connect marketing metrics to enterprise value, not just campaign performance.
• Decision-making discipline under ambiguity. In a 15-brand portfolio with a new leadership team, not everything will be clear on Day 1. You need the judgment to act on imperfect information, the humility to course-correct when new data arrives, and the resilience to operate during organizational transformation.

Personal Characteristics

• High integrity and radical transparency — particularly in managing franchisee marketing funds and reporting results. Franchise marketing is a trust business.
• Self-directed with a strong internal compass. In a PE-backed transformation with new leadership at multiple levels, you’ll need to set your own priorities, manage your own time, and drive your own agenda without waiting for permission.
• Entrepreneurial orientation. You think like an owner, not a manager. You care about unit economics because you understand that every dollar of marketing spend has an opportunity cost — and you’re accountable for the return.
• Data-driven but not data-paralyzed. You use data to inform decisions, not to delay them. You know the difference between precision and accuracy, and you know when “directionally right” is good enough to act.
• Intellectually curious and a continuous learner. The home services industry, franchise marketing, and digital media are all evolving rapidly. You stay current because you’re genuinely interested, not because someone told you to.
• Resilient and thick-skinned. Franchise owners will tell you when they think their marketing dollars are being wasted. Brand presidents will disagree with your resource allocation. PE sponsors will ask hard questions about ROI. You handle all of it with composure, data, and conviction.
• Strong communicator — written and verbal. You create clarity from complexity. You write one-page narratives that speed alignment. You present without relying on slides as a crutch.

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🟥 EMPLOYERS: Separate from recruiting, I write investment‑grade recruiting briefs that walk A‑player ecommerce candidates through the real business case for your role – the market, channels, KPIs, tech stack, team, and AI issues – before they ever get on Zoom with you. I research / write it. YOU bless it. YOU own it.

RESULT: Your first‑round conversations are with 6-8 highly informed A-players who already understand where/how they can drive EBITDA. To have me write and send your posting out to this list, text Harry Joiner at (404) 281‑2025. Confidential briefs / application process are no problem.