Headquarters: San Diego
URL: http://www.takelessons.com
Do you live and breathe online funnels?
Are you an experienced digital marketer?
Are you passionate about building a world-class brand?
Can you lead and inspire a team of excellent marketers?
If this sounds like you, we’ve got your perfect job.
TakeLessons is a venture-backed company used by millions of consumers and instructors each month to find and book education services and take online classes. We have two products: first, a matching marketplace where customers find and book their perfect instructor – both in-person (locally) and online. Second, an online group class product called TakeLessons Live where customers can access live classes from wherever they are, on any device, and get the help they need.
Our VP of Digital Marketing will be the key voice for how our marketing attracts, nurtures, and converts customers while helping the company stay authentic to our brand.
In your role, you will lead the marketing team, but you would be expected to roll up your sleeves from day one and oversee funnels, write sales copy, determine what A/B tests to run, or anything else that moves our users further down the funnel. You’ll be working hand-in-hand with Product, Engineering, Customer Experience, and the Executive team to build products that make our users’ lives better. You will report to the CEO, and have direct input as a member of our Executive Team.
Here are the essential duties and responsibilities:
As the VP of Digital Marketing, You will find yourself overseeing and directly working on:
This role is 30% strategy and 70% execution. You will serve as the senior marketing resource within the company, communicating with and mentoring others
You will create, run, assess, and enhance our online marketing funnels that attracts, nurtures, and converts visitors into loyal customers. Again, this is hands on.
Traffic: You will oversee organic search, web and app SEO, direct response paid media, app store listings, remarketing channels, and brand-focused traffic drivers such as social and PR.
Nurturing: You will set up and oversee the nurturing funnels, including email, text, and Messenger
Site Conversion: You will partner with Product on persuasive sales copy, user flow, site conversion (mobile, desktop, and apps), A/B multivariate testing, and seasonal merchandising strategies
Retention: You will develop strategies to increase retention, lower churn, and increase cart size
You will be responsible for identifying the marketing KPI’s and crafting a strategy accordingly. You will also research the target audience and potential channels, create the overall messaging and positioning, and develop a plan of execution that encompases pricing and merchandising. You will work with the head of Product to understand customer needs and build personas.
You will be responsible for the TakeLessons brand, including voice, tone, imagery, copy, positioning, and customer insights. You will be responsible for making sure the site’s messaging is congruent and ensure our imagery is persuasive, authentic, and beautiful. You will manage our voice and messaging to the outside world through PR, interviews, public reviews, and other external sources.
You will manage our relationships with agencies and contractors.
You will build and support a team of outstanding marketers (in-office, remote, freelancers, and possibly overseas) through interviewing, networking, and community involvement
If you believe you can nail all the above, you’re probably pretty incredible, which brings us to an important question:
Why should you work with us?
We’re TakeLessons and our mission is to inspire the world to connect, explore what’s possible, achieve results, and build a better tomorrow. To do this, we’ve created a top education site for lifelong learning.
You’ll get to lead the direction of the company’s growth marketing, while helping solve really exciting problems. We’re seeing usage continue to ramp and we’re thinking about how to modify our brand so it can scale like crazy.
There’s so much opportunity to make a difference here!
The people we work with are open-minded and focused on ways we can improve. If we find a cool new tool or service that will really benefit the company, let’s use it! If you come up with a new idea or a better way to do something, let’s talk about it! We have a fun and smart group that loves to figure out creative and efficient ways to get things done.
What’s super cool is that we get to help instructors make a better living doing what they love. We all know how hard it is for teachers to make money, but with TakeLessons, they can teach their passion and get paid doing it!
So, what do you think? Does this suit you? If so, here are the details
Location: San Diego is preferred. This makes it easier to meet with the Executive team (also in San Diego). We may also consider remote: You can be located anywhere in North America with excellent Internet and phone connectivity. If so, you will be expected to visit in the office once a month.
Full-time only, salary, bonus tied to results
Necessary Skills and Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in marketing or related business or human psychology field
Direct background driving growth for a consumer Internet brand. You might have worked at an agency.
Expert-level knowledge (please, no junior level!) and recent hands-on experience with growth marketing / growth hacking, landing pages, conversion funnels, viral marketing techniques, SEO, app store optimization, and overall customer acquisition deliverables.
Expert-level proficiency with marketing KPI’s. Deep understanding of how to use analytics, data, business intelligence, and multivariate testing
High proficiency and recent hands-on experience with brand ownership, copy, messaging, and positioning. Extra credit if you have experience working on websites that have scaled up to 3,000,000+ active users per month
High proficiency in key web analytics and traffic reporting tools such as Google Analytics and Tableau. Proficiency in Excel and data analysis.
Proficiency with probability and statistics.
Ability to clearly and concisely communicate complex marketing subject matter to a variety of audiences, including presentations to the executive team and board of directors
Demonstrated success in leading and evolving marketing teams and effectively collaborating with the Product, UX/UI, and Engineering departments
6 years of marketing management experience, including proven success in leading marketing teams of 8+ people. You must have a passion for responsibility and be able to demonstrate strong leadership, people management, and interpersonal skills combined with the ability to develop these skills in others
Experience creating and overseeing successful execution of short and long-term marketing and promotional roadmaps
Direct experience with marketing native mobile applications to consumers
Direct experience with Google Analytics, Tableau, and SQL
Direct experience with Marketo, Iterable, or equivalent email system
Direct experience working with paid acquisition channels such as Google Ads, Facebook Advertising, and others.
Roll Up Your Sleeves: This is not a “sit in the office and plan” role. This is a role where you will be with the exec team one day, and in the trenches the next. All our execs also are in the weeds, doing the work. If you have graduated to the point you are above placing ads, writing copy, deciphering GA, or following up on a PR call, you’re not the right candidate.
Communications: You need grammatically correct written communication skills. You can present well at all levels. You can talk and present in layman’s terms at a company meeting, or you can host a white paper talk to fellow Marketers. You have wonderful interpersonal skills and can persuade, manage conflict, debate, negotiate and conduct meetings. You respond to pressure in a calm and reasonable manner.
Judgment: You make good decisions and take responsibility for them. You can initiate and perform work assignments under minimal supervision that may be broad, varied, and complex in nature. You know how to choose the correct course of action from a given set of variables, with limited data, and with limited direction.
Organization: We’re assuming you couldn’t have gotten to where you are without excellent organizational skills and time management skills that allow you to accomplish big goals. We want you to bring those skills with you.
Ownership Mentality: This is one of our core values. We are looking for someone who doesn’t just want a job. We want someone who thinks of themselves as an owner and steward of the company. This means you have the ability to make decisions based on what’s good for the long-term success of the organization and its people. You can get big results from small budgets. You have an internal disgust for company politics. And you understand what “We, not Me” means.
Management: You have mastered the disciplines of a manager, including visioning, planning, evaluating, making hard choices, organizing, and building up your team. You don’t have an ego and can solicit feedback as well as give direction to others.
Competitive Pay: We are looking for the right person, and will pay up for her or him.
Access to full benefits: We have full health care, optional vision and dental, and a 401K
Stock Options: Remember when we said we were looking for people who think like owners? We put our money where our mouth is. Each employee qualifies for stock options. Our goal is to make them worth a lot of money.
Being a part of an exciting tech startup: Yeah, we’re a bit older than most fledgling startups. But don’t let that fool you. We very much think of ourselves as a startup: fast moving, fail a lot, try things, no offices, no corporate BS, etc. But, since we’ve been around, that means we’ve found product-market fit and we’ve lowered the risk of a normal startup. So you get the best of both worlds – a fiery startup feel with the security of knowing we’re on the right track.
Freedom: We do have standard hours most of us work (8:00-ish to 6:00-ish), but we don’t micro-manage. At the end of the day, you will be judged by the work you produce and the health of your team, not by the number of Slack messages you send.
Working with great people: When you strip away all the benefits, all the tech stacks, and all the roadmaps, it’s really about the people. What you’ll find is that TakeLessons is filled with hardworking, honest, friendly, people who are here to build something great with their teammates.
Great! We can’t wait to meet you. Here’s the next steps:
All applicants must apply online at: https://takelessons.com/about/careers#join
• No phone calls or agencies please
• Sponsorship not available
• We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome diverse backgrounds
To apply: https://takelessons.com/about/careers#join