Director of Marketing and Communications
Position Summary
Department: Marketing & Communications
Supervised By: Executive Director
The Director of Marketing and Communications is responsible for providing strategic and tactical leadership for the Marketing and Communications department. Reporting to the Executive Director, the Director of Marketing and Communications is responsible for developing strategic plans in alignment with the organization’s overall direction with the end goal of ensuring CRS achieves its annual and long-term performance metrics. The Director is expected to articulate and use a well-designed data analysis plan as insight for engaging and maintain engagement of current and potential customers and to inform all marketing communication and advertising campaign decisions and actions. This position is responsible for creating and implementing a comprehensive marketing and communication plan and for heavy collaboration on business development plans.
The Director develops and oversees short- and long-term annual marketing and communications promotional projects for all of CRS’s programs, products and services and oversees the quality control and project management process as a key tool for protecting brand integrity and reputation.
The Director is also responsible for overseeing and planning for CRS’s social media strategy and for ensuring desired messaging are consistently communicated internally and externally and for CRS’s annual conference. The Director is responsible for ensuring CRS’s websites have quality marketing and communication messages and functioning.
Primary Duties & Responsibilities
Planning, designing, and implementing marketing and promotional campaign projects
Creates and implements an annual strategic plan aligned to CRS’s revenue stream metrics, marketing and communication and business development goals. Evaluates and adjusts that plan on a regular and on-going basis for effectiveness to achieve desired results and return on investment.
- Responsible for the development of annual and on-going marketing projects and ensuring each project follows a well-designed quality control and development process that supports on-time and on-budget completion and execution of the project.
- Ensures that each marketing project has a unique identity and that they are developed with the intention to achieve or exceed annual goals. Leads a departmental culture that is nimble and flexible (growth mindset) so as to quickly adapt and improve strategies and activities based upon quality data and feedback. The current body of work for which Marketing and Communications is responsible for setting annual goals are:
- Responsive Classroom contracts for four-day courses and one-day workshops in the US and internationally. These services are provided all year long.
- Responsive Classroom advertised events for four-day courses (June, July, Aug in US and all year long internationally) and one-day workshops (October – March).
- Responsive Classroom publications
- Ave A Books
- Fly Five Curriculum & SEL Workshop
- CRS national conference
- Leads the production of high-quality catalogs and other print and digital sales materials. Responsible for the collaboration needed to ensure the editorial and design direction for all marketing and communication materials are accurate, consistent and internally vetted prior to release
- Oversees the curation and management of marketing assets
- Responsible for conducting regular marketing research and measuring the success of a campaign with an emphasis on analysis, insight, and recommended action
- Plans and oversees the execution of CRS’s annual conference
Well-designed communication and cross-promotional plans
- Responsible for leading communication intended to engage, educate, advocate, and project CRS and its programs as a leader in SEL program development, publications, curriculum, service provider and researcher that is well respected, highly-used and has a national and global reach
- Ensures that communication plans and activities are understood as an investment and each communication plan has a clearly identified expected return on the investment
- Responsible for developing a set of annual communication plans that follow an editorial calendar and ensure that each plan has the required bank of materials/assets. Does a regular evaluation of the effectiveness of planned activities and sets expectations and improvement changes based on data analysis and feedback. The current body of work included in CRS’s communication plan includes:
- Social media channels
- Social and Emotional Learning Professional Association
- Newsletters, blogs, regular emails
- Sponsorships, advertisements, and presentations and exhibits at other conferences
- Responsible for creating, implementing and collaborating on timely programmatic cross-promotional strategies and activities
- Implement a plan for maintaining an updated and well-organized database
- Coordinate and support the implementation of all webinars
Brand integrity and websites
- Responsible for providing leadership and collaborating with the Director of IT to ensure all of CRS’s websites meet the primary objectives of:
- Creating a display that convinces site visitors to become loyal customers and positioning CRS in an educational and marketable way
- Present its programs, products, and services as best-in-class, high-quality and -value, a reliable source of useful and practical content, dependable, trustworthy, and experienced in education and SEL
- Existing as marketing and communication tools intended to generate business and a place where business can be easily transacted
- A source for promoting goodwill among customers and prospects, and delivering strong marketing messages
- Beautifully designed, easy to navigate, sensibly organized, frequently updated, and inspiring
- Collaborates with Directors of IT, Business Development and Customer Care, Administration & Strategy, and Finance on the development and e-commerce functions of CRS’s websites and the Directors of Programs and Publications on content development and design
- Responsible for ensuring all print and digital marketing materials are branded appropriately and free of grammatical errors, easy to read and process, well-designed and presented with integrity and consistency
- Ensures there is a consistent marketing message across the organization, including unified messaging via emails, phone messages, and other external communications
- Oversees media relations, has a regular press release schedule, and provides tools for customers to complete their own press releases
- Ensures that CRS uses communication tools that are well suited to our current and future audience
Collaborates and acts on strategy
- In collaboration with other directors, design, support, and oversee cross-functional teams as appropriate to carry out marketing activities
- Lead a collaborative effort between the Marketing and Communications staff and other departments to plan all aspects of CRS conferences, panels and forums, and secondary events
- Collaborates with relevant directors to generate campaigns that drive sales of services and products, in particular, the Summer Cross-Promotional Plan
- Collaborates with other directors to plan and implement CRS’s annual conference
- Collaborates with Principal Scientist to develop and share research data or to conduct market research and to support education, engagement, and advocacy communications
- Collaborates with other directors on asset creation and for print and digital product development, social media assets including photography and videography
Other Duties
- Plan, develop, implement and monitor the Marketing and Communications department annual budget
- Represents CRS positively and professionally in interactions with clients, vendors, and the community at large
- Serves on CRS’s leadership team, playing a key role in setting and executing organizational strategy
- Attend Board meetings as needed, assisting the Executive Director with preparation of materials and reports.
- Other duties as assigned by Executive Director.
Knowledge, Skills & Abilities Required
- Five or more years of successful leadership; with a Bachelor’s degree in journalism (communication), education, marketing, advertising or business; experience in marketing, communication, advertising, and brand management preferred
- Experienced in communicating with multiple educational professional audiences
- Able to operate on both a tactical and a strategic level, overseeing highly effective teams while also collaborating with colleagues to develop new, innovative marketing and communications solutions
- High accountability for performance; goal-oriented, flexible, and creative under pressure
- Strong leadership skills and the ability to hire, train, and motivate team members
- Ability to travel (sometimes extensively) is required
- Regular and reliable attendance
- Maintains membership in a professional organization, such as the American Marketing Association (AMA); keeps informed of developments in the fields of communications, marketing, advertising, and education and use this information to help CRS operate with initiative and innovation
- Disposition is consistently professional, cooperative, and collegial as evidenced by workplace maturity, composure, perspective, transparency, reliability, integrity and trustworthiness
- Caring for and commitment to the mission, vision, and direction of CRS
Physical Requirements
- Ability to use a computer for up to 8 hours per day, with breaks and lunch.
- Ability to talk on the telephone for up to 4 hours per day.
- Ability to travel by airplane and automobile.
- Ability to lift 30 pounds on occasion.
These requirements are representative, but not all-inclusive, of the knowledge, skill, and ability required to perform this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
This job description is only a summary of the typical functions of this position, not an exhaustive or comprehensive list of all possible job responsibilities, tasks and duties. Responsibilities, tasks, and duties of individual jobholders may vary from the above description. Other duties, as assigned by the jobholder’s supervisor, may also be required.
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