Description
1 JOB PURPOSE
To develop informed, innovative and consistent internal and external marketing strategies to promote the brand values of Chester Zoo and to attract visitors; to enable Chester Zoo to meet ambitious visitor and financial targets and to fulfil our mission of 'connecting people to wildlife'.
2 ORGANISATION
(a) Briefly describe the major responsibilities of your immediate subordinates.
Marketing Officer
- Oversee the relationships between key tourism partners in the region to take advantage of joint marketing opportunities.
- Deliver marketing campaigns to target groups and tourism businesses to meet visitor targets.
- Manage the relationship with ticket agents to promote cross selling opportunities with tourism partners.
- Supports the Marketing Manager in campaign delivery and production of marketing and signage materials in accordance with the brand guidelines
- Provides regular updates on performance of groups and agent ticket sales and opportunities for partnership working.
Online Marketing Manager
- Develop the online strategy
- Co-ordinate all current and on-going digital online projects and activities
- Develop and manage agency relationships to maximise the return on investment
- Grow all online revenue levels
- Grow all e.databases and segregate into appropriate customer groups
- Liaise with internal team for content for e.mails
- Improve proportion of sales online v. offline
- Improve online visitor satisfaction levels
- Optimise online activity for ROI
- Develop and diversify online acquisition channels
- Produce KPI reports
- Support the Development team through development of online fundraising mechanisms and processes.
(b) Briefly describe the nature of the reporting relationship which exists between yourself and the manager to whom you are accountable.
The Head of Marketing
- Meets with the Marketing Manager on a twice monthly basis to discuss campaign strategy, research, evaluation and cross departmental working.
- Meets with the Marketing Manager and the other Managers in the Marketing Team on a twice montly basis to develop integrated working practices.
- Meets with the whole team (including the Marketing Manager) on a monthly basis.
The Marketing Manager
- Provides research and evaluation data to the Head of Marketing as required to inform management decision making and strategic planning.
- Consults the Head of Marketing for approval on creative concepts and campaign strategy.
3 DIMENSIONS
- Oversee an annual expenditure budget of £725,000
- Manage two members of staff (Grade 8 and Grade 10), and any marketing intern placements
- Provide strategic marketing activity to deliver
- A visitor target of 1.4 million visitors
- Provide marketing support to membership, development, events, education, retail and catering to achieve their financial targets.
4 PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES
The role of the Marketing Manager is to
- Provide market research intelligence (including benchmarking) to inform marketing and organisational and commercial decision making.
- Ensure the consistent delivery of the Chester Zoo brand identity (onsite and offsite) to enhance the reputation of Chester Zoo as a world class visitor attraction and conservation charity.
- Plan, implement and evaluate marketing campaigns to achieve visitor and financial targets and to promote a range of commercial and educational opportunities. These should make use of all digital and traditional media and tools available to us.
- Plan, implement and evaluate campaigns to promote awareness and support for Act for Wildlife and our conservation work, using both digital and traditional media.
- Determine the creative approach and choice of media to develop a robust and innovative marketing mix.
- Manage the marketing budget.
- Manage suppliers to ensure a high quality service, value for money and adherence to the brand guidelines.
- To provide recommendations for colleagues across the organisation and beyond to promote innovation in marketing, visitor experience and commercial operation.
- Manage the Marketing Officer & Online Marketing Manager
- Identify opportunities for integrated working with colleagues and external partners.
- Produce site wide signage and work with the interpretation team to ensure a consistent approach to theming and branding.
- Devise and develop a CRM strategy to develop visitor, member, and supporter loyalty and engagement.
5 HARDEST PART OF YOUR JOB
The scale of the job is challenging. From the day to day demands of providing print and signage to project managing complex research projects and campaign planning requires excellent project management and organisation skills to prioritise my work load.
Constantly innovating and bringing about a more ambitious approach to the use of the brand and marketing techniques has met with some resistance from colleagues and I've been required to use influencing skills to ensure that we remain focused on achieving the best possible marketing outcomes.
The infrastructure of the data systems make evaluation, planning and reporting quite challenging and prevent us from building a robust CRM strategy required to develop a fully integrated marketing mix. However I've overcome these challenges by developing a research strategy to inform my decision making.
Retaining a focus on strategic thinking and the 'bigger picture' isn't always easy when faced with the day to day administrative issues. Responding the the needs of colleagues and prioritising the activities that will make the most difference to the organisation is key to managing my work load.
Decision making relating to expenditure, campaign planning and creative is a challenge that I've enjoyed.
Developing and maintaining relationships with key external partners is a key part of the role and something that needs to be prioritised in order to unlock potentially opportunities in the future and to inform my own marketing practice.
6 WORK EXAMPLES
Brand Induction
Working with the HR team to implement an ' induction' programme to inform all staff of the brand values and practical guidelines on how to use the brand and how to enable colleagues to understand how the brand is relevant to their work.
Planning and delivery of marketing campaigns
The planning and delivery of marketing campaigns involves me utilising evidence from previous campaigns, writing a creative and media brief outlining the target audiences, working with agencies to deliver the campaign creative and media and to evaluate the success of the campaign in a timely fashion to anticipate the need for more action in order to deliver on the agreed targets.
Budget Planning
I was responsible for working with Finance to determine the general marketing and groups and tourism budget for 2013. This involved analysing the previous year's activity, drafting a tactical plan to achieve our KPIs for 2013 and projecting budgets accordingly.
Research and Evaluation
Over the last six months I have been responsible for project managing and commissioning three research projects to inform the strategic planning for Chester Zoo. I've worked with the market research agencies to ensure that the projects are delivered within agreed timeframes and to ensure that the projects are robust and relevant to our needs. I have then interpreted and presented this information to various deparments in the zoo to enable colleagues to use the information to inform their work. I continue to project manage these programmes of work and to integrate evaluation and data analysis in to different areas of my work.
7 PLANNING & ORGANISING
- I receive requests from across the zoo for support with creative, artworking, print production or marketing activity to achieve financial targets. I also work to a clearly defined annual tactical plan when campaign planning and am in the process of working towards a 12 month research strategy.
- I try to plan as far ahead as possible using intelligence and working with colleagues across the zoo to anticipate the key objectives for the year ahead, allocating my budget accordingly.
- I also have to be reactive to events (eg poor weather) and monitor the impact of my activity to ensure that I meet the targets that I'm required to deliver against.
- I plan annually, seasonally (seasonal campaign planning) and review activity...