Director of Marketing

Hello College helps families through every step of college admissions, from 7th grade through senior year, with admissions counseling, tutoring, essay coaching, and test prep. We serve families nationwide, and our marketing engine is how they find us.

As Director of Marketing, you own that engine. You'll be accountable for lead volume and lead quality, lead a team of full-time and part-time staff and agencies, and manage roughly $2M in annual marketing spend. You report to the Chief Strategy Officer and run marketing day-to-day: strategy, execution, analytics, and the testing that keeps results improving.

This role suits a metrics-driven leader who likes people, runs on data, and uses AI as a real part of how the work gets done.

• Deliver the annual lead plan (typically 20–30% growth year over year) and our lead-quality targets
• Report to leadership monthly on leads by channel, CAC, lead quality, with analysis, budget implications, and recommendations
• Build and run a testing roadmap across channels, focused on hypotheses and incremental lift

• Manage about $1M in variable and $1M in fixed annual marketing spend (excluding staff)
• Shift budget between channels within the approved plan, based on performance
• Recommend annual budget and lead-spend levels; spend outside the approved budget needs approval

• Paid search and paid social:
  Oversee specialist who leads bidding and day-to-day management of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. You own strategy and lead landing page testing.
• Organic, SEO and AEO: set direction and hold our agency accountable for results
• Referrals and brand advocacy: oversee program design, plus how performance is defined and tracked
• Email, events, partnerships: own strategy and performance; your Email/Events lead runs execution
• Lead providers and affiliate partners: own relationships, contracts and performance
• Organic social: oversight; your Content/Social lead runs execution

• Lead full-time, part-time and fractional team members, plus agencies: set goals, coach, and hold people accountable. Team structure will change as our needs and growth plans evolve, and you'll help shape it.
• Evaluate agency and vendor performance and recommend changes; hiring, firing, and agency changes are made with leadership approval
• Run the marketing team on EOS:
  Rocks, scorecard, weekly L10s, and issue resolution

• Own marketing analytics and infrastructure end to end:
  Hub Spot, GA4, GSC, attribution and reporting
• Own the Word Press/Elementor website and step in hands-on when needed; our Web Dev manages the site and product team consults on larger builds.

• Steward our brand and messaging day-to-day, with final approval from the CSO
• Lead ongoing customer research: interviews, surveys, and direct outreach to families

• Use AI daily for analysis, research, and content creation
• Build agents and workflows that multiply the team's output, and keep expanding your AI skills

• Work with Sales on lead quality, handoffs, and shared funnel metrics
• Work with Service on referrals, testimonials, and proof points

• Lead volume: hitting the annual lead plan
• Lead quality: families who show for consultations
• Efficiency: CAC and return on spend by channel
• Learning velocity: regular testing, with clear findings and action taken on them
• Team health: a team that hits its Rocks and scorecard and keeps getting better

• 10+ years of experience in marketing. 5+ years leading a marketing team: setting goals, managing people, and holding them accountable
• Experience in B2C, high-ticket professional services (education, healthcare, financial or…