Sr Director, Growth Marketing

The Senior Director, Growth Marketing owns family acquisition and demand generation across Learning Care's 11-brand, 1,100+ center portfolio, a $1.5B PE-backed early childhood education operator. This role sits inside the Chief Digital Office, reports directly to the Chief Digital Officer, and has standing visibility to the Executive Leadership Team. The role is accountable for the full demand side of the funnel: paid media, organic visibility, social strategy, and online reputation, orchestrated into a single growth operating system rather than four siloed programs. Learning Care Group is evolving from a pure digital media buy model toward a 'win local' acquisition approach, where every brand's demand plan is tailored to local competitive dynamics, local market demand, local reputation, and local operator capacity. The Senior Director, Growth Marketing leads that shift. This role is revenue-first and conversion-first: every dollar of awareness or visibility investment must carry a defensible path to lead, registration, and enrollment. This role owns the paid media P&L and the enterprise acquisition number. It owns organic search, local search, social strategy, and reputation management as integrated demand drivers. It owns the primary paid media agency relationship and the performance posture that keeps it accountable. It partners with Lifecycle Marketing on the handoff from acquisition to activation, with Enterprise Analytics & BI on measurement and attribution, with Field and brand teams on local-market demand strategy, and with the Chief Digital Officer on enterprise growth priorities.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the enterprise acquisition number and the paid media P&L across 11 brands and 1,100+ centers, with accountability for the full demand surface (paid, organic, social, reputation) measured against lead, registration, and enrollment outcomes.
• Lead the enterprise shift from a pure digital media buy model to a 'win local' acquisition approach, with school-level and market-level demand strategies tailored to local competitive dynamics, local market demand, local reputation, and local operator capacity.
• Own paid media strategy and day-to-day performance across paid search (brand and non-brand), Performance Max, LSAs, Microsoft Ads, online video and OTT, paid social, and programmatic, with hands-on technical depth across the platform stack.
• Own organic visibility strategy including enterprise SEO, local SEO across 1,100+ centers, schema, Google Business Profile, and content density, held to the same conversion standard as paid.
• Own social strategy as a demand generator rather than a brand satellite, with social investment tied to lead, registration, or enrollment outcomes wherever measurable.
• Own online reputation management as a demand asset, including local reviews, response programs, and center-level reputation signals that drive local conversion.
• Manage paid media budgets, pacing, forecasts, and optimization across brands, locations, channels, and enrollment priorities, balancing efficiency, incremental growth, and downstream outcomes within approved investment plans.
• Provide hands-on technical oversight of Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, PMax, LSAs, Meta, and emerging platform AI capabilities, including campaign structure, bidding, conversion tracking, location and audience targeting, and creative asset performance.
• Lead paid media agency and vendor execution, including performance management, testing roadmaps, deliverables, measurement requirements, financial stewardship, and escalation.
• Design and run incrementality and experimentation programs including geo-tests, holdouts, brand lift studies, audience strategies, and creative tests.
• Partner with the Sr Director, Enterprise Analytics & BI on measurement standards, attribution methodology, offline conversion capture, value-based bidding, and lead-quality signals through to enrollment.
• Partner with the Sr Director, Marketing on the acquisition-to-lifecycle handoff and shared journey design so that acquired families land in the right lifecycle motion for their brand.
• Partner with Field, Enrollment, and Call Center leaders on local-market acquisition execution, lead quality, and funnel conversion.
• Present growth performance, forecasts, risks, and recommendations to the Chief Digital Officer and the Executive Leadership Team on a defined cadence, connecting platform metrics to enterprise business outcomes.
• Lead, coach, and develop the growth marketing team, including hiring, operating cadence, and succession planning.
• Other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications:

• A bachelor's degree or equivalent professional experience is required.
• 12+ years of growth marketing, demand generation, or performance marketing leadership experience, including at least 5 years in a senior leadership role, is required.
• Direct accountability for a multi-channel demand generation P&L at enterprise scale, with ownership of paid media plus at least one earned or organic channel (SEO, social, or reputation), is required.
• Direct experience managing $20M or greater in annual paid media investment is required.
• Hands-on technical depth in Google Ads, Performance Max, LSAs, and paid search broadly, plus strong experience with Meta, YouTube and video, and programmatic media, is required.
• Experience in multi-brand or multi-location consumer services with real local market dynamics (franchise, retail, hospitality, healthcare services, education) is required.
• Experience leading and managing an external paid media agency relationship at senior level, including accountability and performance management, is required.
• Experience with attribution and incrementality measurement including geo-tests, holdouts, brand lift studies, and media mix modeling is required.
• Experience tying paid investment to offline or downstream conversion outcomes (CRM integration, call center, enrollment or sales) is required.
• Experience hiring, developing, and scaling a growth marketing or performance marketing team is required.
• Experience presenting growth performance and strategy to C-suite or board audiences is required.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 15+ years of growth or demand generation experience with a track record of building acquisition programs at scale is preferred.
• Experience in education, childcare, healthcare, or other family-services consumer industries is preferred.
• Experience leading SEO or organic programs as a core demand channel, not a side function, is preferred.
• Experience with local market demand strategy including market-level demand modeling, local competitive intelligence, and local operator partnership is preferred.
• Experience with first-party data activation, customer data platform integration, and identity resolution is preferred.
• Experience in a private equity-backed business operating on a defined strategic horizon is preferred.
• Experience with call tracking, offline conversion tracking, and cross-channel funnel measurement is preferred.
• MBA or graduate degree in a related field is preferred.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Revenue-first mindset: every awareness or visibility investment must carry a defensible path to conversion. No channel is exempt.
• Multi-channel growth leadership: ability to orchestrate paid, organic, social, and reputation as a single demand operating system, not four siloed programs reporting to one person.
• Ability to move between hands-on platform diagnostics and enterprise-level investment decisions without losing either lens.
• Analytical rigor and financial discipline, including the ability to challenge platform-reported results with business-level evidence.
• Local market thinking: understanding that enterprise acquisition in a multi-location business is won at the market level, not the enterprise average.
• Credibility with operators and field leaders. This role has to walk into a brand president or Director of Field conversation and have the field respect the demand plan and the person delivering it.
• Ability to hold a paid media agency accountable while maintaining a productive strategic partnership.
• Executive communication: translate complex media and funnel performance into clear decisions and trade-offs for the CDO and ELT.
• Cross-functional influence without direct authority over Lifecycle Marketing, Analytics, Field, Call Center, or Brand.
• Comfort with ambiguity and the discipline to drive the enterprise shift from pure digital media buy to a win-local demand model.

Compensation and Benefits:

• Compensation based on position, education and experience. Bi-weekly paid.
• Base salary range: $205-230k.
• This position is eligible for our Support Central bonus program which is based on annual achievement of company performance.

Health and Wellness Benefits:

• Employees are eligible for a variety of health and welfare benefits based on their Full-time or Part-time status on their date of hire, which include medical, dental, vision, healthcare & dependent care flexible spending accounts (FSAs), life insurance, disability, accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, pre-paid legal, pet insurance and identity theft protection.
• Employees are eligible to participate in our 401(k) retirement plan after 30 days of employment. Participating employees are also eligible to receive a company provided match on their elective deferrals once they reach 1 year of employment with the company.

Employee perks/discounts:

• Education assistance including tuition reimbursement
• Childcare discount available to all employees
• Corporate partner Discounts
• This position is eligible for paid time off. All Corporate employees are enrolled in our Flexible Paid Time Off (PTO) plan. This plan allows for flexibility and discretion between employees and managers in taking time off - with no set accrual for vacation or sick time. Employees can use Flexible PTO for any reason and is compliant with the Colorado Healthy Families Work Act.
• Applications accepted through 12/4/2026.