Marketing Manager

About the Role
The Marketing Manager will own Starbond’s direct-to-consumer growth engine across paid acquisition, retention, lifecycle marketing, content, SEO, answer engine optimization (AEO), social media, conversion optimization, and agency performance. This role requires a strong command of unit economics—including customer lifetime value (LTV), customer acquisition cost (CAC), CAC payback period, gross margin, and contribution margin—and the ability to convert these metrics into sound growth decisions.

You will directly manage marketing agencies across Meta, Google, email, and AEO while leading the internal Marketing team, setting clear performance standards, and giving the CEO timely visibility into results, risks, and recommended actions.

Key Responsibilities

DTC Growth and Customer Acquisition

Develop and lead the DTC acquisition strategy across Meta Ads, Google Ads, Shopify, email, SEO, social media, Amazon alignment, and other relevant channels.
Manage marketing for profitable growth—not revenue or ROAS alone—by incorporating product margin, contribution margin, retention, and customer quality into decisions.
Establish acceptable CAC thresholds by product, customer segment, campaign, and channel, and recommend when to scale, restructure, reduce, or discontinue investment.
Align advertising, creative, landing pages, offers, product positioning, inventory availability, and operational readiness.

LTV, Retention, and Lifecycle Marketing

Maintain a clear and consistent LTV methodology using customer revenue, purchase frequency, retention, gross margin or contribution margin, and cohort data.
Analyze LTV and retention by acquisition source, product, cohort, and customer segment, and use the findings to improve channel and offer decisions.
Lead strategies that improve repeat purchase rate, purchase frequency, average order value, cross-sell, replenishment, retention, and win-back performance.
Oversee email and lifecycle marketing quality, segmentation, deliverability, revenue contribution, and customer communication accuracy.

Paid Advertising and Conversion

Oversee paid media strategy, budget pacing, campaign structure, audience strategy, creative testing, attribution, and landing-page performance.
Establish clear testing, scaling, optimization, and stop-loss rules, and require decisions to be supported by sufficient data and financial context.
Review performance at the channel, campaign, audience, creative, product, and cohort levels.
Partner with the Web Developer on Shopify priorities, site performance, conversion rate optimization, tracking, and quality assurance.

Agency and Vendor Management

Directly manage marketing agencies across Meta, Google, email, and AEO, including scopes of work, deliverables, timelines, communication standards, SLAs, KPIs, reporting, ownership, and escalation procedures.
Use agency scorecards and recurring performance reviews to track KPI attainment, SLA compliance, output quality, timeliness, efficiency, and business results.
Require root-cause analysis and time-bound corrective action plans for missed targets, SLA breaches, quality issues, reporting gaps, or inefficient spend.
Independently validate agency recommendations and recommend contract expansion, renegotiation, reduction, replacement, or termination when appropriate.
Ensure Starbond retains access to and ownership of advertising accounts, data, dashboards, creative files, documentation, and intellectual property.

Content, Creative, and Brand

Maintain an active content and creative pipeline supported by clear briefs, owners, deadlines, QA standards, and success metrics.
Ensure reliable content-production support is available when external resources are required.
Create a structured process for testing creative concepts, hooks, formats, messages, offers, and calls to action.
Protect product positioning and perceived value by avoiding excessive reliance on discounting and ensuring marketing claims are accurate and supportable.
Ensure approved assets are properly named, organized, and stored in company-owned systems.

Team Leadership, Process, and Reporting

Lead the internal Marketing team by setting clear responsibilities, deadlines, quality standards, KPIs, communication expectations, and individual performance targets.
Conduct regular coaching, one-on-ones, performance reviews, and accountability conversations; identify skill gaps and coordinate development or corrective action with HR.
Make timely recommendations regarding training, role clarity, workload changes, reassignment, or other performance actions when standards are not met.
Create and maintain marketing processes, approval flows, reporting definitions, campaign documentation, and quality-control systems.
Maintain a weekly marketing scorecard that distinguishes leading and lagging indicators and explains what changed, why it changed, and what action is required.
Proactively escalate material risks and present concise, financially grounded recommendations to the CEO.

What Success Looks Like

Marketing data, forecasts, campaign reports, creative briefs, and recommendations are accurate, validated, and financially grounded.
Campaigns, agency deliverables, reports, corrective actions, and launches are completed on time, with blockers escalated early.CAC, LTV, LTV:CAC, MER, ROAS, contribution margin, retention, and cohort performance are consistently defined and used to guide decisions.
Marketing investment produces profitable customer growth, stronger retention, faster learning, higher-quality execution, and stronger brand protection.
The Marketing team and external agencies operate with clear ownership, measurable standards, and consistent accountability.

What We’re Looking For

Proven experience leading DTC or e-commerce marketing across paid acquisition, retention, lifecycle marketing, content, and conversion optimization.
Strong working knowledge of CAC, LTV, LTV:CAC, MER, ROAS, contribution margin, retention, cohort analysis, and marketing attribution.
Experience managing Meta Ads, Google Ads, email marketing, SEO, AEO, Shopify, and agency partners.
Demonstrated ability to manage budgets and make channel decisions based on profitability and customer quality.
Experience leading and developing marketing team members, setting KPIs, and managing performance.
Strong analytical judgment with the ability to challenge assumptions, validate agency recommendations, and translate data into clear actions.
Excellent written and verbal communication, with a proactive and concise reporting style.
Highly organized, accountable, and comfortable working in a remote, fast-moving environment.

Marketing Manager