Client Account Manager in Bristol

About Accelerate

We've been in the SEO industry since before it was called SEO, specializing in Saas SEO that is fueled by a combination of human expertise, data analysis and automation. Our skills lie in the strategic use of content, SEO, large-scale outreach and link building to get our clients organic results that match paid performance channels. But, we're not just about getting results. We’re about finding the leanest, most efficient and effective routes to get there. Forget the old agency adage of ‘pulling a late one’ - we’re all about working smarter, not harder while respecting our colleagues’ work life balance. As a fast-growing business looking to scale up quickly we focus on giving our employees a voice and trusting them to lead. We’re happy with either experienced heads who can hit the ground running, or hungry, diamond-in-the-rough types, who aren’t phased by the deep end. We welcome new ideas and an array of backgrounds that can really help us to develop across all areas of the business. Our aim for 2022 is to really take things to the next step and be the future of SEO for Sass.

What we’re looking for

We’re looking for an experienced client manager who has a proven track record for delivering success to clients with an emphasis on retention and upselling. These are the main areas you'll need to work on:

• Building client relationships: We need someone who is obsessed with their clients and their businesses. You’ll need to know everything about them from their financial calendar, to whether they are gearing up for an IPO or lining up any acquisitions, you’ll need to understand their internal org structure and even know your immediate contacts' birthdays and work anniversaries. You need to know what success looks like to your client and to make sure that is translated effectively to your SEO strategist. This will empower your strategist to deliver great results that will help you retain or potentially upsell your client.
• Lead our delivery teams: The position of client manager is a fulcrum position where you will be joining up all the delivery teams to ensure they are all pulling in the right direction to fulfill your clients’ needs. While you will not be managing the other delivery teams directly, the buck ultimately stops with you on client satisfaction and retention, so it is key you are up to the challenge of galvanising the teams to deliver results according to the clients expectations.
• Commercials: It is important you have a handle on when your client contracts are up for renewal and how this affects the profit and loss account of our agency. You’ll need to anticipate renewal dates and create campaigns to really show the clients the love when their contract is up. This also means creating performance reports and projections on future growth to encourage them to continue or even up their budget. You will be encouraged to work with our Head of Growth on building these campaigns to work in key upsells.
• Project Management: You will also be comfortable with prioritising workloads based on the commercial weight of the clients. While we always want to deliver the same high Accelerate standard to our clients, the client manager will have to understand which clients might need to take priority if we ever need to juggle resources. This also means managing clients’ expectations and ensuring projects are kept within scope and are not over-delivered upon.
• Leading direct reports: You will also have client execs working for you to help organise client work and support with admin tasks while chasing up deliveries. Your team will consist of one or two client execs and one or two client virtual assistants. It will be your responsibility to lead this team. This means not only ensuring they are delivering the work but also making sure your team is happy and each of them have a good understanding of where they fit and what their responsibilities are. You will be there to create a positive team environment and consider your team’s wellbeing and work life balance too. This means leading one-to-ones and creating bespoke professional development plans to show them clear lines of progression. It’s important you don’t just manage your team but lead and empower them too.

Company structure

Our client managers are here to do just that, manage the clients. The Accelerate model we’re building out focuses on using a trifecta of internal stakeholders working cohesively to maintain client and agency performance. These three core individuals include:

• A client manager - responsible for retention and ensuring the client is happy and well looked after
• A project manager - responsible for the work getting done effectively and profitability without over or under delivering
• An SEO strategist - responsible for results, this means setting KPIs with the client and ensuring they are delivered upon

We expect our client managers to be just that, client managers who manage clients. While you’ll need to know about SEO and understand how it works well enough to earn our clients trust, your core focuses are on retention, and commercials. Work with the SEO strategist closely and empower them to run and manage the strategy to best deliver results based on your clients needs. We have separated clients into different pods with a maximum of 10 clients per pod, led by a client manager and one or two client execs with a client VA and their own dedicated SEO strategist and SEO execs.

Skills required for the role include:

• At least 3 years previous or current experience as a client manager in a digital marketing agency or preferably an SEO agency
• We’re also happy to speak to in-house staff too if they have demonstrable transferable experience that speaks to all of the above.
• Experience with project management tools (preferably Asana) desired
• Some SEO or digital marketing experience
• Experience managing a team
• Great communication and verbal skills
• Great leadership skills
• Calm under pressure
• Ability to juggle multiple clients and deadlines

What you’ll get

• Basic salary from £28,000 to £42,000 depending on experience
• 20-days holidays + bank holidays + Christmas shutdown + 2 extra days per year for each full year of service up to a total of 8
• Hybrid working
• Flexi-time
• Excellent maternity, paternity and adoption packages
• Annual allowance towards helping you maintain and improve your mental and physical well-being
• Regular team incentives & annual get-togethers

What next?

If the above sounds like something your capable of doing and would be excited to take ownership of please reach out to us. Our process usually involves an initial qualifying call, then a more in-depth call with head of operations before potentially doing a presentation, if needed, to our head of ops and the founder.