Digital Marketing Manager in Milton Keynes

Location: Hybrid role, with 2–3 days per month at the Milton Keynes head office

Working Hours: Monday - Friday, 37.5 hours per week (9:00am – 5:30pm)

Job Status: Permanent

At cinch our mission is simple - to remove the faff from buying and owning cars, giving customers more choice, with more ease. Already the UK’s largest online used car retailer, we’re expanding our offering with an exciting roadmap of online and physical retail solutions - including faff-free car servicing at over 100 locations across the country.

Role Overview: To manage and optimise our digital marketing activation and strategy across key digital channels, including Paid Social, Display, Online Video (including YouTube) and Affiliates. The role acts as a central strategic lead for these channels, translating business objectives into effective media strategies, while managing internal teams and agency partners to activate and deliver against agreed performance targets.

What you’ll be working on:

• Lead the Paid Social/Affiliates Execs to deliver best-in-class activations, overseeing the structure, creation and optimisation of campaigns.
• Work with the Media Agency to help shape our Display/YouTube strategy including Programmatic and Native.
• Ensure campaigns are pacing and performing to plan, proactively working with teams to deliver agreed KPIs within budget.
• Support with the fielding of creative production and supply.
• Responsible for overseeing all measurement strategy associated with the aforementioned channels, including reporting (weekly, quarterly, channel related and creative focused), in addition to tracking and tagging.
• Work alongside the Head of Digital Marketing & Marketing Effectiveness to develop forecasting and performance models (e.g. conversions, revenue) to inform planning, optimisation and decision making.
• Manage the programme for test & learn across channels ensuring results are statistically significant and taking learnings to ensure continuous campaign improvements.
• Support the Head of with slideware production for senior team presentations and business reviews with their associated channels.

Team leadership & development:

• Line manage Paid Social and Affiliates Executives, providing clear direction, prioritisation, coaching and performance management.
• Support development of team capability, ensuring best practice, learning and progression across channels.
• Manage external platform and supplier relationships (e.g. Meta, Google, TikTok), ensuring strong delivery, effective collaboration and ongoing performance improvement.
• Key stakeholder for Media Agency challenging partners to deliver best in class output, effectiveness and value.
• Support end-to-end procurement processes for selection/onboarding new suppliers/fielding renewals processes for existing suppliers.

Governance & Ways of working:

• Build strong relationships with cross functional teams to support with campaign execution and measurement (Brand, Content, Product, Decision Intelligence and Engineering).
• Confidently communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Own day-to-day financial processes relating to managed channels (invoicing, raising POs, financial reporting and reconciliation).
• Identify and resolve technical or performance issues independently where possible, escalating blockers to the Head of as required.
• Keep abreast of developments within Digital Marketing including emerging platforms and existing platform updates to ensure our activity remains best in class.
• Provide clear feedback to Brand & Creative teams on ad performance, creative effectiveness and opportunities for improvement.

Things we look for in you:

• Strong hands-on experience (4+ years) in Paid Social (including Meta, TikTok and Reddit), as well as Display, Programmatic and YouTube experience with a particular focus on direct response/performance campaigns for direct-to-consumer businesses.
• Working knowledge of various major Display Side Platforms (e.g., YouTube, DV360), Native platforms (e.g., Taboola, Outbrain etc.) and other 3rd party programmatic solutions (e.g., Google Campaign Manager, DoubleVerify etc.).
• Experience managing campaigns against clear KPIs and budgets, using data to drive optimisation across the major Paid Social, Display and Native channels.
• Strong analytical capability, including forecasting, experimentation and performance analysis to offer recommendations for optimisation or opportunities for further testing.
• Solid technical understanding and a head for numbers to create practical and value models (Conversions, Revenue) and performance forecasting.
• Experience managing agencies and/or external media partners.
• People management experience, including coaching and performance development.
• Strong Microsoft Excel skills are essential and experience using analytics tools such as Adobe or Google.
• Good understanding of platform pixels, how they collect data, and how they can be used to optimise activity and build audiences.
• A data-driven mindset and the ability to strategise with cross-functional teams.
• Work collaboratively and proactively with multiple teams across concurrent projects.
• Experience with lift studies (e.g. Brand lift/Conversion lift studies etc.) and measurement (e.g., pre bid vs post bid verification etc.).
• Affiliate marketing experience, either via direct relationships or via networks (e.g. Awin, Webgains).
• Organic Social/influencer experience.
• Experience with Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).
• Experience managing end-to-end finance & procurement processes.

cinch and rewards cinch’s benefits programme sees that our people are supported both in and out of work. We offer:

• Competitive salaries and bonuses.
• A company pension scheme.
• An Employee Assistance Programme.
• Access to trained mental health first aiders.
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, and adoption leave.

In making the most out of a career at cinch you need to be curious, creative, and collaborative. Join us as we continue to accelerate, defy expectations, and revolutionise an entire industry.

Diversity and Inclusion: cinch wants to help all kinds of people in the UK find and buy a car. Representation matters. Being free to be the best of who you are as you soar to professional greatness is the kind of business we commit to creating, as one.