Head of Marketing in Manchester

Head of Marketing

£70,000 - £90,000 + performance bonus

Stockport (3-4 days in office) | D2C Retail

The Business

This is a profitable, founder‑led D2C retail scale up with a loyal customer base, a high‑performing email programme and strong commercial momentum through its partnerships channel. The business is entirely self‑funded so no PE/VC pressure, no corporate politics, and is now at a pivotal point, investing seriously in marketing for the first time to drive its next phase of revenue growth. Think scrappy in the best possible way: fast decisions, real accountability, and genuine scope to shape the direction of the brand.

Revenue is currently sub £10m and the ambition is clear. The founders know what they have built. Now they need someone to help them scale it.

The Role

This is a senior, hands‑on leadership position reporting directly to the founders. You will own the full 360 marketing strategy – performance, retention and conversion – and be held accountable for revenue outcomes, not just activity. It is a player‑coach role in the truest sense. You will lead a small capable team while remaining personally active in the ad accounts, the email platform and the analytics tools.

Key priorities include:

• Building and scaling a profitable paid social engine from the ground up – diagnosing underperformance, fixing tracking and signal quality, and running a disciplined creative and offer testing programme
• Owning customer acquisition cost, blended ROAS, payback period and contribution margin – real commercial metrics, not platform vanity numbers
• Leading integrated marketing across paid media, SEO, email/CRM, affiliates, PR and brand
• Driving website conversion on the store platform – funnel, landing pages, proposition and AOV
• Co‑owning and growing the email and lifecycle programme
• Building dashboards and reporting frameworks the founders can trust, with A/B and incrementality testing as standard
• Embedding AI tools across the function to increase output without growing headcount
• Managing, coaching and developing the existing marketing team

What We're Looking For

You will have come up through performance marketing and know what it takes to drive profitable growth in a lean, resource‑constrained business. Specifically:

• ESSENTIAL: Proven growth marketing track record in a D2C, ecommerce or consumer product environment at a similar stage of growth – ideally £5‑15m revenue, founder‑led or scale‑up
• Broad results‑based marketing experience spanning both performance and brand, with deep hands‑on expertise in paid social (Meta essential), SEO, email/CRM and conversion optimisation
• Able to discuss real numbers from paid social campaigns – budgets managed, CAC achieved, ROAS, how you scaled channels and where ceilings were hit
• Specific, provable examples of website conversion improvements you have personally delivered
• Experience with email and lifecycle marketing platforms
• Commercially obsessed and highly numerate – you think in contribution margin and P&L, not just campaign metrics
• A genuine builder and self‑starter who thrives without big‑agency infrastructure or large team support
• Already uses AI tools as part of day‑to‑day workflow and can demonstrate the difference it makes

This is not a role for someone who manages agencies at arm's length or delegates the detail. The founders want someone who gets into the weeds, moves fast, tests, learns and iterates.

If you have scaled a DTC brand from good to great and want genuine ownership of a marketing function at a business with real momentum, this is worth a conversation.