Head of Growth & Acquisition

Hybrid - with travel as required

Salary - Competitive

Contract: Permanent, Full-Time

About us: We are one of the top three automotive retailers in the UK, proudly representing 32 manufacturer brands, selling a huge range of new and used vehicles from over 150 dealerships across the UK and Ireland. We believe our people are our greatest asset, and we’re committed to recognising the valuable contribution each person makes. That’s why we continue to invest in a leading rewards and benefits package designed to support your career, wellbeing, and life outside of work.

The Head of Growth & Acquisition is responsible for defining and leading Lookers' demand channel strategy, ensuring the business delivers sustainable, profitable growth for new cars, used cars and aftersales. The role owns the strategy, performance and optimisation of all core acquisition channels, including paid digital media, SEO/AIO, automotive marketplaces/lead-gen partners, strategic partnerships and group tactical marketing initiatives.

As a senior marketing leader, you will transform how acquisition channels are planned, governed and optimised, ensuring investment is aligned to commercial priorities and delivers measurable business outcomes. Leading a team of channel managers and specialists, supported by agency partners, you will establish a high-performing acquisition function that acts as a centre of excellence for the wider business.

Working closely with operations, divisional/OEM marketing, finance, data and commercial, you will ensure acquisition activity and tactical trading initiatives respond effectively to trading priorities, stock availability, margin opportunities, market dynamics, OEM partner requirements and customer behaviour.

What You'll Be Responsible For:

• Define and lead the core channel acquisition strategy across new car, used car and aftersales, ensuring channels support growth, profitability and trading objectives.
• Lead and develop channel managers responsible for paid media, SEO, marketplaces, partnerships and group trading initiatives, ensuring strong performance management and execution.
• Align acquisition activity with trading priorities, stock, pricing, margin and market demand through close collaboration with operational, finance, commercial, data and divisional stakeholders.
• Establish robust performance management frameworks, ensuring clear visibility of channel effectiveness and continuous optimisation.
• Lead key agency and external partner relationships, ensuring strong governance, accountability and commercial value.
• Build a scalable centre-of-excellence model that delivers expertise, governance and best practice across the wider marketing function, supporting divisional marketing and OEM requirements alongside scaling group growth and trading needs.
• Partner with Marketing Operations, Data and Commercial Finance to improve measurement, attribution and performance insight.
• Support the delivery of group trading initiatives, leading the Group Marketing Manager to coordinate and plan sales events, campaigns and proposition promotions.

Paid Media:

• Define the paid media strategy across search, social and emerging channels as appropriate.
• Set investment priorities and ensure budgets are deployed against commercial objectives and expected returns.
• Provide strategic oversight of agency partners, ensuring effective planning, optimisation and performance delivery.
• Support the effective delivery of OEM requirements alongside Lookers trading needs through scalable acquisition strategies, working closely with divisional marketing teams.

Marketplaces & Partnerships:

• Develop and oversee the partnerships strategy, ensuring a clear and optimised approach across marketplace and lead-gen partners.
• Bring acute performance management and optimisation to marketplace performance across AutoTrader and other lead generation partners, maximising sales opportunity, profitability and return on investment.
• Lead and develop the partnerships manager, to ensure existing partnerships are closely managed on a daily and weekly basis, alongside developing new strategic partnership opportunities to drive cost-efficient scaled growth.
• Drive investment and partnership decisions based on commercial impact and measurable performance outcomes.

SEO & Organic Acquisition:

• Define the organic growth strategy across SEO/AIO, content and emerging search channels.
• Provide leadership and direction across SEO and content activity, ensuring initiatives drive visibility, authority and commercial performance.
• Work closely with the CX function to ensure appropriate technical SEO deployment aligned to the strategic requirements.
• Ensure Lookers remains well positioned for changing search behaviours, including AI-led search and discovery.
• Prioritise organic growth opportunities across core business areas, including used vehicles, EV and aftersales.

Budget & Commercial Performance:

• Own the acquisition investment budget allocation across channels.
• Establish clear commercial KPIs focused on profitable growth, including cost per sale, stock turn, profit maximisation and return on investment.
• Use data and attribution insights to optimise channel mix, investment decisions and performance outcomes.

Leadership & Capability:

• Lead, motivate and develop a high-performing team of managers and specialists across acquisition and growth marketing disciplines.
• Set strategic priorities, objectives and performance standards for the function.
• Build a commercially focused culture driven by accountability, insight, experimentation and measurable results.
• Work closely with marketing operations, data and commercial finance to ensure the team has the data and reporting infrastructure to operate effectively.
• Strengthen capability through coaching, and leadership development.
• Establish clear governance, ownership and ways of working across internal teams, divisional marketing and agency partners.
• Build influence with cross functional stakeholders, enabling the team to effectively contribute and leverage their expertise to improve growth outcomes.
• Act as a member of the Marketing Leadership Team, supporting the CMO in delivering both strategic priorities and operational excellence across the function.

What We’re Looking For:

• Senior performance marketing leadership experience with a proven track record managing paid media spend and activity.
• Deep technical knowledge of Google Ads, Meta Ads and programmatic channels with the ability to audit and challenge agency work.
• Strong SEO knowledge spanning both technical and content dimensions.
• Commercially driven and able to speak in cost-per-sale and gross profit, not cost-per-click.
• Experience with attribution modelling and connecting digital spend to offline commercial outcomes.
• Ability to challenge entrenched budget allocation decisions with data and commercial logic.
• Strong agency management skills with an ability to get more from agency relationships through better briefs and tighter accountability.
• Experience in an omni-channel retail business with national/local demand and conversion dynamics.
• Strong stakeholder management and ability to influence effectively.
• Experience with marketplace platforms (Autotrader etc.).
• Familiarity with automotive retail commercial model i.e. new car margins, used car dynamics, aftersales revenue.
• Experience marketing EV products or operating in categories with high research intensity.

Core Benefits:

• Competitive salaries with structured pay scales and progression as you grow within the business.
• Generous annual leave that increases with your length of service.
• Enhanced family leave, including 6 months’ full pay for maternity and adoption leave, and 2 weeks’ full pay for paternity leave.
• Access to Techscheme for discounted technology purchases with flexible payments.
• Eyecare vouchers to help cover vision care needs.
• Smart Health – 24/7 access to GP services to support your mental and physical wellbeing.
• Dental insurance for everyday dental care and unexpected treatments.
• Optional critical illness cover for peace of mind during life's most challenging moments.
• MyView PayNow – access a portion of your pay as you earn, with features to stream, save, and track your money through a user-friendly app.
• Free will writing services to help plan for the future.
• Flexible life assurance options and partner life assurance for added protection.
• Discounted gym memberships to support an active lifestyle.
• Travel insurance to help you explore with confidence.
• Access to home and technology vouchers bYond card and a wide range of exclusive retail and lifestyle discounts.

We strongly believe in nurturing and providing our people with specific manufacturer brand and management training to enhance career development opportunities. We have a great bunch of people, and we like to celebrate and encourage success at all levels. Lookers and Charles Hurst are an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to a working environment that is free from discrimination, is inclusive, and empowers our people to bring their whole self to work and reach their full potential.

If your application is successful, we will conduct relevant employment checks prior to you commencing employment with us. These will include verifying your recent employment, address, credit history and a standard criminal record check. For roles that require you to drive, a driving licence check will also be carried out. Please note, all offers of employment are made subject to a 6 month probation period commencing from your start date. We take our data protection responsibilities very seriously and are committed to upholding and respecting your privacy rights. Information about how we will process your data including the types of data we collect, the purposes for which we use it, who we may share it with and how long we keep it are set out in our privacy notice. It also includes information about your individual privacy rights. Please make sure you read our Privacy Notice so that you understand how we may collect and use your data.