Director of Marketing & Communications in Colchester

We are seeking a commercially minded and creative Director of Marketing & Communications to lead our marketing function and position the business as the UK’s leading estate agency brand. This role will be pivotal in driving listings growth, market share, and customer trust through data-driven strategy, compelling brand storytelling, and innovative digital campaigns. The Director of Marketing & Communications will work closely with Sales, Lettings, Financial Services and New Homes divisions, ensuring marketing efforts translate directly into valuations, instructions, and long-term client relationships.

The role will have a significant focus on the effective use of AI and emerging technologies to drive business growth, improve decision-making and enhance productivity. The postholder will actively identify, test and embed AI-enabled solutions to support key activities such as data analysis, process optimisation, customer experience, reporting and operational efficiency. This includes working collaboratively with stakeholders to ensure AI is used responsibly, compliantly and in line with business objectives.

What will you do?

• Strategy & Leadership: Develop and execute an annual marketing strategy to achieve business growth targets. Lead and inspire the marketing team, ensuring a culture of high performance and innovation. Collaborate with board directors and regional leaders to align marketing with operational priorities.
• Brand & Reputation: Strengthen and differentiate the brand at both national and hyper-local levels. Oversee PR, media relations, sponsorships, and community engagement. Ensure brand consistency across all customer touchpoints both internally and externally.
• Lead Generation & Conversion: Deliver integrated campaigns that drive valuation requests and vendor/landlord instructions. Work with operations to improve lead nurturing, follow-up, and conversion processes. Maximise return on investment from portals (Rightmove & OTM).
• Marketing, AI and Digital Growth: Own the digital strategy: SEO, PPC, paid social, CRM automation, and website optimisation. Drive video-first storytelling to highlight people, properties, and community presence. Oversee multi-channel content production (blogs, newsletters, social media, video, PR). Lead the group’s response to the evolving AI search landscape, embracing AI as a commercial opportunity to ensure strong brand visibility and discoverability across all key AI-led platforms including Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude. Develop and optimise the group’s presence across review and reputation platforms such as Trustpilot and Feefo, recognising their increasing influence on consumer trust, AI search outcomes and lead generation. Review and enhance the groups digital footprint to ensure the public can easily find, engage with and trust the brand at every stage of the customer journey.
• Data, Analytics & Performance: Track and report on marketing KPIs: CPL, CPA, valuation-to-instruction ratio, deselection rates. Use market data to identify local opportunities and optimise targeting. Present marketing performance and ROI to the board.
• Innovation & Transformation: Explore emerging proptech and marketing technologies to stay ahead of competitors. Lead projects such as employer brand, employee advocacy, and sustainability positioning. Drive cultural engagement through internal campaigns and recognition programmes.
• Content, Engagement & Reputation: Increase engagement through the strategic use of video content, including property listings, testimonials and brand storytelling, to improve conversion, visibility and customer confidence. Drive the volume, quality and consistency of 5-star reviews across all businesses within the group, embedding review generation into operational processes and customer journeys. Develop and deliver a clear content strategy across group websites and digital channels, ensuring content is relevant, compelling, SEO-optimised and aligned with both traditional and AI-powered search behaviours.
• Strategy & Local Market Impact: Develop and own a group-wide marketing and communications strategy that meets the needs of all businesses within the group, while allowing for brand differentiation and local market relevance. Produce and implement a strategy to strengthen “uber-local” marketing, increasing engagement, visibility and relevance at branch and community level across all brands. Regularly review group websites and digital platforms, ensuring they remain current, customer-focused and commercially effective.
• Leadership, Culture & Values: Working as part of the Senior Management Team, develop and deliver internal and external campaigns to review, reinforce and increase understanding of the group’s values and behaviours. Act as a senior marketing partner to the business, influence decision-making through insight, data and a clear understanding of customer behaviour and market trends.

How will you be measured? (KPIs)

• Valuation Leads: Growth in vendor/landlord valuation requests (YoY).
• Instructions: Improvement in valuation-to-instruction conversion rate.
• Listings Volume: Drive towards (target, . 600 listings per week).
• Market Share: Increase in branch and regional share within Rightmove/OTM metrics.
• Lead Response: Reduction in deselection rates and improved follow-up times.
• Digital ROI: Reduction in CPL and CPA across paid campaigns.
• Brand Metrics: Increase in NPS, brand awareness and PR Sentiment.
• Employee Engagement: Uptake in internal advocacy programmes and improved Glassdoor / employer brand metrics.

What are we looking for?

Essential Skills/Experience: Proven track record as a Director of Marketing & Communications, ideally within property, retail, or other high-volume consumer sectors. Strong digital marketing expertise with measurable results in lead generation. Exceptional leadership and team development skills. Commercial acumen with experience of managing large budgets and demonstrating ROI. Creative storytelling ability with strong PR and media experience. Data-driven mindset with advanced analytical capability. Excellent communication and influencing skills at board level.

Desirable Skills/Experience: Digital-first, video-smart, and unafraid to innovate. If you want to shape the future of estate agency marketing — and lead a brand that’s as ambitious as you are — we’d love to hear from you.

The Finer Details: We are currently conducting some interviews using video software. To be eligible to proceed in our recruitment process, you will need: Full UK Driving Licence. Legal entitlement to live and work in the UK (in accordance with the Immigration Asylum and Nationality Act 2006). We’ll need evidence of your right to work in the UK, in the form of: Passport/Birth Certificate. We will also need: Proof of Address. National Insurance. Drivers Licence Check.