Head of Creative & Digital Experience in Sheffield

About The National College

At The National College, we empower education professionals to transform children's lives. Our all-in-one platform helps schools, trusts, and nurseries stay compliant, raise standards, and reduce staff workload through intuitive, impactful technology. If educators need it, we build it. We've created a unique platform that combines the world's largest CPD and policy library with innovative software tools, developed in collaboration with thousands of schools and more than 1,000 education experts.

The Role

The National College is looking for an exceptional Head of Creative & Digital Experience - a senior creative and strategic leader in our Marketing team. Reporting to the Senior Marketing Director, you will lead a multidisciplinary team spanning content, website, email and graphic design. You will bring the big creative idea - the creative territory, campaign concept and messaging architecture that turns a commercial objective into something distinctive - then lead specialists to translate it into connected experiences across the customer journey. You will work in strategic partnership with our Programme Marketing team, which owns audience priorities, propositions, go-to-market programmes and commercial objectives. This is a partnership rather than a client/service relationship: you shape and challenge briefs from the outset.

Job Requirements

• Essential
• A strong track record of turning customer and commercial challenges into distinctive creative ideas, with a focus on the idea and customer response rather than simply the assets required.
• Strong marketing strategy capability, and comfort operating as a strategic partner on audiences, propositions, positioning and go-to-market rather than waiting for a brief.
• Broad digital marketing knowledge across website, email/CRM, content, SEO, social, paid media, brand and CRO - enough to challenge and lead specialists without operating every platform yourself.
• Integrated campaign and always-on experience across multiple channels and stages of the customer journey.
• Commercial acumen: you think in outcomes rather than outputs, and understand how marketing drives acquisition, conversion, engagement, retention and revenue.
• Experience leading multidisciplinary creative, content or digital teams, with the ability to articulate and sell a creative vision to senior stakeholders.
• Highly Desirable
• EdTech or education technology experience, or experience marketing to schools, trusts/MATs and education leaders.
• B2B SaaS, subscription or digital platform experience across both B2B and B2C models, including experimentation, personalisation and conversion optimisation.

Measures of Success

• Stronger creative concepts underpinning our major marketing programmes, with a visible lift in quality, distinctiveness and ambition.
• More connected customer experiences across website, email, content and campaigns - and stronger always-on performance between campaigns.
• A genuine strategic partnership with Programme Marketing in place of transactional asset requests, and a high-performing team delivering faster from strategy to market.
• Clear evidence of the customer and commercial impact of our marketing, including improved campaign engagement and conversion.

Job Responsibilities

• Creative Strategy & Partnership
• Act as the senior creative voice within Marketing, developing the big idea behind major campaigns, propositions and product launches.
• Operate as a strategic counterpart to Programme Marketing from the earliest stages of planning, challenging and strengthening briefs rather than executing completed ones.
• Integrated & Always-On Marketing
• Own the quality and coherence of the marketing experience across website, email, content, social and paid media, considering the whole journey rather than individual assets.
• Ensure our marketing works as an always-on system rather than a sequence of campaign bursts, owning the standard of evergreen marketing: core website content, organic search, lifecycle communications, social presence and recurring content programmes.
• Content, Brand & Storytelling
• Set the strategic direction for marketing content and messaging, guiding thought leadership, campaign content, video, social and digital storytelling, plus lead magnets and gated content that attract and nurture demand.
• Own and evolve how The National College brand is expressed, building distinctiveness while maintaining the trust and authority required in education.
• Website, SEO & Email Experience
• Provide senior marketing leadership for the website as one of our most important commercial channels, and own the creative and customer-experience standard for email and lifecycle communications with CRM and Engagement specialists.
• Lead our approach to SEO, ensuring search visibility, site structure, content and messaging work together to grow qualified organic traffic.
• Team Leadership & Creative Operations
• Lead and develop a multidisciplinary team spanning content, graphic design, website and email, setting a high bar for creative quality and execution.
• Establish an operating model and briefing process with Programme Marketing that encourages collaboration over transactional asset requests, and manage agencies, freelancers and production partners where required.
• Performance & Continuous Improvement
• Build a culture where creative judgement is strengthened by customer insight and performance data.
• Establish a structured test-and-learn approach across creative, content, website and email, using insight to inform future work.

Job Benefits

At The National College, we're passionate about helping organisations grow and thrive through knowledge and connection. You'll be part of a business that values its people, supports continuous development, and celebrates success. You'll also be able to benefit from:

• Life assurance
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, shared parental, and adoption pay
• 24/7 online GP access
• Mental health and wellbeing support
• One paid charity day per year
• 25 days' holiday, increasing to 30 days with service
• Professional study support
• Plus more