Assistant Director of Digital Strategy

The Assistant Director of Digital Strategy is responsible for planning, developing, executing, prioritizing and coordinating comprehensive digital strategy as an integral part of the College’s enrollment, marketing, and branding functions. The Assistant Director of Digital Strategy will manage the College’s digital paid and organic search initiatives, all digital advertising strategies, and serve as a collaborator in effectively leveraging and integrating vendor-supported digital presence. This position will manage and expand use of metrics (e.g. Google Analytics) for assessing online marketing initiatives including SEO and tracking performance of paid and unpaid social media campaigns and other digital advertising initiatives and provide key reports that inform data-driven enrollment strategies.

The Assistant Director of Digital Strategy is also responsible for assisting in the execution and coordination of North Central College website assets as an integral part of the College’s marketing functions. This individual will assist in managing the main College website (northcentralcollege.edu), online alumni magazine in partnership with the Office of Development and Alumni Affairs (magazine.northcentralcollege.edu), and fine and performing arts website in collaboration with the Fine Arts Director (northcentralcollege.edu/fine arts). Additional work includes the Brilliant Future Campaign (brilliantfuture.northcentralcollege.edu), intranet and the College’s mobile app.

PRIMARY ROLES 

1. Assist in the development, creation and implementation of a digital marketing plan that supports undergraduate and graduate student recruitment, fundraising initiatives, alumni engagement, academic affairs and other activity related to the College’s Strategic Plan.
2. Manage the College’s digital marketing partners. Ensure campaigns align with enrollment strategies and target audiences. Determine production and campaign timelines. Create, review, and approve creative and content deliverables. Review provided data to assess effectiveness. Track engagement using Google Analytics.
3. Manage marketing campaign strategy and content development and delivery across multiple websites and channels.
4. Manage the College’s digital accounts, including: College digital accounts such as ad account, analytics accounts, social accounts, etc.
5. Possess knowledge and competence in a variety of analytics accounts such as Google Analytics, YouTube analytic, Facebook analytics, etc.
6. Analyze customer on-site behavior to identify issues or opportunities and create recommendations for future optimizations.
7. Develop and maintain a search engine optimization and keyword plan to increase visibility and rankings on search engine results. Execute routine SEO analysis of websites using provided auditing tools to compile and analyze data to influence site optimization priorities. On-page tactical responsibility to include meta, content structure, alt. tags, and social cards.
8. Serve as a primary expert for digital marketing on campus and participate in the ongoing optimization of web development.
9. Support the construction and management of the College website applying digital strategy best practices to create a positive user experience and yield successful recruitment goals. Possess an understanding of the goals, audiences and information structures unique to the College’s entire public web portfolio, including the main website.
10. Monitor statistical information and user trends throughout all College digital strategy initiatives and implement the use of analytics to inform future digital strategies.
11. Compile a weekly metrics report of digital marketing efforts, website traffic, user engagement and campaign metrics using Google Analytics. Custom reports to align with current enrollment goals and initiatives.
12. Distill data into clear, concise, and user-friendly presentations that deliver insights that lead to actions, and deliver those presentations to various levels of audiences including members of the College’s cabinet and Board of Trustees.
13. Provide direction to the College’s communication team to create effective SEO content.
14. Lead with an active “brand strategy” voice to ensure the integration of all College marketing activities are reflected in digital campaigns and web assets.
15. Work with the College’s creative services team to ensure digital campaigns reflect the College’s brand identity and design guidelines.
16. Integrate effective videography, photography, and graphic design toward achieving measurable and favorable results.
17. Collaborate with the College’s creative services team to conceptualize and create a variety of visually compelling photo and video content for the College digital campaign and website.

Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

1. An individual in this position must possess the proficiency, wherewithal and knowledge of principles and processes for providing high-quality service to both internal and external constituents of the College.
2. Proven experience in current digital technology and analytics.
3. Ability to conduct routine analytics reports of all digital marketing strategies.
4. Excellent writing, organizational, judgment, interpersonal and communications skills, and a strong background in digital strategy management; in particular, the ability to apply professional-quality organizational skills in the production of an integrated digital marketing plan.
5. Excellent project management skills, able to manage multiple priorities and work to deadline. This requires an individual who is well organized, detail-oriented, flexible and self-directed with good stress management skills.
6. Demonstrate outstanding interpersonal skills in dealing with persons internal and external to the College.
7. Manage effective relationships with vendors on behalf of the College.
8. Experience managing websites and content creation such as digital journalism and blogs a plus.
9. Demonstrate a strong sense of creativity and an ability to collaborate with diverse groups with diverse interests.
10. Demonstrated ability to work in a team environment where collaboration, communication and commitment to the College’s mission are valued.
11. Demonstrate civil and inclusive behavior when interacting with staff, faculty, students and visitors to the College.
12. Promote a flexible, collaborative and inclusive work and living environment and engage in educational opportunities to increase awareness and understanding of diversity and inclusion.

Distinguishing Characteristics

The individual in this position is a member of the Enrollment Management and Marketing unit and part of the overall team that markets North Central College to a wide variety of constituencies. This position requires a strong understanding of how to use the web and digital advertising strategies, to the College’s marketing and communication advantage, strong understanding of search engine and digital marketing functionality, ability to collaborate with the College’s web team to progress web marketing initiatives and knowledge of how to support inbound digital marketing initiatives with relevant content.

Education/Training: A bachelor’s degree is required.

Experience: Four to five years of responsible experience in electronic communications (high level of knowledge of internet technologies, website management, journalism, public relations, etc.) is preferred. Or two to three years of experience in a digital marketing agency setting.