Head of Marketing

Part-Time Head of Marketing

SugarHouse Awning is looking for an experienced, practical, and hands-on marketing leader to take ownership of our marketing efforts and lead our existing marketing team.

This is not simply a content creation, social media, or digital advertising position. We are looking for someone who can run the marketing function: develop strategy, establish priorities, manage our marketing team and outside vendors, oversee execution, measure results, and continually improve how we market our company. We have an established business, an existing marketing team, and plenty of opportunities to improve. What we're missing is an experienced marketing leader who can bring everything together.

This is a part-time position of approximately 20–30 hours per week, with flexibility in how those hours are scheduled. We are particularly interested in experienced marketing professionals who want a meaningful leadership role without the commitment of a traditional full-time corporate position.

SugarHouse Awning is a long-established Utah company with roots dating back to 1941. We manufacture and sell custom products across several markets, including residential and commercial shade products, awnings, marine products, and other specialty fabricated products.

We're a real-world, hands-on business. Our marketing has to connect digital channels with actual customers, leads, estimates, projects, products, salespeople, showrooms, and ultimately revenue. We're not interested in marketing for marketing's sake. We want marketing that helps grow the business.

As Head of Marketing, you'll be responsible for the overall direction and day-to-day leadership of SugarHouse's marketing function. You'll work directly with the President/CEO to understand the company's goals and priorities, then take responsibility for translating those into an effective marketing strategy and making sure it gets executed. Your responsibilities will include:

• Develop and maintain an overall marketing strategy and plan aligned with company sales and growth objectives.
• Lead and manage our existing marketing team of approximately 2–3 people.
• Establish clear priorities, projects, responsibilities, deadlines, and accountability for the marketing team.
• Run regular marketing meetings and keep projects moving without requiring constant involvement from the CEO.
• Evaluate our current marketing efforts and determine what we should do more of, less of, differently, or not at all.
• Oversee our website, SEO, paid search/SEM, digital advertising, email marketing, social media, content, photography/video, print materials, trade shows, and other marketing channels as appropriate.
• Stay current on changes in digital marketing, including developments in Google Search, paid advertising, AI-powered search, generative AI, and changing customer search behavior.
• Establish meaningful marketing metrics and reporting, with an emphasis on leads, opportunities, customer acquisition, sales, and return on marketing investment rather than vanity metrics.
• Work closely with our sales team to understand lead quality, customer behavior, sales priorities, and market opportunities.
• Manage outside specialists and vendors such as web developers, SEO/PPC specialists, photographers, videographers, designers, printers, and agencies.
• Identify when specialized outside expertise is needed rather than trying to do everything internally.
• Manage marketing budgets and help us determine where our marketing dollars will produce the greatest return.
• Learn our company, products, customers, competitors, sales process, and industries deeply enough to make informed strategic recommendations.
• Occasionally execute marketing work directly when it makes sense. This is a leadership position, but we're a small enough organization that everyone is willing to roll up their sleeves when necessary.

We're less concerned with finding someone who checks every technical marketing box and more interested in finding an experienced marketing generalist and strong manager with good business judgment. The right person will probably have:

• Significant professional marketing experience, ideally 7+ years.
• Previous responsibility for leading a marketing function, team, major projects, or outside vendors.
• Broad knowledge across both traditional and digital marketing.
• Strong working knowledge of modern digital marketing, including SEO, SEM/paid search, analytics, websites, email, social media, and digital advertising.
• An up-to-date understanding of how AI is changing search, content, advertising, and digital marketing.
• The ability to evaluate and manage specialists even when you aren't personally the technical expert performing the work.
• Strong project-management and organizational skills.
• Experience setting priorities for other people and holding them accountable.
• Comfort working with salespeople and connecting marketing activity to actual business results.
• Good analytical instincts and the ability to use data to make decisions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Curiosity and a willingness to learn unfamiliar products, customers, and industries in depth.
• The confidence to make recommendations, challenge assumptions when appropriate, and explain the reasoning behind your decisions.

Experience marketing for manufacturing, construction, home improvement, building products, outdoor living, specialty products, retail/showroom businesses, or other businesses with both B2B and B2C customers would be particularly valuable, but is not required.

This is not primarily a social media manager, graphic designer, content creator, or Google Ads specialist position. Those skills can certainly be valuable, but we're hiring someone to decide what the marketing department should be doing, why we're doing it, who should do it, and whether it's working. You do not need to personally be the best SEO specialist, photographer, web developer, copywriter, graphic designer, or PPC technician. You do need enough marketing knowledge and judgment to recognize good work, manage the people doing it, and know when outside expertise is needed. We're also not looking for someone who will walk in with a generic marketing playbook and apply it without understanding our business. We want someone who asks questions first.

Within your first several months, we would expect you to develop a strong understanding of SugarHouse, our products, customers, markets, sales process, existing marketing efforts, and marketing team. From there, success means:

• Our marketing team knows what its priorities are and is being actively managed.
• Marketing projects consistently move forward without the CEO having to drive them.
• We have a clear, prioritized marketing strategy rather than a collection of disconnected activities.
• We know which marketing channels are generating meaningful results and where our money is going.
• Our website, search presence, advertising, content, and other marketing efforts continually improve.
• Marketing and sales communicate effectively with each other.
• Outside vendors are being managed intelligently and held accountable.
• We are testing new ideas without constantly chasing marketing trends or shiny objects.
• Over time, our marketing efforts contribute measurably to increased leads, opportunities, and sales.
• Ultimately, the goal is for you to take ownership of marketing so the President/CEO doesn't have to manage it day-to-day.

This is a part-time position of approximately 20–30 hours per week. We can be flexible about the exact schedule and are more concerned with finding the right person than requiring traditional office hours. However, we strongly prefer someone local to the Salt Lake City/Wasatch Front area who can spend meaningful time working with our team in person. Some work can be done remotely, but we believe learning our products, people, customers, and operation firsthand is important to succeeding in this role.

$35–$45 per hour, depending on experience.

This could be particularly attractive to an experienced marketing professional who has already built a substantial career but no longer wants a traditional 40–50 hour-per-week corporate position. Maybe you're consulting independently and would like one substantial long-term client. Maybe you're a former Marketing Director or senior marketing manager who wants greater schedule flexibility. Maybe you want to continue doing interesting, consequential work while working fewer hours. Whatever your situation, we're looking for someone who wants to become a meaningful part of our company-not simply complete a few marketing tasks and move on. You'll have considerable autonomy, direct access to company leadership, an existing team and resources to work with, and the opportunity to make a visible impact on an established Utah business.