Head of Marketing and Advertising

Who We Are & Who We Serve Visit Corvallis is the destination marketing organization serving Corvallis and Benton County, Oregon. local businesses benefit; and tourism strengthens our community.

This role offers meaningful ownership and direction in our marketing programming today, with room to grow into senior marketing strategic leadership.

What We’re Trying To Do At its best, destination marketing is matchmaking. local businesses benefit, and tourism strengthens our community.

Our goal is to make Visit Corvallis one of Oregon’s most engaging, distinctive, and inviting destination brands, and the Marketing Manager’s goal is to build a smarter marketing operation underneath it.

What You’ll Lead This position will oversee Visit Corvallis’ marketing ecosystem, working with our team and contracted agencies to lead:

Brand strategy and creative development

Paid media and digital advertising

Website strategy, AI, SEO/SEM, and conversion

Google Analytics, campaign measurement, and KPI reporting

Social media and content strategy

Email marketing and consumer e-newsletters

Photography, video, and creative asset development

Influencer and visiting media programs

Visitor guide and other visitor-facing content

You won’t need to personally execute every piece, but you will need to understand how the pieces work together, ask good questions, manage our partners, and turn strategy into action.

You’ll also help develop our annual marketing plan, manage the content calendar, identify creative needs, monitor performance, and build a stronger culture of experimentation and A/B testing.

Most importantly, we want data to change what we do. You’re both creative and strategic. You can find an interesting insight in the data and then ask, “What’s the story here?”

You have strong creative instincts, excellent visual taste, aren’t afraid to take risks, and have solid communications skills.

You like testing your own ideas. You’re organized and understand that structure creates freedom, but you don’t need every answer before moving forward.

You’re willing to be bold, take thoughtful risks and challenge the expected.

Experience marketing a consumer product, brand, commodity, place, food or beverage product, outdoor brand, or other competitive consumer offering would be especially interesting to us.

And we’d love to discover that you have a creative superpower of your own: photography, design, writing, video, creative direction, etc.

Visit Corvallis is looking for a strategic, creative marketing leader who gets excited about building things, asking why, testing ideas and finding better ways to connect people with a place they’ll genuinely enjoy.

You’ll join us at an interesting moment: visitor demand has been relatively flat while new lodging inventory is coming into the market. We’re looking for someone energized by that challenge and interested in helping us stand apart in a category where destinations can start sounding remarkably similar.

Reporting to the Executive Director, the Marketing Manager will serve as a thought partner and operate with substantial independence in day-to-day execution. This person will collaborate with Visit Corvallis staff, external agencies, vendors, community partners, and other stakeholders.

Key responsibilities of the Marketing Manager include but are not limited to:

Administrative

Track all marketing programs, including paid and organic social media, paid advertising, content development, media buying, public relations, and influencer marketing

Coordinate video and photo asset strategies and development, including tracking needs, media asset management and managing outside creators

Strong organizational and system building skills

Marketing

Work closely with the Executive Director to ensure our brand and communications are consistent with local strategies and partner needs

Coordinate website and digital marketing editorial content and track and report on monthly and quarterly basis

Coordinate and advice agencies, designers or other creative partners

Compile and use data to make strategic marketing decisions and willingness to experiment and adapt

Build and maintain a robust social paid and organic strategy and oversee daily social media management on multiple channels with an outside agency

Assist in creating and maintaining media pitch updates and work closely with PR firm for implementation

Act as media’s primary contact for inbound visiting media or influencers

Coordinate media and influencer visits and track results, report on ROI

Approximately 10% annual travel required around the region, state of Oregon, and beyond

Some evening and weekend work required

You don’t need previous destination marketing or tourism experience; What is much harder to teach is curiosity, judgment, initiative, creative instinct, and the desire to build something exceptional

A bachelor’s degree is not required

5+ years of relevant marketing experience

Experience with content, email marketing creation, distribution, and marketing optimization, combining creative thinking with data analysis

An understanding of how brand, paid media, earned media, social media, public relations, influencer marketing, and related functions work together

Prior experience in digital marketing and analytics, including familiarity with A/B testing, paid media, and evaluating marketing performance

The ability to direct a robust marketing strategy to accomplish brand objectives

Sound creative judgment and an ability to evaluate creative work

Strong brand, creative, storytelling, writing, and editing skills

Proven strength in communication and relationship-building skills when working with partners, vendors, staff, and community stakeholders

Hospitality, tourism, community-facing, consumer packaged goods (CPG), agency, or other transferable experience may be relevant

Visit Corvallis, Oregon provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, or any other category protected under applicable law. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including, but not limited to, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.

This job posting is being managed by FractionalRecruiter on behalf of Visit Corvallis, Oregon.

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