WHAT DOES A DIRECTOR OF MEDIA DO?
Published: Dec 03, 2024 - The Director of Media excels in fostering outstanding relationships with both internal teams and external agency partners, ensuring the adoption of best practices and the delivery of insightful value to clients throughout project stages. Oversees and mentors the media team, driving professional growth and development, while innovatively managing paid search strategies as part of a Google Premier Partnership. Actively contributes to client pitches and renewal efforts, devises robust data and measurement strategies, and collaborates closely with creative teams to optimize digital marketing assets and campaign effectiveness.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Director of Media
1. Director of Media Duties
- Vertical Expertise: Develop and share expertise and knowledge of relevant verticals and maintain a deep understanding of clients and competitors.
- Team Collaboration: Collaborate with Senior Media Analysts and Media Analysts on successful digital programs.
- Quality Assurance: Ensure the quality of work produced is in line with client expectations and develop proactive and strategic insights that always provide the “so what.”
- Quick Thinking: Think quickly on feet and answer questions on the spot in online or in-person meetings.
- Team Mentorship: Mentor the team and provide an intentional focus on growth, development, and happiness.
- Team Management: Develop, mentor, motivate, and manage the paid team, maximizing talent and ensuring work stays sharp and is something to be proud of.
- Training Development: Develop internal and external training programs for paid media.
- Accountability: Hold accountability for performance and ensure the team achieves top results.
- Client Presentation: Present to clients, often leading the conversation around strategy and rationale for decisions made.
- Strategy Development: Drive the paid strategy for business development and be involved in the pitch process from start to finish.
- Prioritization: Maintain a strong ability to prioritize work and resources based on importance and timeliness.
- Stakeholder Communication: Maintain regular communication with key stakeholders and build genuine rapport.
- Consistency: Bring consistency and excellence across all clients.
- Platform Knowledge: Maintain in-platform knowledge for all channels and stay up-to-date on the latest updates and features.
2. Director of Social Media and Content Details
- Content Development: Develop new and innovative ways to bring together and engage with Sonesta’s community through engaging and compelling content.
- Team Collaboration: Work with creatives, strategists, and production teams.
- Community Management: Lead the community management team and act as the voice of the brand on the front lines with customers and fans, ensuring a high level of engagement with commenters.
- Brand Alignment: Collaborate with the wider team to help ensure that all posts are on-brand and on-strategy.
- Customer Service: Ensure delivery of exceptional customer service on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social platforms as appropriate through best-in-class community management.
- Editorial Management: Lead the Editorial Calendar to ensure consistency in brand voice and give followers a reason to share through relevant and interesting Word of Mouth content and proactive community management.
- Strategic Guidance: Guide strategic direction to build long-lasting customer and fan relationships efficiently and effectively.
- Trend Observation: Observe trending topics and know when to integrate brand content.
- Creative Integration: Participate in integrated creative plans to extend content from other teams and departments.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with brand and marketing to lead customer-facing communications, work cross-functionally to ensure consistent messaging, and define brand voice on social.
- Consumer Insights: Capture consumer insights and work with the integrated team to improve the overall consumer experience.
- Creative Thinking: Think creatively about ways to optimize followers’ experience.
- UGC Strategy: Work with Social Strategist to develop a UGC strategy that turns owners into advocates and generates cost-efficient influencer content.
3. Director of Paid Media Responsibilities
- Relationship Management: Developing and maintaining excellent working relationships with all internal and external agency partners.
- Best Practices Implementation: Ensuring best practices are used across the department and ensuring value-add insights are delivered to clients across all stages of projects.
- Team Leadership: Plan, direct, supervise, and coordinate work activities of subordinates and handle all personnel requirements for immediate staff including training and development.
- Mentorship: Manage and develop direct reports by providing mentorship, structured assistance, instruction, and inspiration for growth.
- Experimentation: Engage a Test-and-Learn approach with the paid search team, including developing new experiments and identifying alpha and beta opportunities for clients as part of the Google Premier Partnership.
- Process Enforcement: Make sure best practices and processes are continually enforced for all Paid Search activities.
- Forecasting: Create Paid Search forecasts and projections of actual business results for clients.
- Data Strategy: Architect data and measurement strategies to show a clear ROI from efforts.
- Client Pitches: Play an active role in pitches for client renewals, upsells, and new accounts when a higher level of subject matter expertise is required.
- Google Partnership: Build relationships with dedicated Google strategists to ensure team implementation of best practices and identify opportunities.
- Campaign Scaling: Identify opportunities to continue to scale and grow online marketing campaigns.
- Creative Collaboration: Work closely with the creative team to create marketing assets (banners, videos, and other).
- KPI Monitoring: Implement and monitor tracking and reporting on KPIs across digital campaigns.
- Process Development: Own and develop processes for all creative requests, managing creative refreshes and collaborating with the internal creative team based on audience targets.
- Paid Media Expertise: Maintain a high level of current knowledge on best practices and strategies in the management of online paid media.
4. Director of Paid Media Accountabilities
- Strategy Development: Assist in defining media and brand strategy into a full-fledged marketing plan that fuels brand awareness, engagement, purchase, and retention specifically in digital channels
- Media Optimization: Drive media optimization strategies across channels to bring in high-value customers at efficient CAC
- Customer Experience Management: Ensure that customer experience is positive by effectively anticipating and addressing all customer concerns.
- Creative Partnership: Partner with Brand and Acquisition creative leads to ensure have thumb-stopping creative & merchandise in advertising
- Forecasting Leadership: Lead media forecasting process and share with FP&A and CEO on a weekly basis
- Team Coaching: Coach and develop a Growth Marketing team to build a best-in-class marketing org across creative coordination and media buying
- Project Management: Proactively ideate and execute general marketing projects beyond digital
- Strategic Collaboration: Partner with the Head of Strategy & Growth to define long-term strategy for new customer acquisition
- Strategy Development: Work closely with the Sr. Director, Paid Media and the VP, Paid Media to develop and continue to evolve the paid search strategy and approach for NPD
- Client Relationship Management: Act as a point of escalation for broad and complex client issues that require additional analysis and leadership
- Client Relationship Development: Prioritize and develop a strong relationship with key paid search clients
- Campaign Execution: Develop and execute online marketing campaigns to drive client acquisition through a variety of paid media channels such as search engine marketing, display advertising (including social media, video, mobile)
- Campaign Management: Management of campaign execution, including: creative & copy development, campaign setup, budget/bid management, A/B testing, reporting and on-going optimization
- Team Management: Manage a team of paid search and paid social media analysts. Own the strategy, performance and reporting of the team.
- Budget Efficiency: Remain goal-oriented and results-driven to help allocate media budgets as efficiently as possible with maximum results
5. Director of Strategy Media Functions
- Team Leadership: Lead, grow, and develop the performance marketing team and clients.
- Strategy Development: Set digital marketing strategies for enterprise eCommerce and B2B clients.
- Performance Monitoring: Monitor campaign performance goals and assist where required to ensure clients' goals are achieved.
- Campaign Management: Manage clients’ monthly marketing activities and calendars to maximize ROAS.
- Market Research: Research products, services, and current strategies to identify new opportunities.
- Business Development Support: Assist in new client and business development conversations; Identify, test, and optimize performance from marketing channels including search, social, display, affiliate partnerships, and more.
- Innovation Promotion: Understand and push the adoption of new techniques and technologies that are relevant to clients’ marketing strategies
- Best Practices Implementation: Drive adoption of best practices through example setting, positive reinforcement, and behavioral correction.
- Thought Leadership: Work with internal account teams to provide thought leadership on media strategies, tactics, insights and performance, as well as other emerging media opportunities.
- Creative Strategy: Bring creative ideas to the table and innovate other scalable approaches to improving customer experience and conversion rates.