Advance Local

Sr. Director, Digital Marketing

Advance Local$125K — $150K *
Media
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in a quantitative field, Master's preferred
  • 7+ years of quantitative research experience; at least 2 years in management
  • Direct experience managing digital marketing teams and setting performance standards
  • Exceptional client communication and presentation skills
  • Strong analytics background with tools like GA4 and Google Ads
  • Proven process builder, enhancing workflows for efficiency
  • Fluency in AI tools and their application in marketing workflows
  • High curiosity with a proactive approach to industry changes

Responsibilities

  • Own end-to-end delivery of digital advertising, SEO, and website services for clients
  • Establish and enforce quality standards for all deliverables
  • Build and maintain standard operating procedures for consistent execution
  • Serve as an escalation point for client issues, resolving them proactively
  • Ensure timely and accurate performance reporting for all clients
  • Implement AI-assisted workflows with the product team
  • Manage execution across teams, developing talent and accountability
  • Identify and address client delivery risks and systemic issues

Benefits

  • Hybrid work environment in Portland, OR
  • Opportunity to shape scalable processes and standards
  • Collaborative team culture where everyone contributes
  • Potential for career growth alongside company's vertical expansion
  • Access to cutting-edge AI tools for professional development
Full Job Description
Sr. Director, Digital Marketing

Hybrid position, located in Portland, OR

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced and driven Sr. Director, Digital Marketing to join the Catalyst IQ capital equipment team. In this role, you will own the delivery engine for the capital equipment vertical - ensuring every client receives excellent work, on time, with clear reporting and measurable impact. We9re not so big that anyone is above the work - you9ll roll up your sleeves alongside the team to further refine our delivery model, deepen our analytical capabilities, and fully leverage what AI makes possible: richer competitive insights, real-time activation, and a level of precision that sets our clients apart.

Over time, you9ll build the scalable processes, standards, and staffing model that allows quality to hold as the client base grows. You are a rising leader from the advertising and/or SEO ranks who understands the work deeply enough to do it, hold others accountable to it, and systematically build a better way of doing it. You are AI-fluent - not a developer, but someone who actively uses AI tools to improve your own work, embraces automation as a competitive advantage, and is excited to lead the team9s transition from manual workflows to AI-assisted delivery. This is a high-ceiling role, and the timing is right: you9d be joining at an opportune moment - as Catalyst IQ moves to leverage its AI investments and platform technology in adjacent verticals, with the opportunity to grow alongside that expansion.

Primary Responsibilities

Delivery Quality
  • Own the end-to-end delivery of digital advertising, SEO, and website services for equipment dealer clients
  • Establish and enforce quality standards - every campaign, every report, every deliverable
  • Build and maintain SOPs that allow the team to execute consistently as the client book grows
  • Serve as the internal escalation point when client issues arise; resolve before they reach account leadership

Reporting & Transparency
  • Ensure every client receives clear, accurate, and timely performance reporting
  • Partner with the Catalyst product team to identify and implement AI-assisted workflows - from automated reporting to campaign analysis to client communication drafts
  • Track delivery metrics internally: on-time rates, error rates, client satisfaction signals

Team Coordination & Management
  • Manage day-to-day execution across advertising, SEO, and website support teams; set clear performance standards, develop talent, and hold the team accountable for delivery quality
  • Partner with product leaders to align delivery expectations with current platform capabilities and the roadmap toward a fully connected intelligence, advertising, website, and SEO ecosystem

Client Health
  • Partner with strategists (who own the client relationship and renewals) to flag delivery risks early
  • Identify patterns across accounts: systemic issues, recurring errors, capacity constraints
  • Serve as a confident client-facing presence and, at times, a subject matter expert - presenting performance, translating data into clear narratives, and lending credibility to the strategies we recommend
  • Contribute to client retention by making sure the work earns it

Process & Efficiency
  • Build and continuously improve the operational infrastructure that allows quality work at scale
  • Identify opportunities to use AI tools to reduce manual work, improve consistency, and increase team capacity
  • Develop reporting templates, workflow documentation, and delivery standards that the team can execute without reinventing the wheel

Qualifications
  • Bachelor9s degree in statistics, business, finance or other related quantitative field; Master9s degree preferred
  • Minimum seven years9 quantitative research experience, including at least two years leading, mentoring, or managing research staff
  • Proven management experience, you have directly managed a team of digital marketing specialists, set performance standards, developed talent, and held the bar on quality
  • Exceptional client-facing communication skills, you are comfortable presenting to business owners and senior decision-makers, translating complex data into clear narratives, and navigating difficult conversations with professionalism and confidence
  • Solid analytics foundation - GA4, Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, attribution modeling; you know what the numbers mean and what to do about them
  • Process builder - you have created or improved workflows, reporting templates, or delivery systems that made a team meaningfully more efficient
  • AI fluency - you actively use AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or similar) in your day-to-day work and are excited to build AI-assisted delivery workflows from the ground up
  • High curiosity - you read, experiment, and bring new ideas; you don9t wait to be told what9s changing in the industry
  • Calm and steady under pressure; you stabilize situations rather than amplify them

Preferred Skills
  • Background in automotive, equipment, agriculture, construction, or dealer vertical digital marketing - you understand how dealers buy and how they think
  • Familiarity with dynamic inventory advertising (feed-based campaigns, Google Shopping, Meta catalogs)
  • Hands-on experience applying AI tools to digital marketing workflows - reporting automation, campaign analysis, content generation, or client communication
  • Experience helping transition a team from high-touch custom delivery toward a more scalable, productized model
  • Familiarity with website delivery and CMS fundamentals - enough to collaborate effectively with the website services team and advocate for integrated digital experiences

About Advance Local

Advance Local is a media company that operates local news and information websites, mobile apps, and newspapers in multiple U.S. markets. It is a subsidiary of Advance Publications, which also owns Condé Nast and American City Business Journals.
Learn more about Advance Local
Size
3,500 employees
Industry

Similar Jobs

More Jobs at Advance Local

More Media Jobs

Find similar Sr. Director, Digital Marketing jobs: