The Role
Owns marketing for an 8,300-unit multifamily portfolio, including Google Ads, internet listings, social media, websites, branding, online reviews, lead tracking, and the overall marketing budget. The role brings agency-managed functions in-house, improves cost per lead and lease volume, negotiates listing contracts, reports performance to ownership, and partners with regional and onsite teams. The position is office-based in La Jolla with quarterly travel to properties across multiple markets.
Summary Generated by Built In
Director of Marketing — Multifamily
Gaines Investment Trust
Location: Our La Jolla (San Diego) office — this is an office-based position
Type: Full time, salaried, in the office Monday through Friday. You are out of the office only when traveling.
Travel: Quarterly — four multi-market trips a year, covering all 32 communities within twelve months (Dallas, Tulsa, Phoenix/Tucson, Las Vegas, Lawrence KS, and Southern California)
Base salary: $120,000
Bonus: Up to 25% of base, paid on marketing cost reduction and traffic growth
About Us
Gaines Investment Trust is a family-owned real estate company founded in 1966. We own about 8,300 apartments across 32 communities in six states — California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
We are not a third-party management company. We own everything we manage and we manage nothing we don’t own. We buy good long-term locations, hold them, take care of the buildings, and take care of our residents. Everyone who works here is expected to think like an owner, because they work for one.
The Job
This is a new position, and it is a builder’s job.
Right now an outside agency runs our pay-per-click advertising and manages several of our internet listing accounts. We are bringing all of that in house. We do no social media for our properties at all. Our websites sit on a template platform and do not get updated the way they should.
We are hiring one person to fix all three and to own marketing for all 8,300 units — the budget, the ad accounts, the websites, the social channels, and the brand.
Ready to Take the Next Step? Tell Us More Than a Résumé Can.
We want to learn more about you—your marketing experience, strategic approach, creativity, and what you could bring to Gaines Investment Trust.
Move directly to the next step in our hiring process by completing a short one-way video interview through Spark Hire.
Complete your interview here:
https://hire.li/uDS_g-NnQIHHl4GKGZALU
https://hire.li/uDS_g-NnQIHHl4GKGZALU
The interview can be completed from your phone, tablet, or computer at a time that works for you.
Please note: Once you access the Spark Hire interview, you will have 3 days to complete and submit it.
What You Will Do
- Take our pay-per-click advertising away from the outside agency and run it yourself, in house
- Bring the internet listing accounts the agency currently manages back under our own control
- Own the Google Ads accounts for every community — build them, budget them, and tune them every week
- Drive cost per lead down and lease volume up, and be able to prove both with numbers
- Build social media for our properties from zero — pick the platforms, create the content, and run it
- Update our property websites yourself — you will be in the template making changes regularly, not sending requests to a vendor
- Build and manage one marketing budget for the whole portfolio
- Negotiate all internet listing contracts as one company instead of 32 separate buyers
- Track every lead — where it came from, what it cost, and whether it turned into a lease
- Own our brand: logo, colors, fonts, signs, photography, video, and floor plans
- Manage online reviews and Google listings for every community
- Visit every property over the course of the year and work directly with regional managers and onsite teams
- Report results to ownership every month in plain numbers
What We Are Looking For
- Real hands-on pay-per-click experience — you have personally built and managed Google Ads accounts, not just reviewed an agency report
- You can talk about your own cost per lead numbers and exactly what you did to improve them
- 5+ years marketing apartments, including work across more than one property
- A good eye for web design, and the ability to make changes on a template website yourself
- Social media experience — you have built or run business accounts and know what actually gets engagement
- Experience buying and negotiating internet listing contracts
- Hands-on with Yardi or RentCafe (or a similar system), Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Google Business Profile
- Comfortable in a spreadsheet — you can build a budget and defend it
- Able to work full time in our La Jolla office and travel quarterly to the markets
- Bachelor’s degree preferred, not required if the experience is there
Where You Will Work
This is an office job. You will work out of our La Jolla office in San Diego, Monday through Friday. This is not a remote or hybrid position. The only time you are out of the office is when you are traveling to the markets, which happens roughly once a quarter.
What We Offer
- $120,000 base salary
- Bonus up to 25% of base
- Health benefits, paid time off, and holidays
- A seat at the table — you report to ownership and your decisions stick
- A clean slate — you are building this function, not inheriting someone else’s
To apply: Submit your resume. Selected candidates will complete a short recorded video interview.
Skills Required
- Hands-on experience personally building and managing Google Ads accounts
- Ability to explain personal cost-per-lead metrics and improvements made
- 5+ years of marketing experience in apartments or multifamily housing across multiple properties
- Web design skills and ability to update a template-based website independently
- Experience building or managing business social media accounts
- Experience buying and negotiating internet listing contracts
- Hands-on experience with Yardi, RentCafe, or a similar system
- Experience with Google Analytics
- Experience with Google Business Profile
- Ability to build and defend a marketing budget using spreadsheets
- Ability to work full time in the La Jolla office
- Ability to travel quarterly to assigned markets
- Bachelor's degree
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The Company
What We Do
Gaines Investment Trust (G.I.T.) is a 100% family-owned real estate investment and management company headquartered in San Diego, California. Established in 1966, it owns and operates more than 8,000 apartment units across six states and serves over 13,000 residents. The company focuses on long-term ownership and management of apartment communities, land, and strategic industrial and commercial investments for its residents and communities.
