Marketing Manager

Who We Are & Who We Serve

Visit Corvallis is the destination marketing organization serving Corvallis and Benton County, Oregon. Our mission is to enhance Corvallis and Benton County’s prosperity by elevating its visitor economy. We do this by connecting people to experiences that show what’s great about Corvallis. When we do that well, visitors discover experiences that delight, restore, and surprise them; local businesses benefit; and tourism strengthens our community.

We’re a small and nimble team, where people and ideas matter. We all wear many different hats, and good work has a visible impact. 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. Not everyone is going to love Corvallis, and that’s okay. Our job is to find the people who will.

When we do that well, visitors discover experiences that delight, restore, and surprise them; 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
• Public relations and earned media
• 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. We aren’t interested in producing reports simply to produce them. We want someone who looks at the results and asks, “What should we try next?”

You’ll Probably Love This Job If:

• You’re curious and naturally ask why and how.
• 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. Being proven wrong doesn’t bother you nearly as much as never finding out whether you were right.
• 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.
• When something isn’t working, you look for the next solution rather than explaining why nothing can be done.

What You Need To Bring

• We’re less interested in someone who checks every traditional box than in the right combination of experience, judgment and potential.
• 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
• Oversee visitor guide creation, working collaboratively with an agency partner

Public Relations

• Oversee PR strategy and contracted firm
• 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
• Track and report public relations efforts to staff on a quarterly basis

Miscellaneous

• Approximately 10% annual travel required around the region, state of Oregon, and beyond
• Some evening and weekend work required
• All other tasks as assigned

What You Don’t Need

• You don’t need previous destination marketing or tourism experience; we can teach you tourism and Corvallis
• 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
• Ability to establish and maintain systems and processes
• Proven strength in communication and relationship-building skills when working with partners, vendors, staff, and community stakeholders
• Ability to work effectively and have fun in a small team environment
• Ability to lift 35lbs

Desired Qualifications

• Hospitality, tourism, community-facing, consumer packaged goods (CPG), agency, or other transferable experience may be relevant
• Experience in a combination of agency and client-side environments is desirable
   

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.