Wayside Publishing - Senior Marketing Manager

The Senior Marketing Manager is responsible for leading both the strategic direction and operational execution of Wayside’s marketing function. This role ensures that marketing initiatives are clearly prioritized, strategically planned, and systematically executed in alignment with company goals. This position serves as the central owner of marketing strategy, brand stewardship, campaign planning, and channel coordination across all marketing channels, including digital campaigns, conferences, trade shows, and sales enablement initiatives.

The Senior Marketing Manager oversees marketing operations, campaign ownership, and workflow visibility across the team while ensuring that marketing efforts are measurable, data-informed, and aligned with sales and product priorities. This role requires a leader who combines strategic marketing planning with strong operational discipline and who can manage complex cross-functional initiatives across marketing, sales, and product teams.

Who We Are

Wayside Publishing is a progressive developer of world language programs, resources, and materials for middle and high schools across the United States. We partner with educators to craft transformative texts and digital tools that engage students and foster successful communication and understanding across cultures.

Primary Responsibilities

People Leadership and Scope

This role is a senior people leader responsible for directly managing marketing team members and coordinating the work of cross functional partners and external vendors as needed.

• Managing, coaching, and developing marketing team members.
• Conducting 1x1s, performance feedback, and goal setting.
• Supporting hiring, onboarding, and team capacity planning.
• Serving as a player/coach as needed for priority initiatives.

Marketing Strategy, Planning & Budget Ownership

Own the development and execution of the company’s marketing strategy to support product adoption, market awareness, and revenue growth.

• Developing and maintaining the annual marketing strategy and campaign roadmap.
• Identifying priority products, initiatives, and audiences for marketing focus.
• Aligning marketing activities with sales pipeline goals and product launch timelines.
• Owing or significantly influencing the annual marketing budget including; making prioritization tradeoffs to maximize impact. and tradeoff, tracking spend and performance across campaigns and events, Ensuring marketing resources are focused on initiatives that drive measurable business impact.
• Defining the strategic purpose of each campaign (lead generation, product awareness, customer engagement, etc.).

Campaign Ownership & Integrated Marketing Execution

Serve as the central owner of marketing campaigns, ensuring that initiatives are fully executed across all marketing channels.

• Defining campaign objectives, timelines, and deliverables Ensuring campaigns are consistently implemented across:
  • Email marketing
  • Website content
  • Social media
  • Conferences and events (including strategic planning, execution, and performance tracking).
  • Sales enablement materials
• Coordinating campaign execution across marketing team members.
• Ensuring campaign messaging is consistent and aligned with product positioning.
• Overseeing campaign launch readiness including testing, approvals, and deployment.

Product Marketing, Brand & Launch Coordination

Lead marketing and brand stewardship across the organization. 

• Developing marketing plans for new product releases.
• Serving as the primary owner of marketing brand, positioning, and narrative consistency.
• Partnering with Product and Editorial teams to ensure messaging is accurate, market-aligned, and educator-focused.
• Maintaining alignment between brand voice, campaign messaging, and sales enablement materials.
• Ensuring launch readiness across marketing channels including:
  • Website pages
  • Marketing collateral
  • Email campaigns
  • Product videos
  • Conference promotion

Conference & Trade Show Strategy

Own the strategic planning, execution, and performance measurement of all conference and trade show participation.

• Defining the strategic role of conferences within the overall marketing plan (lead generation, brand awareness, customer engagement, etc.) 
• Selecting priority conferences based on target audience, product focus, and business goals. 
• Developing pre-, during-, and post-event marketing plans to maximize impact. 
• Coordinating cross-functional efforts including sales, product, and marketing for event readiness. 
• Ensuring consistent messaging, positioning, and branding across all event materials and presence. 
• Tracking and reporting on conference performance, including: 
  • Lead generation and pipeline contribution. 
  • Engagement and booth activity. 
  • Follow-up conversion and ROI. 
• Continuously optimizing conference strategy based on performance data and business outcomes.

Full Customer Lifecycle Marketing

Ensure marketing supports the entire customer lifecycle, not just lead generation.

• Developing campaigns that support: 
  • Acquisition and lead generation.
  • Product adoption and onboarding.
  • Customer engagement and retention.
  • Expansion, cross-sell, and upsell initiatives.
• Partnering with Customer Success, Sales, and Professional Learning to align lifecycle messaging.
• Supporting advocacy initiatives such as case studies, testimonials, and customer stories.

Marketing Operations, Workflow Leadership & Decision Authority

Establish and maintain structured marketing workflows that ensure visibility, accountability, and timely delivery of all marketing initiatives.

• Maintaining a centralized project management system (Smartsheet or equivalent).
• Ensuring every marketing initiative has defined:
  • Owners
  • Timelines
  • Deliverables
• Acting as the final decision-maker for marketing prioritization, sequencing, and capacity allocation.
• Managing intake and prioritization of marketing requests across departments.
• Creating repeatable processes for campaign planning and execution.
• Ensuring no marketing initiative launches without full cross-channel coordination.

Marketing Performance & KPI Ownership

Lead the development and tracking of marketing performance metrics tied to company business objectives.

Responsibilities include:

• Establishing marketing KPIs aligned with revenue goals.
• Tracking campaign performance across channels.
• Monitoring marketing funnel performance including lead generation and trial conversion.
• Analyzing campaign effectiveness and recommending optimization strategies.
• Partnering with Sales Operations to track marketing-driven revenue impact.

Marketing Technology & Systems Management

Oversee the effective use of marketing technology platforms.

Responsibilities include:

• Managing marketing automation platforms (e.g., Pardot).
• Overseeing segmentation, lead capture, and campaign automation workflows.
• Ensuring integration between marketing systems and Salesforce.
• Partnering with Sales Operations and technical resources to optimize marketing systems.
• Maintaining data quality and campaign reporting accuracy.

Website Governance & Digital Presence

Ensure the company website functions as a primary marketing and conversion platform.

Responsibilities include:

• Managing the marketing website roadmap and content updates.
• Coordinating product pages and campaign landing pages.
• Ensuring website content supports product launches and marketing campaigns.
• Working with internal teams and external vendors to maintain and improve site performance.

Team Leadership & Accountability

Lead and develop the marketing team to ensure consistent performance, accountability, and professional growth.

• Assigning clear ownership of marketing initiatives and outcomes.
• Monitoring progress of marketing initiatives and removing workflow blockers.
• Ensuring team members clearly understand responsibilities and expectations.
• Identifying resource gaps and workflow inefficiencies.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Serve as the central coordination point between marketing, sales, product, and leadership teams.

• Aligning marketing priorities with sales initiatives and product launches.
• Supporting sales enablement efforts and lead generation initiatives.
• Coordinating with Product and Editorial teams to ensure accurate product messaging.
• Communicating marketing progress, campaign results, and insights to executive leadership.

Other Duties & Strategic Responsibilities

In addition to the core responsibilities outlined above, the Senior Marketing Manager will:

• Support company-wide strategic initiatives that require marketing leadership, planning, or execution, including transformation efforts, new business models, or organizational priorities.
• Lead or contribute to cross-functional initiatives where marketing strategy, systems, or execution are critical to success.
• Assess and recommend improvements to marketing processes, tools, or operating models to increase scalability and effectiveness.
• Provide marketing insights and recommendations to executive leadership in support of decision-making and long-term planning.
• Represent the marketing function in cross-departmental planning, retrospectives, and continuous improvement efforts.
• Adapt marketing priorities and execution plans in response to evolving business needs, market conditions, and strategic shifts.

• 5+ years of marketing leadership experience.
• Demonstrated experience managing integrated marketing campaigns.
• Strong project management and workflow management expertise.
• Experience using marketing automation platforms (Pardot, HubSpot, or equivalent).
• Experience using CRM systems such as Salesforce.
• Strong data analysis and reporting capabilities.
• Proven ability to manage multiple initiatives simultaneously while maintaining clarity of priorities.
• Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Experience in K-12 or educational publishing.
• Experience managing conference marketing programs.
• Experience managing website content management systems.
• Experience developing marketing KPI frameworks tied to revenue growth.
• Strong operational discipline.
• Clear prioritization and decision-making.
• Process-oriented leadership.
• Data-driven thinking.
• Ability to build scalable marketing systems.
• Accountability for team performance and outcomes.

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation: base salary, uncapped potential.
• Health insurance with options for dental, vision, life insurance, and more.
• Retirement savings plan with employer contribution.
• Employer-paid STD and LTD policies.
• Paid holidays.
• Work/life balance as a company value.

We believe that traditional hiring policies can hurt the most marginalized people in society, including people of color, people from working-class backgrounds, women, and LGBTQ people. Because we believe that these communities must be centered in the work we do, we strongly encourage applications from people with these identities or who are members of other marginalized communities.

Wayside Publishing is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.

When submitting your application, please include a concise cover letter that speaks to your experience and why this role is the next best step in your career. 

NO PHONE CALLS OR RECRUITERS PLEASE.