Director, Growth Marketing

About the Role

BWZ is building its growth engine from scratch, and this is the person who builds it. As Director of Growth Marketing, you’ll own audience acquisition, conversion optimization, and the experimentation systems that make both improve continuously. You’ll be responsible for getting the right people into BWZ's ecosystem efficiently and at scale, across paid campaigns, partner programs, events, and audience products. You’ll report to the COO and work closely with Media, Revenue Products, Events, RevOps, and Audience Ops. There's a blank canvas here: the measurement systems exist but need formalizing, the paid acquisition model is unproven, and the role of this hire is to validate and build it. If you’ve spent your career optimizing someone else’s growth playbook, this probably isn’t the right fit. If you’ve built one, it is.

Who You Are

You’ve grown audiences in a media or newsletter business or as part of content-based GTM demand gen programs; you understand the psychology of getting a senior professional to subscribe or register, and you’ve built campaigns that have driven these outcomes. You’re comfortable at both ends of the job. You can set the strategy and you can go into Meta and adjust the bids yourself. There's no team to delegate the execution to right now, and that doesn’t bother you — if anything, it’s appealing. You’re energized by having end-to-end ownership and you know how to build something from the ground up without waiting for perfect conditions. You think in systems. Campaigns are intentional. Experiments are structured and documented. You build dashboards and reporting cadences that make it obvious what’s working and what isn’t. You translate insights into action quickly. And while you’re comfortable being heads-down and tactical, you’ve led teams before and you think like someone who’s building something that will eventually need to scale.

What You’ll Be Doing

Audience Acquisition

• Own paid acquisition strategy across social, retargeting, and high-intent placements.
• Build and manage referral programs and cross-promotional partnerships (partner newsletters, event businesses, co-marketing).
• Develop conversion pathways into BWZ's membership, events, and audience products.
• Optimize landing pages and signup flows to improve acquisition efficiency.
• Partner with Media to amplify high-performing editorial and audience content.
• Partner with the GTM team to craft campaign amplification add-on products.

Conversion Optimization

• Audit and improve onboarding flows for newsletters, diagnostics, and events.
• Identify funnel drop-off points and run structured tests to address them.
• Work directly with developers and designers to implement web funnel improvements.
• Partner with Audience Ops and Revenue teams to improve lifecycle progression.

Experimentation

• Build and run a repeatable A/B testing framework across channels, messaging, and offers.
• Establish testing priorities, a regular experiment cadence, and a reporting rhythm.
• Operationalize successful experiments.
• Share learnings across Media, Revenue, and Leadership so the whole org gets smarter.

Reporting & Data

• Establish baseline tracking across acquisition and conversion funnels in the first 30 days.
• Build and maintain a live dashboard tracking acquisition, conversion, CAC, and experiment performance.
• Define and track the LTV model for BWZ's subscriber base (email engagement + inventory monetization).

How Your Success Will Be Measured

1. Qualified Audience Acquisition: # Director+ leads/month: Growth of ICP-matching audience acquired through paid campaigns, diagnostics, partnerships, events, and conversion programs.
2. Conversion Rate Improvement: % lift/quarter: Improvement in conversion rates across landing pages, diagnostics, newsletter signup flows, event registrations, and audience product funnels.
3. Experimentation Velocity & Impact: # successful experiments/quarter: Number of meaningful experiments launched, validated, and operationalized that improve acquisition, conversion, engagement, or pipeline contribution.

Your Skillset Includes

• Proven track record in growth marketing or paid acquisition, ideally in a media, newsletter, or audience-driven business.
• Hands-on experience running paid campaigns (Meta, LinkedIn, or equivalent) — not just overseeing them.
• Strong conversion optimization skills: landing pages, funnel analysis, A/B testing.
• Familiarity with CRM and audience data platforms.
• Experience building reporting systems and dashboards, not just reading them.
• Demonstrated ability to operate without a team; building processes from scratch rather than managing existing ones.
• Strong analytical instincts: you know what data matters and you make decisions from it.
• Experience working cross-functionally with product, design, and content teams.
• Prior team leadership experience (even if managing a small team or contractors).

Nice to Haves

• Background in a newsletter business or audience-first media company.
• Familiarity with diagnostic or assessment-based audience products.
• Experience in B2B audience acquisition (targeting professionals, not consumers).
• Copywriting ability — helpful for rapid campaign iteration without a dedicated writer.
• Experience at a company going through early-stage growth infrastructure build-out.

Salary

$150,000 - $180,000 CAD a year

About Us

We’re a rapidly growing, independent media tech company headquartered in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. Since 2012, our portfolio of influential digital publications has been helping millions of people succeed at work. Our brands cover thought leadership for executives in project management, people management, product management, tech, marketing and many others - with the goal of connecting people with knowledge, skills and tools they need to succeed professionally in the age of AI. We got our start in 2011 as The Digital Project Manager blog, founded by our CEO Ben Aston. Since then, we’ve grown into an international team of 70+ creators, strategists, and innovators with a portfolio of more than 15 online publications. We enjoy an impact-driven environment that combines the agility of a startup with the creativity of an agency and the diversity of a global company. We’ve previously ranked #30 in The Globe and Mail’s Fastest Growing Company list as well as Deloitte’s Fast 50 program, received a CMI award for Best Digital Publication for The Digital Project Manager—and we’re listed in both Canada's Top Small & Medium Employers, and Best Employers in BC! All of this growth is driven by our commitment to our mission: In a world of evolving skills, practices, and technology, we’re creating a playbook for the future of work and empowering communities to create it with us. Want to learn more? Watch this video to learn why the team love working at BWZ!

Diversity Equity and Inclusion

Black and White Zebra is an equal opportunity employer and considers all candidates for employment regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, marital status, military or veteran’s status (including protected veterans, as may be required by federal law), sexual orientation or any other category protected by law. We celebrate all backgrounds and attributes that continue to help make our team impactful, iterative, adaptable, and fun!