Marketing Leader & Brand Growth

Questions? Please review the full description above. If your question isn’t answered there, please email Ashley at ashley@collegeessayguy.com. Emailed applications submitted outside of our application portal will not be considered.
About College Essay Guy
College Essay Guy (CEG) is where students, parents, and counselors go for smart, practical guidance on the college admission journey. Since 2011, we’ve been on a mission to bring more ease, joy, and purpose to what is often a stressful process—through free resources, pay-what-you-can courses, and personalized one-on-one college admissions counseling and admissions essay coaching support. As a certified B Corp with a trusted reputation in the college admissions space, we’re proud that thousands of families, schools, and counselors trust our team and our brand every year to help students tell their stories, manage the admissions process and access their higher education goals.
The Role
We’re looking to hire a

Head of Marketing

to lead CEG’s marketing strategy and execution across digital marketing channels. This is a unique opportunity for a marketing expert to leverage the strength of one of the most trusted brands in the college admissions space and take CEG to the next phase of its growth. In this role, you’ll oversee live course launches, create awareness for our 1:1 coaching services, lead content marketing strategy, and website conversion optimization. You’ll be a confident marketing generalist, with likely deeper expertise in a handful of marketing channels. You’ll blend creative instincts with strong measurement habits to help us reach the right people with the right message across our millions of annual website viewers, hundreds of thousands of email subscribers, and tens of thousands of social media followers. You aren't just driving traffic; you're connecting anxious humans with the messaging, storytelling, and resources they need to survive application season.
The Team
You’ll be joining and collaborating with a team of smart, fun, caring, and hilarious (we like to think so…) professionals who are deeply committed to helping students reach their full potential in high school, college, and life.
We move fast, we laugh often, and we take the work seriously…ourselves, less so.
The Opportunity: Part Marketing Wizard, Part Brand Amplifier
This is a rare chance to lead marketing efforts in one of the most trusted brands in the college admissions space (a corner of the internet usually reserved for hysteria). We don't want someone to just keep the lights on; we want you to help us take CEG to the next phase of its growth and further our mission to help students reach their higher education goals.
You'll use your expertise to help us grow—not by shouting louder than everyone else or inciting fear about record low acceptance rates, but by being smarter, more empathetic, and providing more value to the families and counselors who rely on us.
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What you’ll do
Oversee and digital marketing campaigns aligned to company goals
Partner with Ops, sales and other department leaders to both enhance successes of our existing brand, and evolve it into the next stage of CEG’s growth
Choose the right channels and message frameworks to reach end users with clarity, warmth, and persuasion (not vibes-only, not marketing metrics-only—both).
Be a part of helping ensure our marketing funnel
Coordinate content strategy across blog, social, YouTube, and podcast to ensure alignment and consistency and that we are hitting our key marketing objectives
Oversee our YouTube content pipeline (1M+ viewers annually) and provide strategic guidance to our social media strategy
Lead efficient content marketing meetings that turn ideas into decisions, decisions to strategy, and strategy into shipped work.
Ensure content priorities are connected to growth goals (traffic, leads, conversions, revenue), while protecting what makes CEG feel human and trustworthy.
You’ll oversee how we launch and market the live and ondemand courses that we host each year
Co-manage the live course marketing calendar and launch timelines with Ops.
Lead email marketing strategy for launches in collaboration with internal stakeholders: copy direction, send plans, segmentation, and testing/iteration.
Recommend promotional levers (webinars, discounts, on-site promos, and omni-channel coordination).
Set targets, track performance, and share actionable insights through regular reporting and a monthly CEO dashboard.
Website conversion optimization
Improve email opt-ins and sales pages through structured A/B testing and iterative optimization.
Use data to declare winners, scale what works, and retire what doesn’t move the needle
Coordinate with Operations to prioritize tests, ship variations, and keep the testing drumbeat consistent.
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Qualifications (what we’re looking for)
3-5+ years of experience leading multi-channel digital marketing strategy (content marketing, email, social, conversion & funnel optimization).
Strong copy-writing instincts and the ability to translate real audience insight into clear, effective, and brand-aligned messaging
Fluency with marketing tools and CRMs including but not limited to HubSpot (Marketing & Sales Hub), Google Analytics, email opt-in tools
Comfort with leveraging AI tools to improve workflows, including LLMs like ChatGPT, NanoBanana/Gemini, but also emerging AI marketing tools
Comfort with data: A/B testing, performance metrics, and making calls based on results, not just intuition.
Attention to detail and strong project management and cross-functional collaboration (Ops/Sales/Content)
Experience managing and empowering marketing & social media managers and collaborating with blog managers
Ability to balance big-picture strategy with the ability to get your hands dirty with tools, landing page creation, and dashboards to execute in a lean, fast-moving environment
Bonus Qualifications:
Knowledge of the college admissions process and the pain points of families managing the college application process
Experience marketing education, coaching, counseling, or other high-trust services where credibility, trust and empathy matter as much as conversion.
Deeper experience (3+ years) managing social media strategy across paid social ads, as well as organic strategy
Traits that matter at CEG
Deep care + high standards:

You want people to feel supported, you collaborate effectively

and

you want the numbers to move.
Strategic efficiency:

You love clean plans, tight timelines, and not doing extra work “just because.”
Integrity:

You’re allergic to gimmicks (and if you’ve ever asked, “but is this actually helpful?”—you’ll fit in well).
Salary range:

$85,000–$120,000/year, depending on skills, location, and experience.
20 days of PTO/Flex Time Away
11 paid company holidays
Medical, dental, vision, life, and long-term disability coverage
401(k) + matching
Timeline:

We’re aiming to hire for this role in early 2026 and aiming for a start date in March/April, but are flexible on the start date for the right candidate.
TO APPLY:
A bit about your career journey
What makes you particularly well-suited for this role and joining the College Essay Guy team.
If your application is selected for the next round, we will be in touch with details regarding the next steps in our hiring process. Please note that we will follow up with every applicant regarding the status of their application, regardless of the outcome.
Questions?

Please review the full description above. If your question isn’t answered there, please email (no phone calls, please) Ashley at ashley@collegeessayguy.com. Emailed applications submitted outside of our application portal will not be considered.
We are humans reviewing your application, so we appreciate your patience while we review all submitted applications. We will follow up with everyone who applies with an answer!
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College Essay Guy is an equal-opportunity employer that seeks to hire those who represent the diverse communities we serve. All are encouraged to apply. We are a company of humans, our differences are our strengths. We bring all of ourselves to our jobs. That’s what gives us our strength.

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