Senior Marketing Manager (SIO)

Contact: Laura Graham (laura.graham@justice.gov.uk)

This is an exciting opportunity for a marketing professional to join a high performing and highly motivated team, delivering marketing and advertising campaigns that make a difference to people’s lives.

The Recruitment Marketing team is a specialist marketing function within the Recruitment and Retention Communications (RRC) team - part of the Ministry of Justice’s award-winning communications team. We are responsible for delivering high impact recruitment marketing campaigns that ensure the Ministry of Justice has the people it needs to deliver its priorities of swift access to justice, protecting the public and reducing reoffending. This includes attracting several thousand new prison and probation staff each year and 2,000 magistrates.

Our new flagship ‘Extraordinary Jobs’ campaign launched in September 2023, to bring together all recruitment for HM Prison and Probation Service under one unifying campaign brand.

Role overview

The Senior Marketing Manager role offers the opportunity to deliver data-driven marketing campaigns to influence public opinion and behaviour and help shape the perception of the MoJ’s work with key audiences.

The successful candidate will project manage and oversee delivery and evaluation of external marketing for the prison recruitment campaigns. This could be across paid media, partnerships, PR or a combination of channels.

You will help define communications objectives, develop in-depth understanding of our audiences, work with agencies to create content for a wide range of external channels and evaluate the impact and success of communications.

The Recruitment Marketing team utilises a variety of marketing channels (including paid media, paid partnerships, influencers, email, PR, TV and digital audio) to drive awareness and consideration in our prison, probation and magistrate roles.

This role is ideal for a dynamic and creative communicator who has experience in developing and implementing marketing campaigns and is passionate about executing best-in-class communications.

Key responsibilities

• Campaign delivery: Project manage and oversee delivery of the MoJ’s priority recruitment campaigns, both through building awareness and consideration of priority roles and driving quality applications.

• Work with research agencies and in-house resource to develop, deliver and evaluate campaigns against clear objectives, outcomes and timeframes.

• Successfully deliver data-driven campaign messages across multiple platforms and channels - collaborating with stakeholders, agency partners and other government departments.

• Advise, influence and collaborate with agencies, in-house teams and partners to achieve optimised shared goals, improving ROI on paid media where possible.

• Work with creative agencies to develop creative and content that resonates with your target audience and is suitable for a variety of marketing channels.

• Source and manage a pool of case studies to bring your communications to life.

• Manage and oversee campaign budgets.

• Develop strong sector knowledge and a good understanding of the business priorities for different policy areas, helping to anticipate and identify opportunities and risks by liaising with policy and operational teams in the department.

• Regularly update content on the recruitment websites so they remain relevant and provide applicants with the most important recruitment information, adhering to best practice content design.

• Briefing and advising staff across the department at all levels on communications and campaigns, including Ministers, frontline staff and senior policy and operational colleagues.

• Line management of a (IO) Recruitment Marketing Manager to help you deliver on the above.

Person specification

• You are experienced in marketing and/or advertising across any of paid, owned or earned media

• You have experience managing external agencies (media planning, media buying, creative, PR) to deliver against shared goals, or have agency experience yourself

• You have experience of marketing evaluation (e.g. Google Analytics, UTM tagging, data visualisation tools)

• You have an understanding of data and how to use it effectively in planning and evaluating campaigns

• You are able to communicate clearly and with confidence, both verbally and in written format

• You have experience communicating with different demographics, and have a proven track record of delivering messaging to a wide range of communities and audiences

• You are a team player and a champion of collaboration and innovation, who is comfortable working under pressure.

How to apply

Please submit a CV and statement of suitability (no more than 750 words) explaining how your skills and experience make you the ideal candidate for this role with reference to the key responsibilities and person specification above.

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Communicating and Influencing

• Delivering at Pace

• Managing a Quality Service