Brand and Audience Marketing Manager, Salt Lake City, UT

Brand and Audience Marketing Manager, Salt Lake City, UT

Company: Western Governors University

Job Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Category: Communications, Marketing, and Public Affairs

Type: Full-Time

Job Type: Full time

Job Number: JR-024851

If you're passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country-and you're committed to working hard to play your part in building that future-consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Grade: Professional 307 Pay Range: $66,300.00 - $99,500.00

Job Description

The Marketing Manager is responsible for planning, executing, and optimizing integrated marketing campaigns that advance WGU's brand and drive awareness, consideration, and enrollment across priority audiences. This role blends brand campaign execution with audience-led strategy, ensuring that WGU's brand promise is delivered in ways that are relevant, compelling, and effective across the full marketing funnel.

Serving as a cross-functional hub, the Marketing Manager translates strategic objectives, audience insight, and performance data into clear plans, briefs, and execution across channels. This role ensures brand campaigns and audience strategies are activated consistently, on time, and with measurable impact.

Working closely with Media, Creative, Analytics, Research, Regional Marketing, Partnership teams, and in collaboration with School Marketing, the Marketing Manager owns day-to-day hero, seasonal and audience campaign leadership from planning through optimization. While School Marketing teams lead program launches and develop their own creative briefs and tickets for school-specific marketing, this role partners with them to ensure alignment and effective execution. The Marketing Manager also collaborates with the Social Media team on quarterly program initiatives. This role directly supports the Senior Manager, Brand & Audience Marketing by ensuring strategies are executed with clarity and accountability.

WGU has a range of distinct audiences and employs a full range of B2C and B2B marketing tactics; as such, the Brand Manager will help bring a strong customer voice in the establishment of a brand direction that can be activated across television, Out of Home (OOH), print, conferences/events, digital video, display, social media, email, website, field enablement and partner outreach, etc. The Brand Marketing team supports WGU's mission of expanding educational access and attainment, enables continued national growth, and aligns with strategic priorities set by the College, Region, and Strategic Partnerships teams.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Lead end-to-end planning and execution of integrated general and audience marketing campaigns, from strategy and briefing through launch, optimization, and wrap-up.
• Serve as the day-to-day cross-functional lead for assigned campaigns, coordinating across the department and organization.
• Manage project plans, timelines, and workflows to ensure on-time, high-quality delivery.
• Translate audience research, message testing, and qualitative and quantitative insights into clear messaging frameworks, value proposition priorities, and campaign recommendations.
• Maintain and evolve audience frameworks, including personas, segmentation logic, SWOTs, and journey considerations, in partnership with internal teams.
• Ensure audience insight is consistently reflected in campaign messaging, creative direction, and sequencing across the full marketing funnel.
• Partner with Creative teams to ensure messaging and assets balance brand consistency with audience relevance and cultural context.
• Support the execution of brand, seasonal and audience campaigns by defining approach, messaging priorities, and execution considerations.
• Partner with Media and Analytics teams to shape and evaluate full-funnel media strategies that balance long-term brand growth with near-term enrollment performance.
• Monitor campaign performance across funnel stages and audience segments, identifying insights and optimization opportunities.
• Translate performance data into actionable recommendations related to messaging, sequencing, budget allocation, and audience prioritization.
• Communicate performance results, insights, and recommendations clearly to stakeholders and apply learnings to improve future campaigns.
• Contribute to budget planning and forecasting by informing investment decisions based on audience and performance insights.
• Stay current on brand marketing, audience strategy, multicultural marketing best practices, and emerging tools that enhance personalization and performance.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Strong understanding of full-funnel marketing strategy and the role of media, messaging, and creative across stages.
• Ability to synthesize audience insight, brand strategy, and performance data into clear, actionable recommendations.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams without direct authority.
• Highly organized, with strong project management and prioritization skills.
• Data-informed decision maker with comfort navigating ambiguity.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree required
• 4+ years marketing experience with brand strategy, campaign planning or related roles.
• Experience working cross-functionally with creative, media, and analytics teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in higher education, multicultural marketing, or mission-driven organizations.
• Familiarity with brand strategy, analytics platforms, and CRM or MarTech ecosystems.
• Industry experience in higher education and/or areas relevant to WGU colleges.
• Master's degree.

Working Conditions

recruiting@wgu.edu

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