Marketing Lead

Who are we?

Sidewalk Labs is an urban innovation company working to make cities more sustainable and affordable for all. We create products, invest in new companies, and help plan innovative places around the world. Since our founding in 2015, we’ve grown into an organization of over 100 employees based primarily in New York City. Our cross-disciplinary team consists of experts from real estate, urban planning, government, finance, technology, and engineering, among other backgrounds.

We’ve launched innovative companies addressing urban mobility, next-generation infrastructure, and community-based healthcare, and invested in startups working on everything from robotic furniture to digital electricity. We continue to work internally on projects such as factory-made mass timber construction that can improve housing affordability and sustainability, a digital master-planning tool designed to help developers and communities achieve shared objectives, and a new approach to all-electric neighborhoods.

With the potential to catalyze and scale new models for sustainable and affordable growth, our work is both exciting and complex. We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!

What is the role?

We are currently looking for a Marketing Lead to set up and run a new marketing function at the company. You are a seasoned marketer with a broad array of marketing skills and experience and an entrepreneurial mindset. The role requires both strategic and critical thinking as well as the ability to translate strategy into a set of marketing programs and tactics that quickly produce results. You must have a good understanding of and experience with building brands, creating content marketing strategies, building a demand generation engine, and you should be well-versed in best practices in digital marketing. Ideally, you have significant experience in business-to-business marketing.

This is a new role and function in the company, and as such will require you to consult with, educate, and build credibility and confidence with the leadership team and product leaders. 

You will be both player and coach. You need to be execution minded, not only leading but creating marketing products and content. You will also be charged with setting up a small, agile and fluid marketing function that will evolve over time, hiring and onboarding supporting staff, and managing a pool of external resources that can be activated as and when needed.

As Marketing Lead, you will operate out of the centralized Policy, Communications, and Marketing (PC&M) team, coordinating marketing support across the entire company. Your primary responsibility will be supporting sales, product marketing, business development, and brand development.

In collaboration with colleagues on the PC&M team, you will be responsible for furthering the development of the Sidewalk Labs brand, guiding a small product marketing team for the products that are already launched and creating early marketing plans for the businesses that are not yet ready for full-time marketing support. All of our products are at different stages of development and market readiness. Two products have launched and have active customers as well as existing product marketing staff. At least two other products are expected to launch this year. 

Working with each of the business leaders, marketing will be required to develop a marketing plan and a set of campaigns and tactics that helps position each for commercial success wherever they are on this journey. You will be marketing to a global audience of real estate developers, urban planners, architects and designers, municipal agencies, urban-tech companies, and other groups focused on improving urban life.

Day-to-day, you will work with the marketing and communications/editorial teams and business leaders to ensure:

• Understanding the product markets, target audiences, business development goals, and priorities.
• Creating and approving comprehensive marketing plans in close collaboration with product and development teams and ensuring execution of these plans.
• Working with the editorial team on thought leadership and content marketing to drive awareness, knowledge and demand for Sidewalk Labs and its product brands.
• Creating a demand generation engine that results in sales.
• Actively testing and learning marketing programs and tactics to drive the best results
• Establishing an analytics program to evaluate marketing success.
• Reviewing results and adjusting course as needed.

What You Will Achieve

In your first 3 months you will:

• Develop an understanding of each of the product businesses and assess their existing marketing plans, including infrastructure, assets and results from any campaigns.
• Draft the marketing plan and budget to support the Sidewalk brand and its product businesses.
• Begin hiring a small team of product marketing specialists and identify additional marketing resources needed to execute the marketing plan.
• Build rapport with company leadership and the product leads. 
• Refine marketing messaging, channels, and customer profiles for Sidewalk and the product businesses.
• Collaborate with the Communications/Editorial team on the development of thought leadership content and audience targeting onto your team.

In your first 6 months you will 

• Develop a robust company marketing strategy for 2022.
• Complete hiring of the marketing team and secure any external resources needed to execute the plan and launch product marketing campaigns. 
• Created standardized reporting and metrics to track marketing activities across the company.
• Collaborate with the product marketing team, product leads and sales team to ensure growth marketing plans are in place that enable customer acquisition and retention and reach of new geographic markets.
• Assume managerial oversight of product marketing needs currently being handled by other members of the Communications/Editorial team.

After 12 months you will 

• Direct all company-wide marketing efforts.
• Ensure that each product business executes marketing plans that grow the customer base and expand to new geographic markets.

What We Expect

You will be part of the thought-leadership team on this journey and your success will be fueled by a strong interest in cities and technology; you will have 15+ years of relevant experience, and demonstrate the following skills:

• Strategic mindset. You quickly understand insights and are able to develop effective marketing strategies.
• Results-oriented. You can quickly translate strategy into marketing campaigns and tactics that deliver results.  You have already had success in bringing new products to market.
• Brand builder. You understand the importance of the brand and know how to build differentiation through thought leadership and content.
• Leader of people. You know how to form a new marketing function, enabling it to work seamlessly with other related functions, e.g. development, sales, communications and manage a network of external marketing resources effectively.
• Consultative Partner. You are comfortable acting in an advisory capacity with other business leaders in the company and command respect due to your creative but realistic approach to problem-solving.
• Entrepreneurial mindset.  You are a quick study and can change course fluidly when required. 

Sidewalk Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We actively seek applicants from underrepresented communities. Even if you are not 100% sure you are right for the role, please apply and we will be happy to consider your application. All employment is based on merit and business need, and we respond to each application we receive.