Director of Marketing & Growth

Job summary

The Director of Marketing & Growth will lead the development of a comprehensive marketing strategy that integrates brand, customer experience, acquisition, and retention. They are responsible for managing agency performance, overseeing marketing budgets, and driving growth across multiple swim school locations.

Job details

Director of Marketing & Growth About Making Waves Making Waves Swim School helps families build water safety and confidence, one lesson at a time. We're a multi-location swim school built on genuine care for our swimmers, parents, and staff - and we're entering our next stage of growth. That means it's time to build a marketing function to match. The Opportunity We're hiring a Director of Marketing & Growth to build a world-class marketing function that turns Making Waves into a brand families love, talk about, and stay with - while creating a predictable growth engine for the business. This isn't a classic "Director of Marketing" role built around brand, agencies, and an annual plan. It's a senior functional leader who connects Brand → Customer Experience → Acquisition → Conversion → Retention → Revenue into one strategy, reporting directly to our CEO and sitting on our leadership team. What You'll Do Own full-funnel growth - connect brand, acquisition, conversion, and retention into one strategy, with conversion tracked alongside leads, and close the gap on a registration trend that's declined year over year Turn existing families into a growth channel - own lifecycle marketing (CRM, email, SMS), referral strategy, and customer research on why families stay, refer, or leave Drive acquisition and new-location launches - own acquisition strategy, customer segmentation, and growth of our entry-level programs, and build a repeatable playbook for marketing new locations Manage our agency of record - Paid Ads, SEO, and Website - against a documented KPI brief and budget, holding them accountable for ROI Lead and develop our Marketing Specialist, growing their ownership of lead nurturing, events, social, community management, and reporting Set the brand's voice - real stories over constant promotions - and own media relations, reputation management, and how our brand shows up consistently across locations Build our reporting rhythm - weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual, including a competitive audit that doesn't exist today Build location-specific marketing plans that reflect each location's real constraints, instead of one national campaign trying to solve every location's problem What You Bring A senior marketing leader who's owned a growth-accountable function end to end, comfortable reporting directly to a CEO and sitting at the leadership table Experience marketing a service-based, multi-location, B2C business - swim schools, fitness/wellness, childcare, healthcare, home services, or similar Experience managing marketing across more than one brand or sub-brand under a shared parent organization Growth marketing fluency - you think natively in conversion and retention, and don't see storytelling and performance as being in tension Real ROI accountability in agency management - you hold agencies to KPIs and budget, not just receive their reports A genuine track record of developing people into bigger roles Working knowledge across paid media, SEO, website/CRO, social, email/lifecycle marketing, events, community management, and PR Comfort owning a budget and scorecard and a weekly numbers cadence A hands-on, roll-up-your-sleeves approach alongside strategic thinking - you're as comfortable writing the brief as presenting the strategy A customer-service mindset toward our location managers - you treat their input like a customer's, not a report-in Comfort using AI in your day-to-day work, for design, content, and communication Nice to have: B2B marketing experience, experience with subscription/membership or recurring-revenue businesses, experience stepping into a role handed off informally, and franchise or multi-unit business experience Our Core Values These aren't wall art - they're how we expect this role to be done, especially given how much of it runs through location managers, families and a small, growing team: Service-Oriented > We care A LOT about people! Whether it's a swimmer, parent, or staff member, we believe in doing whatever it takes to make someone's day. Self-Driven > We're always levelling up! We work hard and never stop looking for ways to improve. Optimistic > We dream big! Even when stuff gets hard, we keep going, learn from mistakes, and focus on what's possible. Highly Adaptive > Things change, and that's okay! We stay flexible, learn fast, and figure things out together. Fun Energy > Fun is kind of our thing! We bring energy, cheer, and good vibes wherever we go. Details Expected compensation range: $110,000–$130,000 Reports to: CEO Location: On-site (Brampton, ON), with occasional travel across all Making Waves locations Vacancy: this is an existing vacancy AI: Making Waves uses artificial intelligence to assist with screening, assessing and/or selecting applicants as part of our recruitment process

What you’ll do

The Director of Marketing & Growth will lead the development of a comprehensive marketing strategy that integrates brand, customer experience, acquisition, and retention. They are responsible for managing agency performance, overseeing marketing budgets, and driving growth across multiple swim school locations.

Requirements

The ideal candidate is a senior marketing leader with extensive experience in multi-location, B2C service-based businesses. They must possess strong analytical skills, a track record of team development, and the ability to manage complex marketing funnels and agency relationships.

Listed skills

• Leadership · Preferred
• Data analysis · Preferred
• Brand Strategy · Preferred
• CRM · Preferred

Other relevant skills

Identified from the job description. Confirm important requirements above.

• Growth Marketing
• Brand Strategy
• Customer Experience
• Lifecycle Marketing
• CRM
• Email Marketing
• SMS Marketing
• Agency Management
• Paid Media
• SEO
• Conversion Rate Optimization
• Public Relations
• Leadership
• Budget Management
• Data Analysis
• Strategic Planning
• Lead Nurturing
• Customer Segmentation
• Optimism
• Accountability
• Business-To-Business (B2B) Marketing
• Media Relations
• Research
• Artificial Intelligence
• Auditing
• Business Marketing
• Business-To-Consumer
• Customer Relationship Management
• Customer Service
• Communication
• Community Management
• Training And Development
• Franchising
• Search Engine Optimization
• Marketing
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Reputation Management
• Strategic Thinking
• Writing
• Advertisement

Job areas

• Marketing
• Management & Leadership
• Customer Service & Support
• Sports & Recreation
• Director of Growth Marketing
• Director of Marketing
• Sales and Marketing Managers
• Marketing Managers