Digital Marketing Manager
Ashbourne Day Nurseries Group
Location: Hybrid remote | Milton Keynes office (Wednesdays) | Reports to: Head of Sales & Marketing
About the role
You will run digital across two different but complimentary businesses sitting under the same group: Ashbourne Day Nurseries, a 40-setting consumer brand with parent enquiries and recruitment lead generation as the core demand engines, and Fafunia, a B2B nursery furniture manufacturer with a Shopify eCommerce model. Future group entities may also fall under your remit.
You will work directly with the Sales and Marketing Director and the Head of Sales and Marketing to shape strategy, then own execution end to end, with the support of agency partners where appropriate. The work spans paid media, SEO, website and CRO, email, listing platforms and social, with a special focus on performance marketing.
This is a hands-on, broad-remit digital marketing role with genuine ownership, where you can make an immense impact on a leading group that has lots of room for growth and improvement in the digital space.
The role is hybrid remote, with 1-2 days in the office per week (Milton Keynes) with a mandatory Wednesday in office.
Roles & responsibilities
Strategy and planning
- Co-shape the digital strategy across Ashbourne and Fafunia with the Director and Head of Sales and Marketing.
- Translate strategy into channel plans tied to occupancy targets, recruitment pipeline needs, and Fafunia revenue targets.
- Act as the group point of contact for all digital marketing activity, including agency relationships.
Paid acquisition
- Plan, execute, and optimise integrated paid campaigns across Google and Meta for parent enquiries, recruitment leads, and Fafunia direct sales. Assisted by agency partners where appropriate.
- Build localised campaigns tailored to individual nurseries and regions, recognising that one of our settings in Birmingham, for example, has different demand dynamics from one in Milton Keynes.
- Continuously adhere to a test-and-learn approach. Bring evidence of what changed and what it moved. Adjust accordingly.
Organic and SEO
- Lead the SEO strategy across onsite, offsite, and technical, with clear priorities by site and by setting.
- Support activity across organic social where it earns its place against paid.
- Build the content and on-page work needed to compete in local search across 40 settings.
Website and conversion
- Own website performance including UX, conversion rate, from first click to enquiry or purchase.
- Plan and ship landing pages and campaign assets in collaboration with the wider team.
- Run a continuous CRO programme. Treat conversion rate as a lever with the same weight as CPC.
Listings and reviews
- Own performance on nursery listing platforms such as DayNurseries, including listing optimisation and content.
- Build and run the review generation strategy across the platforms that matter, improving both score and volume to drive trust and visibility.
eCommerce (Fafunia)
- Run paid acquisition and performance marketing for the Fafunia Shopify store.
- Set up and optimise Google Merchant Centre, shopping campaigns, and feed quality.
- Own the email programme, including lifecycle flows and broadcast campaigns.
Tracking & attribution, reporting and analytics
- Set up effective and sophisticated tracking and attribution for each digital marketing channel to accurately ascertain campaign ROI against pre-defined goals.
- Track performance across all digital channels and present clear, actionable insight to the leadership team.
- Own digital budgets and the ROI conversation. Know what every pound is doing.
- Feed insight back into strategy. Be the person in the room who knows what the data actually says.
Experience we are looking for
Must have:
- Five plus years running paid digital campaigns across Google and Meta to tight budgets, with a clear track record of delivering against KPIs.
- Demonstrable lead generation experience, ideally in a multi-location consumer business, with evidence of how you improved performance over time.
- Strong working knowledge across the digital spectrum: PPC, SEO (onsite and offsite), email, and organic social, but with an emphasis on paid marketing.
- Hands-on eCommerce experience, ideally with Shopify, including running paid acquisition and performance marketing for stores.
- Fluent in the core toolset: Google Analytics, Google Ads, Search Console, and Merchant Centre. You should know these platforms inside out.
- Working knowledge of at least some of: Ahrefs or SEMRush, Klaviyo or equivalent ESP, and one or more conversion or analytics tools.
Nice to have:
- Experience in childcare, education, or another regulated consumer category.
- Direct experience of integrated, multi-channel campaign execution where you can talk through how the channels worked together.
- Recruitment marketing experience.
How you work
You connect marketing to commercial outcomes (occupancy, recruitment, revenue), set the strategy and ship it yourself. You decide from data, show your working, flag when it's too thin, and default to running the experiment rather than debating it - all while holding campaigns across 40 settings and a B2B eCommerce business without things slipping.
Pay: £45,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company pension
- On-site parking
- Work from home
Work Location: Hybrid remote in Milton Keynes MK17 9JT
