Director of Marketing

About Axial

Axial is a pioneering online platform that is transforming American small business M&A for the better. Founded in 2009, Axial serves over 10,000 private M&A market participants, including corporate acquirers, lower middle market private equity firms, small business lenders, the burgeoning “EtA” community, boutique investment banks, and owner-operators.

In 2023, Axial powered the exit efforts of over 9,900 private companies, leading to over 900,000 platform connections, 75,000+ signed NDAs, and hundreds of millions of dollars in successfully closed transactions (https://www.axial.net/closed-deals/).

About the Role:

Axial has built a trusted brand in this market, with a powerful inbound marketing engine built on a foundation of content excellence. We are searching for a hands-on Director of Marketing to supercharge this marketing strategy, accelerate member growth, and further develop our brand. As the Director of Marketing, you will have a leadership role in driving the growth of newly acquired Axial members, while expanding the reach and trustworthiness of our brand within our target end markets. You’ll lead important initiatives, including:

• Demand Generation & Content Strategy: Accelerate our marketing strategy with small and mid-sized (SMB) business owners looking to exit, while continuing to invest in growing our core membership of deal professionals (corporate acquirers, private equity firms, investment banks, etc).
• Direct-to-Business Owner Initiatives: Establish strategies to attract business owners while building the most trusted resource hub for SMB exit planning on the internet, expanding on our current Exit Planning Resource Hub. The growth of “Axial for Owners” is a critical business priority that is core to our mission and strategically aligns with our marketplace offerings.
• Brand & Operational Coherence: Create stronger integration of our offering for both deal professionals and business owners, across all aspects of our brand, messaging, product, org structure, and resource allocation strategy.
• Brand Equity & Awareness: Continue to build on Axial’s strong brand awareness, credibility, and authority by leveraging Axial's foundation of over 400,000 annual website visitors and 50,000+ subscribers across Middle Market Review’s newsletters.
• Expand Marketing Channels: Experiment with and invest in underdeveloped growth channels including, but not limited to, SEO, website conversion, free resources, social media, email marketing, events, earned media, and partner ecosystems.

Support & Leadership:

Our leadership team and CEO have a long-term commitment to B2B marketing excellence rooted in high quality content and a focus on organic marketing methods. You'll have the opportunity to develop and execute a marketing roadmap in partnership with the CEO and the leadership team, with the resources needed to succeed.

Your Responsibilities

• Elevate our core demand generation engine to accelerate growth in new members acquired via content marketing, web-site optimization, SEO, social media, whitepapers, customer testimonials, webinars and videos, etc.
• Evolve the Axial brand from a brand primarily recognized by practitioners in the M&A world to one that also appeals to and attracts “exit-curious” business owners.
• Build, coach, and grow a high performing marketing team of internal team members (currently two), external consultants & outsourced / freelance professionals (currently six); and partnerships with marketing and branding agencies (currently one).
• Develop and execute quarterly marketing plans to accelerate growth in qualified leads, new members acquired, and revenue pipeline.
• Cultivate a culture of experimentation, optimizing growth levers to improve performance throughout the funnel, including A/B tests, creative and messaging tests, and exploring new growth channels.
• Refine and standardize Axial’s positioning, messaging, and competitive differentiation for all stakeholders in a manner that aligns the company on a clear vision.
• Utilize Analytics to measure and understand Axial’s various funnels, as well as identify opportunities for optimization, leveraging a deep understanding of unit economics (CAC/LTV, CAC payback), sales cycles, customer journeys, and critical acquisition metrics (CPA, CPC, CPM).
• Work cross-functionally with other teams, including Product, Sales, Business Ops to improve CAC, LTV, and marketing-influenced unit economics through shared goals and initiatives.

About You:

• ~8+ years of growth marketing experience spanning the full funnel
• ~4+ years as an individual contributor in a demand generation-related role
• Track record of building, managing, and scaling high-performing teams of marketers across a range of growth marketing specialties
• A builder, excited to work in a fast-paced startup environment and craft a playbook to scale all facets of Axial’s growth engine (strategy, team, and infrastructure)
• Proven track record successfully developing and executing inbound-driven and/or freemium customer acquisition strategies, ideally in multi-sided marketplace business.
• Has a knack for establishing and refining companies’ positioning, messaging, and tone, and integrating these into copywriting and storytelling playbooks and best practices across the organization.
• Has an experimental, “test, learn, scale” mindset, utilizing agile methodologies to launch new initiatives.
• Highly collaborative team player, with a track record of building strong cross-functional partnerships and alignment towards achieving growth targets.
• Experience with inbound-driven customer acquisition models

Great to Have:

• Exposure to some aspect(s) of our market (Corporate finance, private capital markets, PE/IB, business owners in their final stages before exiting/retiring).

Location

New York City | Hybrid attendance policy

Compensation

All-in Compensation: $200,000 - $275,000

For cash compensation, we set standard ranges for all U.S.-based roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. In order to be compliant with local legislation, as well as to provide greater transparency to candidates, we share salary ranges on all job postings regardless of desired hiring location. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including geographic location as well as candidate experience and expertise, and may vary slightly from the amounts listed above.

Working at Axial

We’re building incredible products for users, a premium brand, and a unique culture. In short, a company that helps millions of people and that millions of people admire.

We are a small and tight-knit team (average tenure of 4+ years), and you’ll have the opportunity to have a direct impact on the growth of the company. We subscribe to the following 5 character traits that every employee embraces and practices: positive, gritty, humble, discerning, and accountable. We’re a group of interesting, intellectually curious individuals that like to collaborate, work hard, and grow the business while growing personally and professionally in the pursuit of our mission.

Our Values:

Be an Owner: you have the personal maturity and accountability to take ownership for your work, to operate with transparency, and to focus on delivering results

Expect and Deliver Excellence: you do high-quality work consistently, and you expect it from your colleagues as well

Communication Matters: you deliberately focus on being an excellent communicator, listener, and collaborator with your teammates and with members

Invent and Simplify: you are creative and curious, always looking for better ways to materially improve the quality and scalability of the member experience

Obsess over Member Trust: you work in a way that helps Axial consistently earn, grow and keep member trust. You never forget that we’re working on life-altering, confidential transactions with our members.

At Axial you will also enjoy:

• Working with a great team of smart, motivated people on exciting and unique projects
• Robust medical, dental and vision insurance, paid for by Axial
• 401k program
• Flexible vacation policy (we urge employees to take a minimum of 15 days)
• Health & Wellness reimbursement program
• Pre-tax commuter program