Paid Search Business Director
Wavemaker UK, London

About Wavemaker

We believe there always is a better way to grow. We positively provoke growth for our clients by reshaping consumer decision-making and experiences through media, content, and technology. The Wavemaker way is globally consistent. Fuelled by the world’s most powerful consumer data, we understand where and how marketing can intervene decisively to help brands win more sales.
 

Our name is our mission and our method. To make waves, you need to be provocative, even fearless. We do our best work for brave brands and people who want to be challenged to go further and faster. We know it’s not easy, but if it’s in you, we will get it out of you.

Our 7,600 people across 90 markets provoke growth for some of the world’s leading brands and businesses. Our attitude of Positive Provocation is enabled by:

• Deep knowledge we have of our clients’ business
• Confidence to challenge what’s gone before
• The support to go further than we thought possible

About GroupM Nexus:

GroupM Nexus UK is a community of more than 1,000 specialists comprised of Search, Social, Programmatic, and Ad Tech Ops teams from across the GroupM agencies. GroupM Nexus is designed to help accelerate our clients’ businesses by leveraging the power and capabilities of GroupM and its agencies, through partnerships with the world’s leading digital platforms, advanced accreditations for digital practitioners or continued development and deployment of industry leading benchmarks.

About Paid Search at Wavemaker:

The Paid Search team works to plan & execute market-leading search advertising campaigns for our clients across a variety of search engines. We are currently a team of over 40 people working on a mixture of clients that include Audible, Danone, Morrisons, Avon and Nationwide. The team are based at Wavemakers’ office at Sea Containers, SE1 in London UK.

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About the role

As Paid Search becomes increasingly automated and complex, advertisers are recognising the value in having highly skilled partners who can either manage their Paid Search campaigns on their behalf or advise their in-house teams on how to stay ahead. As a result, it’s critical for each Wavemaker client team to have a Paid Search Business Director who is responsible for:

1. People.
   1. Making our Paid Search people are the best in the industry through developing a market leading on-boarding programme for new starters
   2. Ongoing training and mentoring for our Paid Search specialists
   3. Participating in regular Paid Search knowledge sharing and wider events in Wavemaker and GroupM Nexus.

1. Product.
   1. Making sure that we are delivering the ‘Wavemaker Way’ for Paid Search consistently across your client groups.
   2. Working with our engineers to make sure the proprietary products, tools & technology are effective for our teams and genuinely market leading.

1. Operations.
   1. Ensure your Directors are utilising the Global Hub team effectively.
   2. Your teams are conducting daily stand-ups and diagnostics, as well as maintaining governance dashboards and processes.
   3. Your team need to be focused on actionable insight reports.
   4. Accurate and timely finance booking and reconciliations.
   5. You enforce & enhance the workflow systems in place.

1. Profile.
   1. We will have over +40 Paid Search specialists doing amazing work which we need our clients and prospective clients to know about. The Business Director will work with teams to identify and shape case studies, award entries and press releases. They’ll then relentlessly champion this work and the people behind the work. As part of our mission to ensure clients and the industry know Wavemaker are the experts in Paid Search, it will be important to produce regular thought pieces.

1. Performance.
   1. This starts with ensuring the clients your Account Directors are responsible for are delivering the best performance for clients
   2. Achieving and exceeding agreed client and business KPIs
   3. Continually pushing the boundaries with our activation.
   4. This will mean working closely with Google, Microsoft (among others) in creating and delivering joint business plans that help our clients reach the highest levels of search maturity. 

1. Growth.
   1. The Business Director will collate insight, recommend approaches, and be involved in new business pitches.
   2. You will encourage a ‘fearless growth’ mindset in your team; continually experimenting and driving our Paid Search product forwards.

The Paid Search Business Director will be directing your book of business, working across two or three client groups directing the Paid Search specialists. Primary line management is from the Head of Paid Search, who will consult with you when setting objectives and reviewing progress regularly.

Measures for success in this role will include client retention & new business wins, experimentation in your teams, completion of assigned department projects, progression of the people you line manage, number of publications (external case studies and award entries) and overall progress of clients against the Wavemaker Way (measured though Unlocks; our proprietary auditing tool).

About You

We are looking for candidates who are self-starters, want to succeed and have a desire to push the boundaries. Passionate about digital marketing, specifically Paid Search and Cross-Platform campaign formats (e.g. Performance Max, Microsoft Audience Network etc.). Successful candidates will have an analytical mindset coupled with creativity.

To excel in this role the Paid Search Business Director will need to:

1. Be willing and able to ‘get their hands dirty’. There will be occasions where standing back and advising the client team’s Paid Search specialists will be the right approach. But on occasions the Business Director will set the example, showing the team what to do and how to do it. This is a critical factor for success in this role because a key requirement is for the quality and integrity of a clients’ Paid Search accounts to always be maintained.

1. Be flexible. The way the Business Director works from week-to-week will be very different. They will be working on different clients, different projects, and even in different operating models (consultancy vs fully managed service). As a business we need to balance the need for focus on the key day-to-day managing of Paid Search accounts with an ability to move people to where their expertise is most needed.

1. Focus on outcomes. Assigning a value to every piece of work will be critical in helping everyone to focus on the projects that will have the biggest impact and which, therefore, prove our value to our clients.

1. Champion agile working. The Business Director will need to role model agile working as it is a key strategy for our success. Agile working is the mechanism that’ll allow you to be flexible and drive the most value from Paid Search for our clients, as it allows you and the client teams to focus and tackle tasks that generate the highest value first.

1. Be a specialist within an area of Paid Search. An ambition is for each Business Director to be specialists in specific areas of Paid Search for example: Governance, Structure, Technology to name a few. On this basis the Business Director will lead relevant ‘Sprints’ using Agile Project Management principles, as well as being brought into client meetings and projects as required.

1. Be collaborative. The Business Director will need to work with a variety of people across the client teams in delivering Paid Search projects. This will mean working with the client teams’ Paid Search Directors to identify and scope Paid Search projects. Then work with the client teams Paid Search managers and executives to deliver those projects. You will also need to be able to influence partners such as Google, Microsoft to get your clients onto the latest betas.

1. Be client first. The Business Director role is not a back-office role. While the client team will manage the client relationship, it is important clients know they have Paid Search Business Director available and working on their business and can clearly see the value they bring to their Paid Search performance. In addition, any projects the Business Director are working on need to have a clear benefit to the client, i.e. we start with the client needs first then design the solution.

1. Love the detail. We work by the mantra of ‘Don’t walk by a quality issue’. This means if you see a problem with a client’s Paid Search activity you address it. Our aim is to make our accounts pitch proof, so if a rival team wishes to audit our activity they find no holes in how we run Paid Search at Wavemaker.

Overall, the Paid Search Business Director role will suit candidates with a deep understanding of Paid Search, with a strong track record of delivering exceptional results for clients through innovation and gold standard operations & delivery. The role will stretch these candidates by asking them to take responsibility for the advancement of a client group’s whole Paid Search output and the fitness of our operating models to deliver this.

About Our GroupM Nexus Benefits

• Private Medical Insurance.
• WPP Pension Scheme.
• 25 Days Holiday (increasing to 30 in increments after third year of service by one day annually).
• Birthday day off.
• Free eye tests.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Free office breakfast & fruit.
• Hybrid working.
• Gym membership/allowance.
• Milestone anniversary rewards.
• Independent financial advice.
• Mental Health Allies Programme.
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Employee Resource Groups.
• Disability confident employer.
• Flexible Working Policy.
• Back in the Game Programme – to support returners back to work after a long period of absence.
• GroupM University – our learning and development platform.

And more!

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