Regional Head of Marketing, Exams at British Council

• To lead the development and implementation of the regional Exams marketing strategy and plans, ensuring alignment with the global marketing strategy, including the planning, delivery, and evaluation of marketing strategies across all Exams products. The Regional Head of Marketing, Exams, will work with the Exams Strategic Business Unit (SBU) to ensure that regional and country marketing programmes deliver planned business targets. They’ll also provide professional expertise to the Exams SBU within the region, share relevant knowledge and expertise with other marketing professionals, and help ensure alignment with marketing strategy across the British Council. This role plays a proactive role in the development of the SBU within the region, including business planning and the monitoring and reporting of performance quarterly and via monthly dashboards.

Main accountabilities, but not limited to the following:

Strategy and Planning

• Develops and manages the regional long-term marketing strategy for exams, ensuring alignment with global SBU marketing strategies and plans, regional objectives, financial and business development targets, and the overarching global marketing strategy for the British Council.
• Plans, delivers, and evaluates regional marketing strategies and activities for exams.
• Manages the execution and planning of effective 360 campaigns, ensuring coordination across the region and alignment with global digital communications policies and standards.

Consultancy, analysis & problem-solving

• Applies core technical and professional knowledge, recognised best practice approaches, and insight from previous experience to develop marketing strategies and plans and resolve issues and risks.
• Conducts analysis based on insights, focus groups, research, and external trend and market analysis to provide high-quality, evidence-based marketing advice, recommendations, and plans.
• Presents complex information clearly, tailoring the presentation of findings to meet the differing needs of marketing and leadership audiences appropriately, as required.

Business Development

• Identifies opportunities for improvements to regional marketing for exams and determines how to progress these, working collaboratively with the SBU leads in the country and the SBU global marketing team to ensure alignment with global marketing approaches and enable ideas, new business opportunities, and innovations to be shared.
• Demonstrates awareness of relevant governance arrangements related to the development of regional marketing strategies and approaches for exams.
• Makes recommendations to resolve specific issues but also offers ideas that contribute to the development of wider solutions to broader business challenges and problems.

Functional expertise

• Provides proactive professional marketing advice and support to internal customers to ensure regional marketing for exams is high quality, effective, and compliant with relevant corporate policies.
• Completes an annual cycle of formally recognised continuing professional development (CPD) to maintain and deepen their professional expertise.
• Uses a variety of information resources and professional networks to maintain up-to-date knowledge of developments in external policy, practice, and regulation within their professional discipline.

Commercial and financial management

• Using agreed corporate systems and processes, she plans and manages the regional budget for Exam marketing activities and conducts monthly and year-end reporting on income and expenditure, profitability, and risk.
• Shows an understanding of value for money and cost effectiveness in regional marketing strategies, plans, and activities delivered for exams.

Relationships and stakeholder management

• Actively participates in and contributes to the marketing community of practice and network of marketing professionals.
• Builds a network of external suppliers, providers, and contacts to support effective service provision and knowledge exchange.

Leadership and management

• Plans and prioritises own work activities to ensure effective delivery of diverse responsibilities and internal customer deliverables over a monthly to quarterly time horizon.
• I am a member of and an active contributor to the Regional Marketing Governance team.
• Provides direction, advice, and support to country marketing teams on marketing strategies, plans, and activities for exams.

Role-specific knowledge and experience:

Essential requirements:

• Degree or professional qualification in marketing or business, or demonstrable level of equivalent experience
• Considerable experience in developing marketing strategies and plans within a large and complex organisation
• Experience in the design and delivery of plans to support products
• Experience in providing direction, oversight and coaching on the delivery of marketing plans and activities
• Experience in effectively negotiating budgets and resources with senior stakeholders
• Experience of delivering results through a dispersed team
• Experience in delivering financial performance targets through demonstrating effective marketing programmes and processes

Desirable:

• Relevant professional accreditations, e.g. CIM, Melcrum, GCN, CIPR, WOMMA, etc.
• Experience in a global organization
• Commercial experience of the exams market
• Commercial experience in marketing effectiveness with KPI-focused deliverables (financial, operational strategic and organizational), including managing a diverse team in a highly matrixed organization