Senior Creative Strategist

About Toptal

Toptal is a global network of top freelance talent in business, design, and technology that enables companies to scale their teams, on-demand. With $200+ million in annual revenue and over 40% year-over-year growth, Toptal is the world’s largest fully remote company.

We take the best elements of virtual teams and combine them with a support structure that encourages innovation, social interaction, and fun. We see no borders, move at a fast pace, and are never afraid to break the mold.

Position Description

As a Senior Creative Strategist, you will be responsible for ensuring Toptal’s client audience of small businesses, startups, enterprises, and everything in between, experiences the Toptal brand through consistent and compelling creative. You are the glue between strategy and execution, guiding content marketing strategies and steering the creative process for all aspects of marketing. You will be responsible for framing creative briefs and projects in the context of the customer journeys, user personas, and in ways that are optimized relative to the channels that each brief or project will relate to. You stay close to the market, as the subject matter expert resource for creatives at Toptal. You are the primary brand steward who builds and maintains Toptal’s creative assets, best practices, brand guidelines, and are the final quality control owner for all brand and creative positioning and compliance relating to the Toptal initiatives and projects to which you are assigned.

Successful hires will have experience working with creative teams, developing comprehensive messaging architectures and creative briefs, and understanding what problems clients have and how Toptal uniquely solves them. You must understand best practices relative to each channel and rely on data to inform creative decisions. Knowing how creative impacts CTR (click through rates), UX (user experience), CRO (conversion rates), and other marketing-related metrics is a must in order to develop impactful and successful creative briefs relative to the channels the creative will be deployed on. Ideally, you understand the nuances of each channel (SEM, SEO, display, landing pages, etc.) and how to develop creative briefs that will result in creative that is as impactful as possible relative to each channel’s constraints and nuances.

You should have experience working closely with all functional marketing areas. You know how to market solutions for a B2B audience and ideally have experience in B2C as well, are a stickler for quality and organization, can see around corners and proactively communicate across stakeholders to keep a deliverable on track. You are passionate about branding and developing persuasive content that drives measurable results. You design compelling narratives based on Client successes and outcomes. You write tight briefs and your creative counterparts are always delighted when you are leading one of their projects. You will be expected to be both a facilitator and generator of world-class marketing ideas that are put into action at Toptal.

This is a remote position that can be performed from anywhere. Due to the remote nature of this role, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship. Resumes and communication must be submitted in English.

Responsibilities:

• Work with various Marketing teams to create and curate deliverables in support of marketing plans and branding initiatives.
• Act as the primary liaison between Marketing Strategy and Toptal’s in-house Creative and Publications teams to facilitate the creation of compelling, on-brand content across all media.
• Act as a high-level project leader to all of the creative projects you are responsible for, ensuring work is properly prioritized and resourced so it is delivered on time with excellent quality.
• Facilitate the development of world-class case studies and client testimonials leveraging different media types.
• Work with the Social Media team to ensure organic engagement with Toptal content by our potential B2B clients and talent network members, particularly focused on LinkedIn.
• Arm the Events team with messaging and standout executions to maximize pre-, during, and post-event outreach supported by engaging content and consistent sales enablement materials.
• Work with the Communications team to develop relevant stories and ensure they have everything they need to engage effectively on Toptal thought leadership initiatives.
• Ensure all programs and content developed support the business goals of the organization.
• Partner with Growth Marketing and your Marketing Strategy segment leader to engage all relevant channels in your content distribution plans for maximum amplification and ROI.
• Participate in regular business reviews with the Business Analytics and Marketing Operations teams to review data and ensure the content and programs you drive are effective at building pipeline and converting prospects to clients.
• Work with the Market Insights team to extrapolate audience insights that inform useful, differentiated content, optimized by channel.
• Act as an internal SME for brand creative, best practices and guidelines, and as a creative expert within the Marketing Strategy team.

In the first week, expect to:

• Onboard and integrate into Toptal. Meet with associates in Marketing Strategy to understand our strategic marketing plans, goals and primary initiatives.
• Work to get up to speed with how the organization runs, including how our OKRs, RACIs, and other operational frameworks work. Understand the fundamentals of Toptal and what sets us apart, particularly focused on the benefits to business clients.

In the first month, expect to:

• Understand the inner workings of the Marketing team and how they work effectively with other teams.
• Build relationships and trust with your Marketing Strategy leader, other marketing executives, and primary business partners. Meet with key team members to understand the Toptal client journey and brand standards.

In the first three months, expect to:

• Assume ownership of deliverable execution against the respective marketing plans — on time and meeting quality standards.
• Have a very strong understanding of how the Marketing team and all related external teams are working together with Marketing.
• Have charted a path for ensuring collaboration is strong and work output remains at an extremely high quality level for all marketing-related initiatives.
• Garner the trust of your peers and the individuals who you’re most closely working with.

In the first six months, expect to:

• Be fully immersed in all Toptal processes and tools and design the creative strategy in support of business initiatives working with your Marketing Strategy leader.
• Execute multiple creative projects successfully.
• Have exemplified the ability to inspire and mentor the teams with whom you’re working.
• Have upleveled the team’s ability to brainstorm, collaborate, and execute materially.

In the first year, expect to:

• Be seen as a “go to” for all communications touchpoints on brand initiatives and other assigned areas of responsibility.
• Develop a deep understanding of the customer journey by market segment, and have a strong, data-driven point of view about what messages and vehicles resonate with different buyers at different stages.

Requirements:

• You must have at least five years of experience in consulting, strategy, Growth Marketing, digital campaign creation, or a similar type of role where you owned brand and messaging and leveraged data to draw insights about potential clients and marketing strategies to inform your decisions.
• You must be familiar with interpreting marketing metrics and insights relating to CTR (click through rates), UX (user experience), CRO (conversion rates), and apply them while developing creative briefs relative to the respective channels.
• You must have the ability and willingness to review, with meticulous attention to detail, all of the final creative work product for which you are responsible.
• You must be able to classify and understand customer personas in order to create effective marketing messages that resonate with that precise customer type.
• You must be able to quickly research, analyze, and create strategies around the types of creative that will be most effective by channel.
• You must have a best-in-class, analytical and data-driven background and approach to creative development. You are intuitive about how to use and present data to inform marketing decisions.
• You must be able to determine if the brand and creative execution for any given marketing initiative is of extremely high quality, or not.
• You must have excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Fortune 500 or big brand experience is a plus, as is creative agency experience. Prefer experience marketing companies who provide consulting expertise or skilled resources to solve client problems.
• Able to provide examples of creative programs or campaigns you have overseen and launched.
• Brand + Sales mindset - you are always thinking about your work in the context of how helpful it will be to Toptal’s Brand goals and Client team.
• You must be a world-class individual contributor to thrive at Toptal. You will not be here just to tell other people what to do.

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