Digital Marketing Manager

South Western News UK; Greater London; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 75,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Free duty and leisure travel on SWR

Free leisure travel for partner and/or

75% discount on other train companies

Full training and development

Excellent pension

Job summary

South Western Railway is seeking a hands-on Digital Marketing Lead to drive performance across paid search, paid social, and display. You will partner with the Senior Digital Manager and media agency to run a test-and-learn agenda, optimise creative messaging, and report on overall digital sales across web and app.

You should have 3–5 years in digital marketing, experience managing budgets >£1m in e-commerce, and strong Excel/data skills.

Qualifications

• Hands-on expert in paid search and paid social with industry trends.
• Experience managing annual budgets above £1m in e-commerce.
• Proficient at measuring CPA, ROAS, ROI and performance metrics.
• Strong data reporting skills and attention to detail.

Responsibilities

• Manage performance across search engines, social and display; expand to new channels.
• Collaborate to ideate and execute test & learn plans; report results and forward plan.
• Improve performance creative to align with media strategy and KPI targets.
• Map audiences and opportunities; optimize audience governance.
• Oversee feed management for pricing and rewards deployment into paid media.
• Report on total digital sales across web and app; analyse volumes and ticket mix.
• Ensure GEO-optimized content and data-led content creation for AI/SEO.

Skills

Paid search

Paid social

Analytics

Excel

Tools

Google Ads

Meta Ads

Google Analytics

Job description

About the job

We have been busy building a best-in-class mar-tech engine, and we're now ready to use it. This is an opportunity to experiment, lead and shape our digital marketing future. You will drive digital performance marketing spearheading how we activate known and unknown 1PD across channels, and join us on the journey towards multi-channel message orchestration. Working in partnership with our media agency and the Senior Digital Marketing Manager you will also lead on our test & Learn agenda across performance media channels pulling through successful activities into BAU.

Experimentation is top of the agenda as we seek to better understand attribution and how and where digital marketing influences consumer travel and ticket purchase.

Functioning as part of a broader marketing team you will gain exposure to all our marketing initiatives, visibility on our integrated media plan and full creative review and input; offering you a comprehensive perspective on how digital marketing fuels business growth and personal growth and development opportunities.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Manage our performance activities across search engines (organic & paid), and performance social and display, & expansion into new channels as required
• Partner with the Senior Digital Manager and the media agency to ideate and execute our test and learn plan for digital media, assessing impact, reporting back results, utilising insights and managing the forward plan
• Lead & continuously seek to improve performance creative ensuring that the message is right for the media strategy, consumer and KPI goal
• Become the expert across paid media on what audiences are used, where and any audience opportunities, ensuring effective mapping and governance
• Own our feed management process into media for pricing and our rewards proposition, leading on deployment and activation into paid media channels. Partner with the website team and the Rewards Manager to ensure quality data, highlighting opportunities to improve and working collectively to resolve.
• Be responsible for understanding, and reporting back on total digital sales across web and app, understanding volume, revenues and ticket mix into the Marketing team
• Ensure that our website and content is optimised from a GEO perspective for AI & search engines, partnering with the content lead to ensure that a data-led approach to content creation is employed and that content delivers on GEO requirements

A bit about you:

• Be a hands‑on expert in the management of paid search & paid social channels, understanding industry‑level trends and developments with a minimum of 3‑5 years experience
• Solid digital marketing experience (either in‑house or agency) managing annual budgets of above £1m in an e‑commerce environment
• Be proficient in managing and optimising campaigns towards direct performance metrics such as cost per acquisition (CPA), return on ad spend (ROAS), return on investment (ROI)
• Be target‑driven and passionate about digital marketing. You should always be looking to go further, learn more, and outperform yourself
• Have a highly investigative mindset and always be looking to turn insight into action
• Strong reporting & data skills (advanced Excel) and a high level of attention to detail
• A willingness to be versatile and eager to learn new skills and lean into new trends
• Strong communication skills with both internal and external stakeholders and the ability to communicate complex information in a digestible manner

About the location

South Western Railways HQ is based on the 4th Floor at South Bank Central, a stone's throw from the River Thames and a 10 minute walk from our busiest station, Waterloo. It is local to many well‑known attractions, restaurants and retail facilities and is easily accessible by public transport.

Working pattern

Working an average of 37 hours per week over 5 days

Core hours of Monday – Friday 9-5

Applicants who require a visa must have6 months remaining at the time of their appointment

The Reward

In return we offer a competitive salary and a variety of valuable benefits, including:

• Free duty and leisure travel on SWR services for employees
• Free leisure travel for spouse/partner and dependants (criteria dependent)
• 75% discount on many other train operating companies
• Full training and support with development
• Excellent pension scheme

Who are we?

South Western Railway (SWR) operates over 1,500 services each weekday across the network and employs more than 5,000 people. We provide easy and convenient mobility, connecting people and communities in South West London, southern counties of England, and the Isle of Wight.

Join our team and help us continue to bring people together to get the most out of life.

We all belong at SWR.

Our vision is to provide an inclusive environment for all colleagues, ensuring all candidates have an equal opportunity to access meaningful employment.

We value our differences such as age, gender, LGBTQIA+, ethnicity, religion, and disability. We maintain a zero tolerance towards any form of prejudice towards our colleagues, customers, and future talent.

We celebrate and encourage diversity of thought, progressive ways of working and seeing all our colleagues grow and thrive.

If you require additionalsupport to complete your application due to a disability or neurodivergent condition, for example, dyslexia, dyspraxia, or autism, please follow the links below. We encourage you to share any additional needs you may require so we can provide a fair and equal process for all who apply.

https://exceptionalindividuals.com/neurodiversity/

https://www.healthassured.org/blog/neurodiversit