Growth Lead (Paid Marketing)

Avant Arte is a curated platform connecting the world’s leading artists and public arts institutions with a new generation of enthusiasts, collectors and patrons. We collaborate with the most exciting contemporary artists such as Ai Weiwei, Mickalene Thomas, Maurizio Cattelan and Jenny Holzer to create limited editions of the highest quality, from prints and sculptures to digital works.

Our global community of over 4 million collectors and art enthusiasts reflects the growing energy and curiosity of a new generation transforming how art is discovered and supported. Together with leading museums and institutions, we develop fundraising collaborations that strengthen public access to art and engage the new generation of patrons who will shape its future. Make-Ready, our North London print studio, is the largest fine art silkscreen printmaker in the world.

Our mission is to make discovering and collecting art more accessible, connecting artists, institutions and audiences in meaningful ways that expand art’s reach and impact.

We’re a small team with really big ambitions, both for what we want to achieve and also the environment we’re building. We want to create a company that remains thoughtful as we scale and tries to be genuinely progressive in how we operate. We want people to really own what they do and be given the autonomy and freedom to make mistakes, learn, and create something meaningful.

We all work incredibly hard because we really care about what Avant Arte is here to do – we’re looking for exceptional people who are proactive, hungry to learn, and want to put their pride in our collective achievements.

We know that creating an inclusive environment that promotes and values diversity is critical if we want to build something with impact and meaning. We believe that having diversity in age, background, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability, ethnicity, and perspective will make us an infinitely better company. We were shortlisted for Women in Tech’s Best Employer - Small Company and Best Benefits, and Otta’s top 100 startups to work at. 

Over the past few years, the marketing team at Avant Arte has become integral to driving some of the business' most important outcomes: acquiring collectors efficiently, making campaigns perform, growing collector value and building a distinctive brand.

This role is responsible for the first two: acquiring new collectors as efficiently as possible, and maximising the commercial impact of every campaign. For us, those things are inherently linked – campaigns are one of the main ways we acquire new collectors, with every release bringing in a mix of new and repeat buyers. This role therefore owns both the acquisition engine and the performance of the campaigns that drive it. 

Alongside Avant Arte, you’ll also be responsible for paid acquisition for Make–Ready Editions – our newer, more accessible editions brand, born out of Make–Ready, our specialist fine art printmaking studio. You’ll work closely with the dedicated Make–Ready Editions Marketing Lead, who owns the brand and wider marketing strategy.

This role sits at the heart of our programme of editions, spanning paid acquisition, audience strategy and measurement through to the planning, forecasting and optimisation of every release. Paid media is also one of the largest single investments in the business. Our spend has increased by more than 300% in the last two years and is set to keep growing. We need someone who can bring the measurement, forecasting and testing rigour that should come with that investment. 

We have, on average, around two releases every week. Two Marketing Managers, who run campaign planning and optimisation day to day, will report into this role. You’ll also work closely with the rest of the marketing team. Brand-building organic social sits with the Brand Lead and Social Manager, while organic activity designed primarily to drive release performance sits with you. CRM and growing long-term collector value sits with the CRM team, who you’ll work with closely.

• Lead paid acquisition for Avant Arte and Make–Ready Editions, adapting audience, media and optimisation strategies to the needs of each brand

• Set realistic targets for each channel and optimise performance to meet these targets in flight

• Bring much stronger measurement, forecasting and testing discipline to a paid media budget that's growing quickly, with a clear view on what we're getting back for what we spend

• Make spend calls quickly. Our campaigns are short and the right decision needs to be made in hours rather than after several weeks of clear data

• Build a testing programme that helps us iterate learnings from one release to the next

• Set the approach to cross-channel campaign planning and optimisation across our programme of releases

• Own the cross-channel forecast for every release before it goes live, including the assumptions behind it and what needs to happen for us to hit it

• Work with the team to brief the creative campaign needs, based on both the artist and what we know will make the release perform

• Lead the post-campaign analysis and make sure what we learn actually changes the next forecast, paid media plan or creative brief

• Manage two Marketing Managers who run campaigns day to day, providing direction, supporting their developing and and helping raise the standard of campaign planning and optimisation across the team

• You've managed meaningful paid media budgets yourself, with deep experience in Meta and ideally experience across channels such as Google and Tiktok too

• You're comfortable opening Ads Manager, Metabase, Shopify or a spreadsheet and getting to your own answer

• You understand CAC, ROAS, conversion and incrementality, but you also know where each of those measures can give you the wrong answer

• You can build a forecast from sensible assumptions, explain why you believe it, and work out why reality differs afterwards

• You have good creative judgement and can help shape work that performs without compromising how we present the artist or artwork

• You're comfortable making decisions with imperfect information

• You’ve managed people before, with experience supporting development while giving people clear ownership and accountability

• You can make a complicated performance problem understandable to people who don't spend their day looking at dashboards

• Around 7+ years’ experience in performance, growth or acquisition marketing, including experience managing and developing others

• Experience in a fast-paced, performance-driven e-commerce or marketplace environment

• A background that spans both paid performance and campaign or launch planning

• An interest in art and culture is a plus. You don’t need to come from the art world, but you should be curious about it and interested in applying rigorous performance thinking within a distinctive, creative business