Associate Marketing Manager I, Paid Media

About our family of companies:

We’re on a mission to bring learning to life! Across our family of companies—Learning Resources®, Educational Insights, and hand2mind—we create children’s toys, pet toys, educational products, and supplemental curriculum trusted by teachers and loved by families. As a growing, family-owned business and a Chicago Tribune Top Workplace, we are dedicated to helping kids succeed in school and develop a lifelong love of learning. If you’re curious, collaborative, and a kid at heart, you’ll feel right at home here. Join us in shaping the future of learning with our award-winning team!

Team & Position Description:

We are currently seeking an Associate Marketing Manager I, Paid Media to join our team! This role supports the execution of digital media programs across US & International retailer sites and our D2C channels. This individual will collaborate across internal teams and external agency partners to drive growth for our portfolio of brands - including hand2mind, Learning Resources, Brightkins and Educational Insights. Join us in increasing both the mental and physical availability of our brand while driving revenue and long-term success!

What you’ll do day to day (Responsibilities):

Under the direction of the Sr. Marketing Manager, Paid Media, you will:

• Manage end-to-end paid media campaign execution across digital channels, including setup, trafficking, QA, tracking implementation, optimization, and reporting.
• Partner with brand, sales, eCommerce, and creative teams to align media strategies with business objectives, product launches, and promotional priorities.
• Contribute to media planning by providing performance insights, audience recommendations, creative strategy input, channel investment recommendations, and budget allocation guidance.
• Develop and execute structured testing plans across audiences, creative, bidding strategies, placements, and channels to drive continuous performance improvement and learning.
• Analyze campaign, audience, and creative performance data to identify trends, generate actionable insights, and recommend optimization opportunities.
• Partner with agency teams and platform representatives to optimize campaign performance, implement best practices, and identify new growth opportunities.
• Leverage AI-enabled tools and platform capabilities to improve campaign management efficiency, reporting processes, and performance outcomes.
• Communicate campaign performance, key learnings, and recommendations to cross-functional stakeholders.
• Respond promptly to questions, alerts, and campaign issues with a strong customer focus and sense of urgency.

What Success looks like in this role (Key Performance Objectives):

• Within the first 90 days, successfully support paid media campaigns across assigned channels, ensuring campaign assets, tracking, timelines, and reporting are completed accurately and on schedule.
• Within the first 4 months, develop and implement an audience testing framework to optimize targeting, improve efficiency, and uncover scalable high‑value audiences across key social platforms.
• Within the first 6 months, audit our paid social and social commerce strategy, including TikTok Shop GMV campaigns, across awareness and conversion objectives to identify budget savings, optimizations, and growth opportunities. In addition, establish and maintain a consistent reporting cadence, delivering timely performance reporting, actionable insights, and optimization recommendations to marketing stakeholders.
• Maintain accurate budget pacing and campaign documentation, helping ensure spending aligns with approved plans, and reporting remains reliable and actionable.

What we’re looking for:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant experience in Marketing, Business, Advertising, or a related field.
• Hands-on experience managing TikTok Shop GMV Max campaigns (TikTok GMV ads), including campaign setup, optimization, and performance analysis, strongly preferred.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret campaign performance data, identify trends, and translate insights into actionable recommendations.
• Leverage AI-enabled tools and platform capabilities to improve campaign efficiency, identify optimization opportunities, and support data-driven decision-making.
• Ability to track and manage programs across multiple retailers, and campaign reporting.
• Understanding and ability to navigate retailer systems and the experience help to resolve retailer issues.
• Ability to build and maintain effective relationships with management, sales teams, peers and agency partners and manage those relationships to achieve objectives
• Detail-oriented with strong organizational skills
• Proactive and resourceful in solving problems

We are a drug-free workplace and an EEO employer.

Please note: This role will be filled by our internal recruitment team, so no assistance is needed from any outside staffing agency at this time.

Compensation Range: $68,000 – $78,000 annual salary – Actual compensation may vary due to other factors such as: years of experience, skill set and location. Total compensation includes profit sharing bonus potential, 401k matching, and a variety of other benefits (details can be found here).

#LI-hybrid