Digital Marketing Lead

San Carlo are hiring a Digital Marketing Lead!

Our story:

The Distefano family, spanning two generations, started San Carlo over 30 years ago and seen it grow to twenty-five authentic Italian restaurants across the UK – from Covent Garden, Piccadilly and Knightsbridge in London to Bristol, Leicester, Liverpool, Leeds, Cheshire and Manchester and with a growing number overseas – Including Kuwait, Bangkok, Dubai, and Miami, with additional restaurant openings planned as San Carlo continues to expand globally.

Colleague Benefits:

• Free Meals on Duty - Delicious, healthy meals, all free
• 50% Staff Discount - For you and your friends and family, in any of our restaurants around the UK
• Refer a Friend - Bring your friends and earn up to £1,000 per person
• Elevate Training Academy - Commitment to training and continuing professional development with our San Carlo training app
• Volunteering Days - Give back with dedicated volunteering days, making a positive impact in your community
• Squadra App - Offering you discounts and rewards with thousands of companies worldwide
• Legal and Financial Advice - Free legal and financial advice for you and your family
• San Carlo Awards - Our annual San Carlo Awards, dedicated to celebrating the incredible talent and hard work of our colleagues
• Best in Class Pension - San Carlo are partnered with an industry-leading pension provider, ensuring your hard work today supports your tomorrow

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the group CRM strategy, coordinating campaigns across all San Carlo brands and restaurants and managing CRM agency and technology partners
• Develop customer segmentation and automated journeys (acquisition, welcome, retention and re-engagement), and grow the quality and value of the customer database in line with UK GDPR and PECR
• Lead the PPC/search agency relationship, setting briefs, objectives, budgets and KPIs, and challenging performance on spend, conversion, bookings and return
• Ensure paid search supports both always-on restaurant demand and specific campaigns or openings, coordinating the landing pages and offers needed to improve results
• Manage the SEO agency and organic search strategy, ensuring each restaurant and brand is optimised for relevant local and national searches
• Develop keyword priorities and use SEO insight to identify content opportunities across restaurant pages, landing pages and the blog
• Take day-to-day marketing ownership of San Carlo’s portfolio of websites, managing web development and design partners and coordinating content updates, launches and testing
• Continually review the guest journey from discovery to booking, identifying opportunities to improve UX, conversion and SEO performance
• Oversee restaurant business listings, particularly Google Business Profile, keeping addresses, opening hours, menus, booking links and imagery accurate and consistent, including seasonal and temporary closure updates
• Own the website content calendar, briefing SEO-led and brand-led blog content that balances our premium brand positioning with search requirements
• Act as the primary day-to-day contact for all digital, SEO, PPC, CRM and website partners, producing clear briefs with defined objectives, deliverables, budgets and deadlines
• Run regular agency performance reviews, challenge recommendations, monitor scopes, retainers and additional costs, and hold partners accountable for agreed actions
• Ensure agencies work together rather than in silos, sharing learnings across channels and turning wider San Carlo marketing campaigns into coordinated digital activity
• Own the digital reporting framework covering traffic, booking conversions, organic visibility, PPC and CRM performance, local search and results by restaurant, brand and campaign
• Interpret performance data and recommend clear next steps to drive bookings, guest acquisition, retention and revenue

Required Qualifications & Experience:

• Strong digital marketing experience, ideally within hospitality, restaurants, hotels, luxury, retail or another multi-site consumer brand
• Demonstrable experience managing digital agencies and external partners
• Strong understanding of CRM and customer lifecycle marketing
• Good working knowledge of PPC and paid search
• Strong understanding of technical, on-page and local SEO
• Experience managing websites, web development projects and digital content
• Strong understanding of Google Business Profile and local search
• Comfortable using analytics and performance data to make commercial recommendations
• Excellent project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple brands, restaurants, campaigns and agencies simultaneously
• Commercially minded and focused on turning digital activity into measurable customer action