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 a Marketing Coordinator, 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.

What you’ll do day to day (Responsibilities)

• Under the direction of the Sr. Marketing Manager, Paid Media, you will:
• Execute and support paid media campaigns across digital channels, managing campaign setup, tracking implementation, creative trafficking, platform configuration, and launch readiness.
• Conduct pre-launch and in-flight QA reviews to validate campaign accuracy, tracking functionality, creative approvals, and reporting integrity.
• Support both direct campaign execution within advertising platforms and coordination of agency-managed campaigns, ensuring deliverables, timelines, and performance expectations are met.
• Monitor campaign performance, attribution, and conversion metrics, partnering with agencies and platform partners to identify optimization opportunities.
• Develop recurring performance reports and translate campaign data into actionable insights and recommendations for marketing stakeholders.
• Monitor campaign budgets, pacing, and spend performance, ensuring alignment with approved plans and promptly escalating discrepancies.
• Support Amazon DSP, retail media, paid search, paid social, display, programmatic, and other digital advertising initiatives through execution, reporting, and optimization.
• Maintain accurate campaign documentation, budgets, project records, and tracking frameworks while proactively identifying and resolving execution issues.
• Assist in researching emerging advertising channels, audience strategies, AI-powered media tools, reporting automation solutions, and industry trends to support continuous improvement.
• 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.
• Effectively manage campaign operations across assigned paid media programs, including setup, trafficking, QA, tracking implementation, budget monitoring, and partner communication while proactively identifying and resolving issues.
• Establish and maintain a consistent reporting cadence within the first 6 months, 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.

1-2 years of relevant paid media experience, including internships and/or agency experience, supporting digital advertising campaigns.

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).

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