Head of Marketing

Head of Marketing

Location: Hybrid - 3 days Office (Savile Row), London, 2 days from home

Salary: Competitive

We are Food Alert – a leading food safety and health & safety consultancy working across the UK. We genuinely love, admire, and are passionate about the whole food and hospitality industry. From independents to enterprise; suppliers to retailers – our team has worked with clients across the whole spectrum, making their day-to-day simpler, smoother, and safer, with a human touch unique to us. We specialise in the hospitality sector, supporting standout names like Starbucks, Dishoom, The Ivy Collection, and Citizen M.

Food Alert forms part of Citation Group - Citation Group is a collective of businesses dedicated to supporting small and medium-sized enterprises across a range of essential services. We know that running a business means juggling a lot. Our mission is to ease these pressures by providing expertise, guidance, and solutions that enable business leaders to focus on what they do best. From HR and Health & Safety to Cybersecurity, E-Learning, and ISO compliance, we’ve got you covered.

The role

You will be the senior marketing leader embedded within Food Alert, working directly with the Commercial Director and Senior Leadership Team to understand the commercial priorities of the business, identify where the biggest growth opportunities exist and turn them into a clear marketing strategy and plan.

You'll bring that strategy to life by harnessing the specialist capabilities of Citation Group's central marketing function across digital, performance, CRM, content, creative, web and marketing operations.

This makes the role ideal for someone who enjoys being close to the business, influencing senior decisions and driving commercial growth, while having the scale and capability of a larger Group marketing function behind them.

What You'll Own

• Commercial Marketing Leadership

• Sit on the Food Alert Senior Leadership Team and contribute to the wider direction and performance of the business.

• Build a deep understanding of Food Alert's commercial model, customers, products, sales performance and growth opportunities.

• Translate business targets into a clear marketing strategy, priorities and investment plan.

• Identify where marketing can have the greatest impact across acquisition, conversion, customer growth and retention.

• Bring customer, competitor and market insight into commercial decision-making.

• Own marketing performance and be accountable for its contribution to pipeline, revenue and profitable growth.

Growth Strategy & Demand Generation

• Build an integrated demand-generation strategy across paid search, SEO, paid social, content, email, partnerships, webinars, events and other relevant channels.

• Define priority audiences, sectors and propositions based on commercial opportunity.

• Improve the balance between lead volume, lead quality, conversion and customer acquisition cost.

• Identify new routes to market and opportunities to reach Food Alert's target customers.

• Develop campaigns around regulatory change, emerging risks and other market triggers that create customer demand.

• Create go-to-market strategies for new services, software capabilities, propositions and sectors.

• Ensure sales and marketing activity works together to convert demand into revenue.

• Your focus will be on commercial growth rather than marketing activity for its own sake.

Proposition, Customer & Market Strategy

• Develop compelling positioning and messaging for Food Alert and its key products and services.

• Build propositions for different customer segments, from independent operators through to complex multi-site and enterprise businesses.

• Turn Food Alert's expertise in food safety, health & safety and compliance into campaigns and content that create demand.

• Work with Product, Sales and operational teams to understand customer needs and translate them into stronger propositions.

• Use customer and market insight to identify emerging opportunities and potential new propositions.

• Strengthen Food Alert's authority and reputation within its core markets.

Customer Growth, Retention & Lifetime Value

• Identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities across consultancy, software, training and related services.

• Develop lifecycle, nurture and customer communication strategies.

• Improve customer engagement and support retention.

• Build referral, advocacy, testimonial and case-study programmes.

• Use customer insight and behaviour to identify opportunities to increase lifetime value.

Digital Experience & Conversion

• Own the website roadmap from a business and commercial perspective.

• Identify and prioritise opportunities to improve conversion.

• Use customer behaviour, analytics and experimentation to improve the journey from first visit through to enquiry or demo.

• Develop sector, service and proposition journeys that better reflect customer intent.

• Ensure Food Alert is well positioned as search behaviour evolves across traditional search, AI search and emerging discovery channels.

Mobilising the Citation Group Marketing Team

• Translate Food Alert's commercial priorities into clear, well-prioritised briefs for central marketing teams.

• Build strong working relationships with central digital, CRM, content, creative, performance and marketing operations specialists.

• Set clear objectives, expected outcomes and measures of success.

• Review performance and challenge activity where results aren't strong enough.

• Balance immediate commercial priorities with longer-term growth opportunities.

• Work with central marketing leadership to resolve resource or capability constraints.

• Ensure Food Alert receives the right support at the right time against the opportunities that matter most.

• You will act as the bridge between Food Alert's commercial ambition and the Group's marketing capability.

Performance, Insight & Investment

• Own the Food Alert marketing budget and investment plan.

• Set clear targets across leads, pipeline, conversion, CAC, revenue and ROI.

• Understand channel and campaign performance and continually reallocate investment towards the strongest opportunities.

• Work with central teams to improve attribution and performance measurement.

• Provide clear, commercially focused reporting to the MD, CD and Senior Leadership Team.

• Turn data into decisions rather than simply reporting what happened.

• Use customer, competitor, regulatory and market insight to identify new growth opportunities.

What We're Looking For

We're looking for someone who combines commercial thinking, marketing leadership and the ability to make things happen in a matrix organisation.

You'll ideally bring:

• Senior marketing leadership experience in a commercially focused B2B organisation.

• A strong track record of generating leads, pipeline and revenue.

• Experience building marketing strategy directly from business and commercial objectives.

• Strong understanding of digital acquisition, CRM, lifecycle marketing, content, conversion and brand.

• Experience working with SaaS, subscription, professional services, compliance or other recurring-revenue models would be advantageous.

• Experience operating within a matrix, Group or shared-services environment.

• The ability to lead through influence rather than relying solely on direct reporting lines.

• Strong analytical and commercial capability, including understanding CAC, conversion, pipeline and marketing ROI.

• The confidence to challenge performance, priorities and investment decisions.

• Excellent stakeholder management skills, particularly with MD, CD, SLT and senior functional leaders.

• Enough technical and channel knowledge to challenge specialists without needing to be the specialist yourself.

• A naturally curious mindset and an appetite to understand customers, markets and what drives growth.

• Most importantly, you'll be someone who is comfortable owning the outcome.

Here’s a taste of the perks we roll out for our extraordinary team members:

• 25 Days of Holiday + Bank holidays: We’re talking sun-soaked beaches, snow-capped mountains, or simply your favourite cosy spot at home. Take your well-deserved break with 25 days of holiday, plus those cherished bank holidays.

• Birthday Bliss: Your birthday isn’t just another day on the calendar; it’s YOUR day! Enjoy it in style with a day off, because at Citation, we believe in celebrating YOU.

• Post-Wedding Bliss: Newlyweds, we’ve got something special for you too! Extra weeks of holiday to bask in the glow of post-wedding happiness.

• Growing Families: We’re all about supporting our Citation family, and that includes expectant parents. Vouchers and special perks await to celebrate the newest addition to your family.

• Healthcare cash plan: Your well-being is our priority. That’s why we offer private healthcare to ensure your peace of mind and keep you feeling your best.

• Pawternity Leave: Welcoming a new furry friend? Enjoy a day off on us to give your new cat or dog the ultimate welcome home experience!

• Community Days: Looking to give back? Take a day off to volunteer and make a positive impact in your community or support your favourite charities.

Join us at Citation, where success comes with unbeatable perks and a culture that truly celebrates your achievements!