Interim Commercial Marketing Manager

We're looking for a commercially driven and creatively minded
Commercial Marketing Manager
to join us for a 12-month contract to lead and deliver high-impact marketing campaigns that drive revenue and engagement across the CBI's core commercial activities. This role is pivotal in supporting our growth ambitions—recruiting new members, generating leads for our economic consultancy, and selling tickets for flagship events. This role will report into the Director of Marketing and Propositions and will be supported by the wider team but with no direct reports.

Objectives of the role:

• The Marketing and Propositions team is responsible for the CBI's brand positioning, member communications and commercial marketing activity.
• The role is based on three key priorities: events marketing campaigns to boost paid-for registrations, strategic lead generation for membership and sales enablement.
• This role will lead on our commercial activity, leading 4-5 campaigns every year (three for events, one for membership and where possible, one for CBI Economics).
• The role will be the creative heart of our commercial marketing activity – coming up with ideas and bringing them to life with the support of colleagues. Communication and teamwork will be essential skills for bringing your vision to life.
• As a leader in commercial marketing, this role will have a lot of autonomy to make decisions, act quickly and try new ideas, and upskill those around you to improve the commercial marketing knowledge across the wider team.

This role is offered on a 12-month contract with a salary of £45,000 per annum (payband 4).

To apply for the role, please send your CV and a short covering letter setting out your suitability for the role to by 9am on Friday 28 November.

Interviews will be held 9 December (stage 1 - online) and 16/17 Dec (stage 2 in our London office).

Key Responsibilities

Campaign leadership for major events

• Lead end-to-end marketing for our three biggest commercial events—National Business Dinner, Annual Conference and Scotland Annual Dinner, from theme development and messaging to campaign planning, copywriting, and delivery.
• Audience development: identify and target key audience segments using data-driven insights to maximise reach and conversion.
• Campaign strategy and execution: develop and implement integrated marketing campaigns to drive attendance, engagement, and revenue for a range of events including conferences, dinners, and summits; you'll have experience across a broad range of owned and paid channels and bring digital marketing expertise on areas such as PPC, digital advertising and remarketing
• Proactively manage the marketing budget, ensuring ROI by investing strategically in paid-for marketing while making the best use of our extensive owned channels
• Coordinate invites to different stakeholder groups via the Cvent system
• Proactively manage the Cvent Event website, adding speakers, updating the programme, narrative, promotional opportunities, sponsors and key info as needed
• Content and messaging: create compelling marketing content across email, web, social media, and print that aligns with event themes and audience needs; you'll write copy for the campaign that spans across email, social, website, ads and other channels
• Manage sponsors from a marketing perspective, gathering important information and supporting them to take advantage of thought leadership opportunities
• Stakeholder collaboration: work closely with internal teams (commercial, content, events, design, digital) and external partners to ensure campaign alignment and delivery.
• Work closely with events, who will lead on logistics.
• Performance tracking: monitor and report on campaign performance, using analytics to optimise future activity and demonstrate ROI.
• Onsite Support: support event delivery on the day, ensuring brand consistency, working with videographers and photographers to capture the right content for future promotion, keeping social feeds updated to maximise on the event buzz.

Lead Generation

• Design and execute creative, insight-led campaigns that highlight the CBI's unique value proposition, driving up membership enquiries and conversions, as well as leads for our Economic consultancy business.
• Lead generation strategy: develop and implement multi-channel lead generation strategies to drive pipeline growth across key business units.
• Campaign management: plan, execute, and optimise integrated marketing campaigns across email, paid media, social, and content syndication to attract and convert prospects.
• Audience targeting and segmentation: build and refine audience segments to ensure campaigns are highly targeted and relevant. Work with the CRM team to ensure data remains clean and usable.
• Marketing automation: manage and optimise marketing automation workflows (we use Spotler) to nurture leads through the funnel.
• Performance analytics: track and report on campaign performance, lead quality, and ROI. Use insights to continuously improve campaign effectiveness.
• Sales support: Supporting the wider commercial team with high-quality assets, campaign toolkits, and consistent brand messaging. This includes social content, email templates, and comms support to drive external visibility and internal consistency.
• Sales alignment: collaborate closely with sales teams to ensure lead handover processes are seamless and that marketing efforts align with commercial goals.

Content and Copywriting

• You will be supported by colleagues specialising in content, but should feel confident in crafting compelling, on-brand copy across digital and offline channels, ensuring consistency of tone and messaging.

Work collaboratively across the business to deliver.

• Engage with colleagues across policy, economics and planning to ensure we are aligning with wider organisational priorities, and we have the resources to deliver.
• Work with colleagues to identify risks / opportunities and respond accordingly.
• Manage your projects exceptionally – proactively initiating projects based on the outcomes needed, communicating and hitting key milestones, looping in the right people, ensuring clear and speedy sign off, highlighting blockers and most importantly – washing up to learn from them.

Success indicators

This role will have measurable KPIs relating to:

• Delegate income from the three core events
• Leads and enquiries generated from non-members or dormant contacts
• Strategic campaign conversion into membership discussions or economic commissions.

Knowledge & Experience

What an individual must know or understand to fulfil the role's requirements

• Proven experience in independently planning and delivering commercial marketing campaigns that drive measurable income
• Strong copywriting and copyediting skills, with the ability to tailor messaging to diverse audiences, including for social media
• Experiencing conceptualising, writing and working with design to deliver campaign assets – from adverts to social media posts to email, direct mail and more
• Experience in events marketing, ideally for dinners, conferences and high-profile events
• Familiarity with marketing automation platforms and event management tools
• A data-driven mindset with the ability to interpret campaign metrics and translate insights into action
• Excellent stakeholder management and the ability to work cross-functionally with commercial, events, and consultancy teams
• Demonstration of ability to use and effectively leverage the full range of distribution channels for a B2B audience
• Understanding of current challenges and opportunities facing UK business
• Proven ability to drive innovative and forward thinking, challenging a mindset of 'what we have always done'
• Demonstrated intellectual interest and curiosity
• A keen interest in the UK business and policy landscape.

Desirable knowledge and experience:

• Experience of Cvent and Spotler
• Experience of using website CMSs to publish content
• Experience in B2B membership organisations or professional services.