Head of Marketing & Communications at Teach for Nigeria

Position Summary

For our organization to achieve its goal, your role as Marketing & Communication Specialist will have a direct contribution to positioning and selling the organization's brand and increasing its visibility. We are searching for a Marketing & Communications Specialist to lead Teach For Nigeria's Media/Communications strategy and public relations efforts. The Marketing & Communications Specialist will strive to leverage national, local, and youth-based media to drive broad public understanding of Teach For Nigeria’s mission, impact, and support key organizational goals.

Mission for the role

• Lead Teach For Nigeria’s communication efforts to ensure organizational key messages effectively reach all of our priority target audiences (prospective applicants, prospective and existing corporate donors, policy and decision-makers, and school principals).
• Lead Teach For Nigeria’s marketing efforts and work with the Program team to ensure that the organization generates a sufficient number of quality registrations and applications for the Teach For Nigeria Program.
• Be an effective leader of the Marketing and Communications team developing an overall team vision and strategy and ensuring working team processes and structures.
• Act as the ultimate organizational brand champion, develop internal brand stewardship among our community (staff, teachers, alumni, and supporters), and ensure brand alignment in all external communication and marketing collateral.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with national and regional journalists to ensure positive and sufficient coverage of the organization’s work and impact.
• Be a strong role model for our organizational value within the TFN community as well as an engaged member of the organizational leadership team.

Major Responsibilities

• Build a better understanding of the characteristics of all target audiences, interests, desires, preferences, etc.
• Thoroughly analyze the dynamics and culture behind each target audience.
• Understand the web of influences and key players within each target audience.
• Effectively formulate specific core messages that lead to certain desired behaviors from each target audience.
• Identify key communication channels and other relevant tactics through which TFN can engage its audience.
• Lead the effective management of all social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube, X, etc).
• Lead the content development and design activities for all marketing channels
• Identify key print and online media channels through which TFN can reach the maximum number of people from each target audience.
• Ensure that we leverage all of our public events in terms of communicating our brand and core messages.
• Coordinate and conduct target market research and brand perception analysis among all target audiences.
• Oversee the development and execution of TFN’s annual marketing strategy
• Review TFN’s marketing strategic activities and processes regularly to adapt strategy as needed and plan required innovations and changes based on outcomes and data.
• Oversee the production of strong marketing collateral for the organization
• Develop a clear vision and strategy for TFN’s Marketing & Communications team.
• Manage and support the marketing/communications components of all units through regular check-ins and step-backs.
• Manage the marketing and Communications team budget.
• Conduct internal training on brand stewardship and use of the brand guidelines.
• Design a system & structure to support team members with branding/marketing requests when creating external documents to ensure alignment with our brand identity and core messaging.
• Review all materials for external audiences that are developed by other internal teams.
• Develop and implement a proactive plan to position the organization as an opinion leader in education and a top employer for the University’s graduates and young professionals.
• Respond to media channel inquiries and react to news agenda.
• Create an effective crisis communication plan to ensure the organization is fully prepared when a crisis emerges.
• Meet with and engage national and international journalists to generate positive media coverage.
• Ensure clear systems are in place for planning & identifying proactive and reactive opportunities.
• Manage the effective monitoring of our marketing activities and sharing and evaluating its success.
• Ensure relevant units are suitably briefed, aware of key organizational positions and messages, and suitably trained to understand how to support the marketing & communications unit
• Write and distribute press releases and op-eds.
• Plan and execute online fundraising campaigns.

Knowledge & Skills

• 8 to 10 years of experience in progressively responsible Marketing & Communications roles
• Fluency in English
• A demonstrated track record in building a strong brand is required.
• Experience designing and facilitating marketing strategy is required.
• Significant experience working in marketing, media, communications, and public relations
• At a minimum, a Bachelor’s degree is required

Perseverance & entrepreneurship

• Feel passionate about the Teach For Nigeria mission and our role model.
• Looking for an intense and stimulating challenge.
• Understand the requirements of the role.

Exceptional communication skills

• Write press releases, articles, and other texts for online and printed materials.
• Able to look through client perspectives and prioritize/adapt messaging.
• Provide feedback to team members on presentations and written communication pieces.

Strategic thinking & problem solving

• Identify, prioritize and proactively anticipate opportunities/problems to solve.
• Use logic and data to analyze situations.
• Develop high-quality and actionable strategies/solutions.

Making decisions/demonstrating judgment

• Use appropriate context and data to make sensible decisions
• Display sound judgment when faced with tough decisions

Ability to influence and motivate others

• Convince others to act in a desired way

Drive

• Work through obstacles purposefully and relentlessly
• Maintain a sense of possibility even during tough times
• Be action-oriented
• Put in the work necessary to achieve results.

Learning and continuously improving

• Strive to continuously improve self, the marketing and communications team processes, and use data to drive action.
• Incorporate feedback from others and data-driven reflection on successes and failures.