[The Mission]:
The Mission of a Digital Strategy Researcher is to create compelling, concise, data-backed research that helps marketers create and refine a digital strategy that is more effective by being evidence-based. Our research is focused on (a) online audience behaviour to identify the content people are loving and where they’re spending their time, and (b) deconstructing the digital strategies of top-performing brands to identify what’s working and not working. This research is the core deliverable that RightMetric provides to our clients.
[The Day-to-Day]:
- Work On Your Own Schedule: We have clearly shared expectations about the work that needs to be done and delivered, but other than that you’re free to work when you want and where you want. This can look different depending on your preferences. Like to start work super early in the morning and have afternoons off? All good. Hate getting up early and would rather start later and work in the afternoon/evening? No problem. Take breaks whenever you want. You never need to ask anyone to pause work for a doctor’s appointment or haircut, just do it. Want to work remotely from Mexico for a month? Give’r. You get the idea!
- Weekly Huddle: Typically you’ll meet with the rest of the research team on a video call once a week to share your work, align on priorities, bounce ideas off each other, and catch up as humans. It tends to be in the mid-morning PST timezone, but can evolve to fit the team’s varying schedules and timezones.
- Dive Into The Research Tools: Our team has access to a world class tech stack of marketing intelligence tools that we use to perform and validate our research. Much of a Digital Strategy Researcher’s (DSR’s) time is spent mastering those tools and using them to analyze online brands and audiences. We’ll share our tool stack with you during the interview process.
- Apply The Methodologies: We’ve spent years developing repeatable and robust research methodologies to reliably answer some of marketers’ toughest questions like “where is my audience spending time online?” and “what content is truly resonating with them across the digital landscape?”. Expect roughly 40% of research time to be applying pre-existing methodologies and the other 60% performing more free-form research where you need to adapt or create a robust methodology on the fly.
- Create & Improve Methodologies: Once you’re proficient with our existing methodologies, we’ll rely on you to constantly refine and improve them, while also creating new ones as needed. Our clients are always thinking of new questions that need data-backed answers and digital marketing is always evolving.
- Write & Design The Research Deliverable: We design all of our research deliverables in Google Slides and Google Sheets to keep things simple, so you’ll spend a lot of time with these tools. We have a vast library of templates to work from so you’re not always starting from scratch. Beyond slides, all our research is also published as an HTML webpage within RightMetric’s Insight Library portal for clients to access easily, so designing with that in mind is important as well.
- We Minimize Meetings, But Stay Social: RightMetric is a fully remote team. There’s the daily research huddle and a company all hands once per month. Most people on the team have one or two 1:1 meetings per week, again primarily to keep in touch socially while working remotely. Otherwise, our culture is to minimize pointless meetings.
- Deep Research: It’s a huge part of this role. Expect the majority of time to be uninterrupted research work.
- Explore Top Performing Brands’ Activities Across All Digital Channels: Our research covers all currently relevant digital marketing channels, from advertising, to content, to SEO, affiliate marketing, app marketing, and beyond. You don’t need to be an expert in all those channels (no one is), but have a solid understanding of most of them and how they play together in a B2C brand’s digital strategy.
- Collab with the team: Naturally, a good deal of banter, gifs, and memes are created and shared via Basecamp while working (If you’re not familiar with it, Basecamp is like a simplified, non-intrusive combo of Slack and Asana). We chat throughout the day as we work together to complete projects.
- Work on side projects: Pretty much everyone on our small team helps out with things outside their core research role. We’re all marketers here, so this includes things like running our email list, social accounts, website, doing design work, and supporting podcast production. We wear many hats to mix things up.
- We like organization: Almost everything we do is well-documented in our Employee Handbook, Business Plan, KPI dashboard, and various SOPs.
- We try to only use a few tools, calm ones: We use Basecamp (https://basecamp.com/) for (almost) all team communication, task tracking, and project management; and GSuite for Drive, Docs, Slides, and Sheets.
[The Compensation & Perks]:
- Salary: $62,500 - $72,500 CAD, depending on experience level, skill level, and quality of work sample.
- Vacation: 5 Weeks Paid Vacation, which includes 2 weeks of mandatory paid time off holiday break at the end of December each year. Additional paid & unpaid vacation beyond 5 weeks is considered on request. We want everyone to be well rested and do everything we can to avoid burnout.
- Full Benefits: 100% Coverage of Dental, Vision, Drugs, Massage, Physio, Acupuncture, Naturopath, Life, Loss of Income etc.
- Unlimited Sick Days
- Educational stipends: Considered on request
- Flexible Working Hours: We have a shared expectation that KPIs are met, team members participate in our culture, and everyone attends a few key meetings. Beyond that, work when you want.
- Fully Remote Team: Pre, during, and Post-Covid; we work remote. We do have a back-up office available in downtown Vancouver for local team members who need it.
- Work-Life Boundaries are respected: Once you share your working hours, the team won’t bug you outside that time, ever.
- Apple Equipment: Dat new new
- Home office stipend: Considered on request.
[Outcomes & KPIs]:
Note: Not all KPIs are numerical. Feedback on qualitative KPIs is gathered from the rest of the team and clients.
- Research Output: Each research team member is expected to complete a certain number of deliverables each week and month, depending on the complexity of currently assigned projects. This output level is measured by your manager on a regular basis.
- Research Quality: We use an internal framework to assess the quality of research. Factors include measurability, repeatability, defensibility, actionability, concision, and design. Deliverable quality is assessed via qualitative feedback from other team members as well as analytics from usage analytics from inside RightMetric’s Insight Library.
- Create, Improve, and Document Methodologies: You’ll need to think creatively and critically to create and improve research methodologies that provide robust data-backed answers to our clients’ marketing questions.
- Collaborate and Edit: Regularly share your ideas, provide feedback, and editorial support to the rest of the team.
- Cultural Alignment: Our team cares a lot about having a diverse and inclusive environment where everyone is aligned on our core cultural values, in other words the principles that all of our team members believe in at work and are willing to make (sometimes tough) decisions to uphold. We assess values alignment during the interview process and use our value to make day-to-day business decisions. See the "Our Values" section below for more details.
[Skills & Experience Needed]:
There are four key skills that contribute to success in a Digital Strategy Research Role. Here’s what we look for in each of them.
- Writing Skills: You excel at business writing that is clear, concise, and compelling. In other words, you can get your ideas across to a reader in a very short format while also convincing them of your point. You probably got really good marks on your essays in school. You love writing.
- Design Skills: You are great at pairing just the right visual—whether it’s an image, graph, or otherwise—with your writing so that it helps get your point across clearly. Your documents and slides are beautifully laid out, adhere to a colour palette, and are just super attractive and readable. You know your way around a slide deck like nobody’s business. You love making things look good.
- Research Skills: You’re naturally curious, logical, and probably a tad cynical. You understand what makes a piece of research useful, interesting, robust, and statistically significant. You’ve probably used a variety of marketing analytics, intelligence, and research tools in your past work.
- Digital Strategy Skills: There are many roads to marketing strategy roles, but you’ve walked one of them; probably by working at several reputable agencies, brands, or starting your own business. You likely began the journey by working in the trenches as a “button pusher” before you became an expert at a couple key areas of digital; paid media, email marketing, ecommerce CRO perhaps. Then as you became a recognized expert you went broad and became a “T-shaped” marketer that understands how to tie multiple channels together to meet a business objective with a cohesive strategy. Finally, you learned how to convince your boss/clients/customers that your strategy was a good idea and that they should give you money to execute it.
- [Bonus] Presentation Skills: This isn’t a necessity for the role, but it’s certainly helpful. If you can not only create research, but present it to a marketing leadership team in a client meeting, knock their socks off with your insightfulness, and answer tough questions on the fly; you’ll have even more opportunities for advancement at RightMetric.
[Our Values]:
These values define how all of our team members work. We hire, give feedback, and—if necessary—fire based on them. Please deeply consider them before applying. If they sound like you, you’ll fit right in. If not, the way we do things likely won’t match you.
- Proven Systems: We don’t fly by the seat of our pants. We find the best way to do things & repeat that process.
- Freedom: We work to live, not live to work. We’re serious about our responsibilities to ourselves and our clients; but family, friends, and personal wellbeing come first.
- Strong Beliefs, Loosely Held: We care a lot & share our opinions, but will change them if presented with reliable evidence to the contrary.
- Ownership: We hold our work to an extremely high standard & take sole responsibility for it.
- Radical Candour: We give, seek, and implement respectful and constructive feedback proactively.
- Calm & Flexible: We strive for structure, realistic deadlines, & respecting boundaries, but are willing to hustle & deliver when murphy’s law kicks in.
- Be Real: We’re all weird, flawed, humans. We’re willing to be vulnerable and be our true selves at work. We don’t tolerate fakeness.
- Passion: We have a true fascination with digital marketing strategy. If we didn’t, work would be boring.
- Empathy: We genuinely care about each other, our customers, and our world. We always strive to lift others up, not put them down.
[Criteria For Successful Applications]:
Here are some highlights of past applications that have been successful.
- PDF Format: Please submit all documents in PDF format.
- Comment on Culture: Tell us what you care about in a work environment and how you embody it.
- Well Designed Resume: The visual design of your submission matters a lot, since it's a core skill involved in the research we create here at RightMetric. Use a template or create your own.
- Short and Concise: A 1 page resume is ideal. Slightly longer if necessary.
- Please Spell RightMetric Correctly: Yep. It happens.
- Include Work Samples: It's not mandatory, but really useful to see samples of work you've done in the past that are relevant to the role. That can be a personal portfolio website, link to slides, a dropbox folder, or anything else you feel will effectively show your fit for the role. Bonus points for slides-presentations on the topic of digital strategy and/or research.
[RightMetric’s Hiring Process]:Here’s what to expect if you progress through the process:
1. Application Assessment (Resume & Video Cover Letter): We aim to respond to everyone’s applications within a couple weeks.
2. Intro Call: 30 Minutes to get to know the hiring manager and see if there is a basic fit.
3. Deeper Interview: 90 Minute resume review with two members of our team.
4. Research Assignment: Hands on work sample so we can see your skills applied to the kind of work we do at RightMetric. Detailed instructions are provided and you get to choose a timeline that fits what’s going on in your life.
5. Reference Checks: We’ll ask you to intro us to 2-3 people you’ve worked with before for quick phone/video conversations. We’ll ask them what it was like to work with you.
6. Verbal Offer: We’ll give you a call to let you know there’s a spot on our team for you, answer any questions and talk through any concerns you have; then align on particulars like final compensation structure, start date, etc.
7. Written Offer: We’ll send you an employment offer letter to review and sign.
8. Pre-Onboarding: We’ll give you all the information, equipment, and account access you need to feel prepared ahead of your first day and hit the ground running.
9. Onboarding: We’ll introduce you to everyone on the team, train you on our processes, and make you feel welcome.
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Thanks for reading! If you're interested and qualified we would love to hear from you : )