Open position: Marketer

Why this role?

80,000 Hours provides free research and support to help people find careers tackling the world’s most pressing problems.

Since the launch of our marketing programme in 2022, we’ve increased the hours that people spend engaging with our content by 6.5x, reached millions of new users across different platforms, and now have over 500,000 newsletter subscribers. We’re also the largest single source of people getting involved in the effective altruism community, according to the most recent EA Survey.

Even so, it seems like there’s considerable room to grow further — we’re not nearly at the ceiling of what we think we can achieve. So, we’re looking for a new marketer to help us bring the marketing team to its full potential.

We anticipate that the right person in this role could help us massively increase our readership, and lead to hundreds or thousands of additional people pursuing high-impact careers.

As some indication of what success in the role might look like, over the next couple of years your team might have:

• Cost-effectively deployed >$5 million reaching people from our target audience.
• Worked with some of the largest and most well-regarded YouTube channels (for instance, we have run sponsorships with Veritasium, Kurzgesagt, and Wendover Productions).
• Designed digital ad campaigns that reached hundreds of millions of people.
• Driven hundreds of thousands of additional newsletter subscriptions, leading to many of those people changing to a more impactful career.
• Launched a new channel that causes us to double the proportion of people who are aware of 80,000 Hours, within a particular target audience segment.

Since we are a nonprofit and we aren’t selling a product, this is a fairly nontraditional marketing role. We’d therefore encourage you to apply, even if you aren’t otherwise looking for roles in marketing and don’t have prior marketing experience.

Responsibilities

We’re looking for a flexible marketer who will:

• Help us scale up and improve our current best-performing marketing channels. For example, you could run campaigns aimed at particular subsets of our target audience, improve our messaging, or make the case for how quickly (or slowly!) we should scale up investment. These channels are:
  • Sponsorships with people who have large audiences, primarily on YouTube (influencer marketing — see examples here, here, and here).
  • Advertisements on social media sites (e.g. Instagram), Google search, and elsewhere (digital marketing — see examples here, here, and here).
• Take on other marketing responsibilities, such as the copy and design of marketing-relevant pages on the website, and managing the promotion of our book giveaway.
• Take on experiments with other new marketing channels or initiatives.
• Manage part of our budget (which currently totals $3 million per year) within your areas of responsibility.

About you

We’re looking for someone who has:

• A strong interest in effective altruism, longtermism, and/or having a big, positive impact in the world
• Good “taste,” where that means you’re willing to think carefully about what kinds of marketing work and why, and exercise that judgement
• An interest in thinking carefully about what will drive engagement with our work from people who might make especially high-impact career changes, and what this means for our marketing strategy
• An ambitious approach to the role, with enthusiasm for helping our marketing go well
• Written communication that is easy to follow — in particular, the ability to write out and show your thinking / your uncertainties in decision making
• Flexibility; excitement about trying out and evaluating new marketing approaches, platforms, and messages
• Assuming you were hired and things were going well in the role, excitement about staying in this role over the medium-term, i.e. at least 2 years

Ideally, you’d also have the following traits — but we encourage you to apply even if they don’t describe you!

• You have some previous experience relevant to this role. (Please note we definitely do not expect any candidate to have all of these, and this role does not require any previous experience). Here are some kinds of experience we’d be especially excited about:
  • Measurement and evaluation of a product or programme; data science or stats
  • Influencer marketing, or experience with anything to do with online content creation or monetisation
  • Digital marketing, especially performance marketing, design, copywriting, and/or experience with Meta and Google ads
  • Communications, including PR, media, campaigning, science communications, etc.
  • Other marketing experience; for example, marketing for a university society
  • Product experience, especially where this includes launching and attracting or maintaining a lot of users
• You are habitually data driven in your work, wherever possible and appropriate.
• You really “get” our target audience (talented, ambitious, altruistic 18–30 year olds), or are excited to learn more about them and their interests.

Role details

The new marketer would be managed by our current head of marketing, Bella Forristal — or a new team lead if we hire one. Our existing marketing team consists of Bella Forristal (the current head) and Nik Mastroddi.

This is a full-time role. We would prefer for you to work in-person, based in London (we can support UK visa applications if needed). However, we are open to remote applications.

The salary will vary based on your skills, fit, and experience, but to give a rough sense, the starting salary for someone with no relevant prior experience would be approximately £58,000 per year; for someone with four years of relevant prior experience it would be approximately £65,000 per year.

Our benefits include:

• The option to use 10% of your time for self development
• 25 days of paid holiday, plus bank holidays
• Standard UK pension, with 3% contribution from employer
• Flexible work hours and location
• Private medical insurance
• Long-term disability insurance
• Up to 14 weeks of fully paid parental leave
• Childcare allowance for children under 5
• Coverage of work-related expenses like travel to conferences and office equipment
• £5,000 annual mental health support allowance
• £5,000 annual self-development budget
• Gym, shower facilities, and free food provided at our London office

We have a really awesome team and are excited for more people to join us in our mission to help people use their careers to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

Note we also have an application open for a head of marketing. The main difference is that we expect applicants to the head of marketing role to be interested in management and strategy — otherwise, we will assess applicants based on very similar criteria. Please apply to whichever seems like the right fit for you — if it seems like the other level is a better fit later in the process, we can change this later on.

Application process

To apply, please fill in this application form. If you have any problems submitting the form, please send your CV to [email protected].

Applications are due by 18th August 2024.

The application process will vary a bit depending on the candidate, but is likely to include a written work sample, an interview, and a multi-day in-person trial. We offer payment for work samples and trials, conditional on your location and right to work in the UK.

We’re aware that factors like gender, race, and socioeconomic background can affect people’s willingness to apply for roles for which they meet many but not all the suggested attributes. We’d especially like to encourage people from underrepresented backgrounds to apply.

If you’re feeling unsure whether you meet our criteria, I’d like to strongly encourage you to apply; or reach out to [email protected] if you’re still unsure.

Apply here