Associate Marketing Manager I, Paid Media

About our family of companies:

We’re on a mission to bring learning to life! Across our family of companies—Learning Resources®, Educational Insights, and hand2mind—we create children’s toys, pet toys, educational products, and supplemental curriculum trusted by teachers and loved by families. As a growing, family-owned business and a Chicago Tribune Top Workplace, we are dedicated to helping kids succeed in school and develop a lifelong love of learning. If you’re curious, collaborative, and a kid at heart, you’ll feel right at home here. Join us in shaping the future of learning with our award-winning team!

Team & Position Description:

We are currently seeking a Marketing Coordinator, Paid Media to join our team! This role supports the execution of digital media programs across US & International retailer sites and our D2C channels. This individual will collaborate across internal teams and external agency partners to drive growth for our portfolio of brands - including hand2mind, Learning Resources, Brightkins and Educational Insights.

What you’ll do day to day (Responsibilities):

Under the direction of the Sr. Marketing Manager, Paid Media, you will:

• Execute and support paid media campaigns across digital channels, managing campaign setup, tracking implementation, creative trafficking, platform configuration, and launch readiness.
• Conduct pre-launch and in-flight QA reviews to validate campaign accuracy, tracking functionality, creative approvals, and reporting integrity.
• Support both direct campaign execution within advertising platforms and coordination of agency-managed campaigns, ensuring deliverables, timelines, and performance expectations are met.
• Monitor campaign performance, attribution, and conversion metrics, partnering with agencies and platform partners to identify optimization opportunities.
• Develop recurring performance reports and translate campaign data into actionable insights and recommendations for marketing stakeholders.
• Monitor campaign budgets, pacing, and spend performance, ensuring alignment with approved plans and promptly escalating discrepancies.
• Support Amazon DSP, retail media, paid search, paid social, display, programmatic, and other digital advertising initiatives through execution, reporting, and optimization.
• Maintain accurate campaign documentation, budgets, project records, and tracking frameworks while proactively identifying and resolving execution issues.
• Assist in researching emerging advertising channels, audience strategies, AI-powered media tools, reporting automation solutions, and industry trends to support continuous improvement.
• Respond promptly to questions, alerts, and campaign issues with a strong customer focus and sense of urgency.

What Success looks like in this role (Key Performance Objectives):

• Within the first 90 days, successfully support paid media campaigns across assigned channels, ensuring campaign assets, tracking, timelines, and reporting are completed accurately and on schedule.
• Effectively manage campaign operations across assigned paid media programs, including setup, trafficking, QA, tracking implementation, budget monitoring, and partner communication while proactively identifying and resolving issues.
• Establish and maintain a consistent reporting cadence within the first 6 months, delivering timely performance reporting, actionable insights, and optimization recommendations to marketing stakeholders.
• Maintain accurate budget pacing and campaign documentation, helping ensure spending aligns with approved plans, and reporting remains reliable and actionable.

What we’re looking for:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant experience in Marketing, Business, Advertising, or a related field.
• 1-2 years of relevant paid media experience, including internships and/or agency experience, supporting digital advertising campaigns.
• Ability to track and manage programs across multiple retailers, and campaign reporting.
• Understanding and ability to navigate retailer systems and the experience help to resolve retailer issues
• Ability to build and maintain effective relationships with management, sales teams, peers and agency partners and manage those relationships to achieve objectives
• Detail-oriented with strong organizational skills
• Proactive and resourceful in solving problems

We are a drug-free workplace and an EEO employer.

Please note: This role will be filled by our internal recruitment team, so no assistance is needed from any outside staffing agency at this time.

Compensation Range: $68,000 – $78,000 annual salary – Actual compensation may vary due to other factors such as: years of experience, skill set and location. Total compensation includes profit sharing bonus potential, 401k matching, and a variety of other benefits (details can be found here).