DescriptionJob Title: Marketing Operations Manager
FLSA Status: Exempt
Hours: Full-time
Pay Rate: Range starts at $69,591/year
Summary:
The Marketing Operations Manager is responsible for driving the operational execution of marketing initiatives that support revenue growth, brand visibility, and guest engagement for Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium and Lee G. Simmons Wildlife Safari Park. Reporting to the Vice President of Marketing and Communications, this individual contributor plays a critical role in translating marketing strategy into disciplined, timely, and effective execution.
This role serves as the operational backbone of the Marketing and Communications team, ensuring marketing work is prioritized, coordinated, and delivered with clarity and accountability. The Marketing Operations Manager brings structure, rigor, and agility to how marketing efforts are planned, activated, and measured across channels and partners.
As a trusted partner to marketing leadership, this role provides operational leadership, performance visibility, and market insight that enables the team to move faster, work smarter, and deliver measurable impact without direct supervisory responsibility.
Duties and Responsibilities (include but not limited to):
- Own project acquisition, assessment, prioritization, and delivery for the Marketing and Communications team, ensuring all marketing work entering and exiting the team is intake driven, appropriately prioritized, resourced, tracked, and delivered with discipline, flexibility, and accountability.
- Establish, document, and maintain standard operating procedures governing project intake, workflow, approvals, timelines, and delivery across all marketing initiatives.
- Maintain comprehensive visibility into active and upcoming marketing initiatives, dependencies, and deadlines, serving as the central source of operational clarity for the Marketing and Communications team and its partners.
- Translate marketing strategy and priorities into executable plans across organic, paid, partnership, traditional, and digital channels, flexing plans as needed and applying agile ways of working.
- Coordinate activation by aligning inputs, reviews, and delivery across internal contributors and external partners, leveraging available resources to keep work moving efficiently.
- Drive accountability to timelines and processes through clear expectations, tracking, and escalation of risks when needed.
- Own campaign level performance visibility, coordinating reporting inputs and ensuring insights related to performance, attribution, targeting, and optimization are timely, accurate, and actionable.
- Support market and guest intelligence by monitoring competitive activity, maintaining guest and member personas, and applying location, visitation, and audience data to identify growth and targeting opportunities.
- Own governance of marketing assets and brand standards, including management of the Digital Asset Management system, quality control, and consistency across all marketing and communications deliverables.
- Develop clear and strategic creative briefs that align objectives, audience insight, messaging, timelines, and success measures.
- Serve as the operational owner for Marketing and Communications work, supporting cross functional alignment by providing clarity on marketing priorities, timelines, and dependencies, while cross departmental prioritization and decision making remain with Marketing leadership.
Key Competencies:
- Marketing Operations Leadership: Demonstrates ownership and accountability for marketing operations, driving clarity, prioritization, and disciplined execution in complex environments.
- Operational Rigor and Attention to Detail: Maintains exceptional standards for accuracy, timelines, dependencies, and quality control with minimal oversight.
- Strategic Prioritization and Agility: Assesses work objectively, adapts plans quickly, and balances speed with rigor as priorities shift.
- Marketing Fluency and Judgment: Applies deep understanding of marketing strategy, channels, and tactics to assess readiness, quality, and impact of work.
- Data and Analytics Mindset: Uses performance data, attribution, and audience insights to inform prioritization, targeting, and optimization decisions.
- Cross Functional Influence: Builds alignment and accountability through clarity, credibility, and consistent follow through.
- Market and Guest Awareness: Understands the attractions and retail landscape and applies guest and member insights to planning and execution.
- Resourcefulness and Problem Solving: Identifies obstacles early and mobilizes practical solutions to keep work moving forward.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
- Operate as a senior individual contributor within a Marketing and Communications team, owning complex multi-channel marketing operations through judgment, accountability, and influence.
- Deep proficiency with marketing operations and work management platforms, including Monday.com, designing and maintaining workflows, intake processes, dashboards, and reporting structures.
- Ownership of Digital Asset Management practices, including use of Canto for asset governance, taxonomy, version control, and enforcement of brand standards.
- Strong working knowledge of Google Analytics 4, media attribution models, and performance measurement, connecting execution to outcomes and optimization decisions.
- Fluency with location intelligence tools such as Placer.ai to analyze visitation patterns, identify geographic opportunity areas, and inform targeting and market expansion strategies.
- Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, with particular strength in PowerPoint and Excel to produce executive ready presentations, operational trackers, performance reports, and analytical summaries.
- Design, documentation, and enforcement of standard operating procedures that drive consistency, speed, and execution quality.
- Analytical mindset that synthesizes data, insights, and context into clear priorities and actionable execution plans.
Supervisory Responsibilities:
- This position does not have supervisory responsibilities and operates as an individual contributor with influence across collaborators, partners, and stakeholders.
Required Experience and Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Communications, Business Administration, or a related field.
- Eight or more years in marketing operations, campaign execution, or marketing project leadership roles.
- Background operating in fast-paced, high-volume, consumer-facing environments such as attractions or retail, with demonstrated ability to manage speed, complexity, and execution discipline.
- Agency or internal marketing agency experience supporting multiple stakeholders, concurrent initiatives, and compressed timelines.
- Ownership of marketing workflows from intake and prioritization through execution and delivery across traditional and digital channels.
- Hands-on use of marketing work management platforms and operational systems to drive alignment, visibility, and adoption.
- Responsibility for brand governance, asset management, quality control, and performance reporting that connects marketing activity to outcomes.
Candidates might be required to pass a pre-employment background check, drug test, and possess a valid driver’s license with a good history.
Work Environment/Physical Demands:
- Works primarily in an office environment with regular on-site collaboration at the Zoo and the Wildlife Safari Park (located in Ashland, NE).
- May require occasional evening or weekend work tied to campaign launches, events, or project deadlines.
- Position may involve occasional lifting or transport of materials generally under 25 pounds.
- Must be able to sit, stand, bend, stoop, crouch, kneel, and reach upward as required for campaign coordination or operational needs.
Travel Required:
- Ability to travel to attend annual job-related conferences or other zoo-related functions. Travel requirements are less than 5%.
Remote Work:
- This is to be determined in conjunction with the Department Head and Zoo policy.
DISCLAIMER
The information presented indicates the general nature and level of work expected of employees in this classification. It is not designed to contain, nor is it to be interpreted as, a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and objectives required of employees assigned to this job.
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer as defined by the EEOC.
