Executive Director Custom SMA Product Marketing

About Northern Trust:

Northern Trust, a Fortune 500 company, is a globally recognized, award-winning financial institution that has been in continuous operation since 1889.  

Northern Trust is proud to provide innovative financial services and guidance to the world’s most successful individuals, families, and institutions by remaining true to our enduring principles of service, expertise, and integrity. With more than 130 years of financial experience and over 22,000 partners, we serve the world’s most sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service.

Role/Department: Executive Director, Custom SMA Product Marketing/Asset Management Marketing

It is an exciting time to join Northern Trust Asset Management, as we are investing to drive innovation and growth – with marketing playing a critical role.

The Executive Director, Custom SMA Product Marketing is a critical leadership position within our Product Marketing team, responsible for building and executing the marketing strategy in pursuit of growth of our Custom SMA business, with specific focus on our Tax-Advantaged solutions, working in partnership with our Custom SMAs leaders.  In this capacity, they will define competitive positioning and value proposition of our Tax Advantage and Tax Managed custom SMAs and Direct Indexing (DI) platform, lead the development, management and execution of marketing content in support of our marketing efforts and lead product launch campaigns as we grow our offerings.  This includes building and “feeding” always-on and point-in-time campaigns to drive product adoption and loyalty within key investor segments and assisting with product marketing operations as needed. Overtime, this leader will manage direct reports in support of these efforts.

The role will serve as a “go to” subject matter expert for custom SMA offerings within the marketing team and will partner across marketing and the rest of the organization in the execution of our strategy. The role will require strong leadership and collaboration within the broader organization – Marketing Centers of Excellence, Investments, CPMs, Product, Distribution, Compliance, Operations, etc. – to successfully meet marketing and organizational goals. In addition, the position will partner with adjacency Northern Trust business units to advance collaboration and growth.

The key responsibilities of the role include: 
•    Establish clear product marketing strategies for the custom SMA platform aligned with business goals and within budget.
•    Define product positioning and distill technical concepts into simple, compelling messages customized by client segment (institutional, intermediary, retail). Technical and promotional writing expertise required.
•    Lead new product launches, including, development of value proposition and strategic competitive positioning for go-to market activities and materials designed to build awareness and product adoption within sales enablement tools and website presence.
•    Serve as SME for all marketing-related activities (advertising, campaigns, thought leadership, etc.).
•    Develop, direct and manage, as needed, product content across marketing assets (e.g., videos, articles, website, social, presentations, etc.) and assist with value-add and thought leadership content.
•    Leverage intelligence from competitive research (peers, new entrants, category incumbents), industry partners (Cerulli, Fuse, etc.), internal SMEs, and data-driven tools (Morningstar/eVestments) to identify differentiated and viable long-term competitive advantages and positioning.
•    Participate in salesforce training in relation to use of marketing deliverables.
•    Ensure marketing materials meet all required regulatory obligations across all marketing constructs, distribution channels and regions.
•    Assist Marketing Services team with maintaining, updating, distributing and enhancing product-related updates as needed (e.g., recurring performance communications and product actions across digital and print).

Skills/Qualifications: 
•    15+ years of asset management marketing experience, specifically with custom SMA and/or DI platforms and B2B concentration required.
•    Strong communication skills (written and verbal); demonstrated ability to  craft product messaging that illustrates compelling, differentiated benefits.
•    Strong product technical knowledge and ability to translate difficult/complex investment concepts into practical, applicable content and messaging.
•    Exceptional interpersonal skills and ability to influence senior stakeholders in relation to marketing strategy and best practices. Demonstrated experience collaborating with senior stakeholders across investment, sales and product teams.
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