Head of Marketing, Business and Coach

Location – London, The Point 1-2 days per week, as well as travel to the Business & Coach locations, as required.

We have a fantastic opportunity for a Head of Marketing, Business and Coach to join our Marketing team on a full-time permanent basis.

The successful candidate will lead the marketing strategy, planning, and delivery for First Bus’s Business & Coach division, made up of a diverse portfolio of primarily B2B businesses, including Coaching firms, First Charge and First Travel Solutions, amongst others. This role ensures each business within the portfolio receives commercially grounded, insight‑driven marketing support that accelerates organic growth, elevates market position, and meets customer and commercial requirements.

You will bring sharp commercial judgement, strategic discipline, and a highly tailored approach—creating plans for each business while identifying opportunities for shared assets, efficiencies, and cross‑portfolio alignment. You will also define how the central Marketing Centre of Excellence can best support the Business & Coach division and will develop common playbooks and frameworks for repeatable success.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership

• Lead the development and execution of customised marketing strategies across a portfolio that includes Coaching brands, FTS, Ensign, and First Charge.
• Ensure each business receives marketing support aligned to its commercial model, customer needs, competitive environment, and growth objectives.
• Build a clear understanding of each market’s value drivers, customers and proposition strengths to shape effective marketing plans.

Insight‑Led Planning & Commercial Impact

• Develop insight‑driven growth plans for each business, leveraging customer data, market intelligence, and commercial input.
• Apply commercial acumen to shape P&L‑linked marketing strategies, including margin drivers, lead‑generation requirements, and ROI expectations.
• Identify opportunities to harmonise approaches across the portfolio.

Execution Through Shared Capability

• Determine how central marketing capabilities, e.g. content, digital, CRM, performance, brand, creative, can best support each business.
• Lead ‘pods’ drawn from the Marketing Pool matrix, ensuring high‑quality delivery and clear accountability for outcomes.
• Collaborate closely with the Production Hub, Social, CRM, PR and PA teams, and potentially external agencies to deliver campaigns with commercial impact.
• ‘Re‑use and recycle’ with pride – drive efficiency by borrowing effective marketing insights, campaign assets or initiatives taken from other parts of the Marketing team. Proudly share (good and bad) results, to build shared understanding across the whole department.

Marketing & Sales Enablement

• Oversee development of Account‑Based Marketing (ABM) strategies for key accounts and sectors.
• Strengthen Customer Marketing programmes to support retention, upsell, and long‑term relationship development.
• Provide tools, content, and playbooks to strengthen sales team effectiveness and consistency across segments.

Stakeholder Influence & Partnership

• Serve as the trusted marketing partner to the Business & Coach Commercial Director and their team.
• Build strong, collaborative relationships with the B&C portfolio businesses e.g. MDs of the Coaching businesses, FTS, Ensign and First Charge etc.
• Influence senior leaders across diverse businesses, bringing clarity on strategic trade‑offs and directing marketing investment for maximum yield.

Performance, Measurement & Continuous Improvement

• Track and report on marketing effectiveness, commercial outcomes, pipeline contribution, and brand performance across the portfolio.
• Ensure evaluation frameworks, dashboards, and reporting mechanisms are in place to inform future planning.
• Lead budget management across the Business & Coach marketing portfolio, highlighting risks, efficiencies, and opportunities.

Leadership & Ways of Working

• Role‑model a practical, adaptable, commercially minded working style, comfortable with both strategic thinking and hands‑on delivery where needed.
• Foster a culture of responsiveness, curiosity, experimentation, and continuous improvement within project teams.
• Provide empathetic and effective leadership across matrixed teams and complex stakeholder environments.

Skills/Experience

• Strategic thinking and operational delivery excellence.
• Deep understanding of B2B customer journeys, value propositions, and buying behaviours.
• Ability to translate complex commercial needs into clear marketing activity.
• Skilled at managing multiple priorities across varied business models.

• Commercial, pragmatic, and solutions‑oriented.
• Highly adaptable; thrives in varied business contexts and fast‑moving environments.
• Strong communicator with the ability to persuade and influence at senior levels.
• Collaborative, empathetic, and able to build trusted relationships.
• Creative thinker with a scrappy, resourceful approach to problem‑solving.

Essential

• Proven experience leading marketing in complex, multi‑segment or multi‑brand B2B environments.
• Strong commercial acumen, with the ability to understand P&Ls, pricing, margin levers, and business cases.
• Demonstrable experience developing tailored, insight‑led, growth‑driven strategies for different businesses or customer types.
• Strong track record of influencing and partnering with senior stakeholders.
• Experience in B2B digital marketing, content strategy, CRM, lead generation, and acquisition pipelines.