Vice President, Go to Market

Job Summary:

The Marketing Leader for Organic Growth Go-to-Market defines and drives how Mariner reaches and converts new clients. This role is equal parts strategist, orchestrator, and connector, owning the full go-to-market motion from vision to execution across growth channels, alliances, corporate partnerships, and audience segments. This means building the systems and workflows that let GTM execution scale through a blend of human judgment and AI/agentic tools. This leader designs how the work gets done and develops the team's capability to direct that system rather than produce every output.

This leader holds shared accountability for pipeline contribution and revenue-influenced targets, not just marketing program delivery. It requires strong influence, sharp prioritization, and the ability to turn complex strategies into clear narratives, programs, and client experiences that move the business forward.

Go-to-Market & Growth Strategy

• Define and lead the go-to-market strategy for organic growth, aligning channels, audiences, and messaging to business priorities

• Lead marketing across key alliances, including CPA, Credit Union/Banking, and Investment Banking, ensuring consistent and effective activation

• Drive strategy for corporate partnership marketing programs to expand reach and unlock new audiences

• Define and maintain ICPs and audience segmentation frameworks across organic growth channels – and leverage this to build and customize niche growth channels

• Research and share competitive and market positioning insights, and translate these into external insights into actionable positioning updates

• Partner with organic growth team to identify whitespace and emerging audience opportunities

• Act as the orchestrator of the organic growth operating model by defining what's templated, what requires in-house production, and what requires agency or specialist support, and evolving that model as capability matures

Client Journey Strategy & Experience Design

• Define and visualize end-to-end client journeys across organic growth channels, from initial awareness through conversion and engagement, with accountability for conversion benchmarks over time

• Identify key moments that matter across the journey and ensure marketing programs, content, and campaigns are aligned to each stage

• Partner with Lifecycle, Performance Marketing, and Analytics teams to optimize journey performance, improve conversion, and eliminate friction

• Establish a clear framework - including a shared decision logic, messaging rules, and audience definitions - that both the team and AI/agentic tools can act on consistently, so channel and message decisions don't depend on one person.

Demand Generation & Performance

• Partner with Lifecycle and Performance Marketing, along with lead desk, to drive integrated contact acquisition, lead generation, and pipeline growth

• Connect organic channels to conversion pathways, ensuring campaigns move efficiently from awareness to engagement to pipeline

• Develop and deliver sales enablement tools that accelerate closed business

• Translate partner, content, and brand engagement into measurable outcomes

Events & Sponsorship Strategy

• Partner with events/conference team to build a sponsorship strategy to support growth and audience expansion. Execute high-impact activations and ensure strong pre-, on-site, and post-event integration

• Tie events directly into broader campaigns and demand generation efforts

Content, Brand & Communications Alignment

• Create and own content that directly supports organic growth channels - not just briefing others, but in some cases writing and producing it

• Partner with content leadership to build and scale a cohesive content strategy across alliances, partnerships, and audience segments

• Work with brand team to ensure consistent, differentiated market presence across all channels

• Collaborate with communications to drive earned media strategies that extend reach into new audiences

Channel Activation & Enablement

• Build scalable, repeatable programs across alliance and partner channels. Identify which GTM workflows are candidates for agentic execution and lead the transition, including training the team to direct and evaluate AI-driven work

• Present campaigns, content, and initiatives to OG teams, enabling effective adoption and amplification

• Develop frameworks and toolkits to drive consistency across teams and partners

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Analytics & Business Impact

• Partner closely with Analytics leadership to connect marketing investments and activities to business outcomes

• Define KPIs and measurement frameworks across channels, with clear visibility into performance and ROI

• Use performance data to continuously refine the operating model to define what gets automated, what stays manual, what gets outsourced

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Required Education and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in marketing, communications, business, or related field

• 15+ years of experience with demonstrated success in organic growth, go-to-market strategy, and multi-channel execution

• Proven ability to design and optimize end-to-end client journeys that drive measurable business outcomes

• Experience across alliances, partner ecosystems, or indirect channels

• Past success working directly with sales or business development to align on pipeline targets and handoff criteria

• Demonstrated ability to build and scale a sales and partner enablement function

• Direct experience deploying AI/agentic tools or automation into a marketing operating model - not just using AI tools personally, but redesigning team workflows and role definitions around them

• Willingness to build new operating/collaboration models in a high-growth organization, driven by a test-and-learn mindset

• Demonstrated experience coaching a team through a shift from doing the work to directing systems that do the work - including change-management and skill-building

Preferred Education and Experience:

• Experience in financial services, wealth management, or professional services

• Background in building growth programs for high-consideration categories

• Familiarity with referral-driven or partner-led growth models

Required License/Certification:

· NA

Skills:

• Strategic thinker with the ability to execute and scale programs across complex, multi-channel environments

• Exceptional cross-functional leadership and influencing skills — able to align diverse teams without direct authority

• Comfortable operating as a builder of systems and processes, and able to design workflows and training that combine human and AI capabilities

• Deep experience across content, brand, events, and integrated campaigns

• Strong partnership experience with Lifecycle, Performance Marketing, and Analytics teams

• A natural translator between marketing and the revenue layer - able to tell the story of how marketing activity drives pipeline and contributes to growth in language the business actually uses

• Data-driven mindset with a focus on performance, accountability, and continuous optimization

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Physical Demands/Requirements:

The physical demands described here are representative of those requirements employees must meet to perform the essential functions of this job with or without reasonable accommodations. While performing job functions the employee is regularly required to sit, stand, write, review and type reports, compile data, operate a pc, communicate, listen, and assess information. The employee may move about the office complex, may travel to other office locations and may lift, push, pull or move 10 - 15 pounds. Visual requirements include distant, close and color vision, and ability to adjust focus

Work Environment:

This job operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as laptop computers, photocopiers and smartphones. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Travel Requirement:
Limited – Less than 10% if in Overland Park, KS area. Up to 25% if outside the area.

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We welcome your interest in being a part of our firm. We believe in giving associates progressive opportunities, actively nurturing professional growth and giving back to the community. We are dedicated to building a diverse culture where everyone has the support they need to achieve their career goals. We offer an innovative workplace and a culture that fosters camaraderie, teamwork and work-life balance.

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