Growth Marketing Manager at Virgin Active South Africa

Job Description
Your Purpose...

• Is to “change people’s lives for the better through wellness”;
• We deliver social wellness experiences that enable people to meet their personal wellness goals, through holistic physical, mental nutritional and social wellbeing.
• Virgin Active South Africa’s Growth Marketing Manager is responsible for driving measurable member acquisition growth through high-quality digital lead generation and full-funnel optimisation.
• This role owns the performance marketing engine for Virgin Active South Africa, with a clear commercial mandate: build and scale a data-driven growth system that consistently delivers high-intent leads, improves conversion rates across the funnel, and increases new memberships across South Africa.
• This is a growth and performance leadership role, not a brand awareness role. Success is defined by acquisition efficiency, lead quality, and member conversion.

Your Duties and Responsibilities...

Strategy

• Own the end-to-end growth marketing strategy across paid, owned and emerging digital channels.
• Optimise for cost per lead (CPL), cost per acquisition (CPA), and member conversion rate.
• Continuously improve the full acquisition funnel from first engagement to membership sign-up.
• Align closely with CRM and Sales teams to maximise lead-to-member conversion.

Paid media ownership

• Lead performance across key acquisition channels:
• Google Ads (Search, Display, YouTube) – capture high-intent demand and drive conversions.
• Meta (Facebook & Instagram) – scale lead generation, retargeting, and conversion campaigns.
• TikTok Ads – build efficient upper-funnel and conversion-driven acquisition campaigns.
• Landing Pages & Website Funnels – Work closely with Website Product team to optimise UX, messaging, and conversion pathways to maximise lead capture.

Experimentation

• Build a structured test-and-learn growth roadmap.
• Identify, test, and scale new acquisition channels including affiliates, influencers, partnerships, programmatic, local publishers and referral systems.
• Rapidly iterate based on performance data and scale only proven channels.

Reporting, analytics and optimisation

• Own growth performance reporting and dashboards.
• Ensure accurate end-to-end attribution from lead to membership conversion.
• Drive continuous optimisation of targeting, creative, messaging and funnel performance.
• Embed a culture of experimentation (A/B testing across campaigns, landing pages, and offers).

Cross-functional leadership

• Work closely with the Brand & Social teams to ensure consistent and effective acquisition messaging.
• Work with the CRM and Sales teams to improve lead nurturing, follow-up and conversion rates.
• Collaborate with the Website Product team to improve website and digital funnel performance.
• Manage external media agencies and platform partners to deliver performance outcomes.

Budget management

• Own and manage the end-to-end digital growth marketing budget.
• Allocate spend across channels (Google, Meta, TikTok, and emerging platforms) to maximise ROI and acquisition efficiency.
• Continuously optimise budget distribution based on performance data, shifting investment toward the highest-performing channels and campaigns.
• Ensure spend efficiency against agreed CPL, CPA, and ROAS targets.

Our Minimum Requirements...
We can’t live without…

• Relevant tertiary qualification in Marketing or related field.
• Minimum 8 years’ experience in digital performance marketing or growth marketing.
• Proven experience in paid media (in-house or agency), e-commerce or digital commerce environments, with responsibility for driving measurable revenue outcomes (e.g. lead-to-sale, online conversion or subscription-based growth).
• Demonstrated success in building and optimising full-funnel acquisition strategies from awareness through to conversion and retention.
• Strong hands-on experience in campaign management and optimisation across high-performance digital channels.
• Deep working knowledge of Meta Ads Manager and Google Ads with a proven ability to optimise campaigns for efficiency and scale.
• Strong advantage for candidates with in-platform execution experience (not just strategic oversight) across paid media platforms including:
• Meta (Facebook and Instagram).
• Google Ads (Search, Display, YouTube, PMax, Demand Gen and UAC).
• TikTok Ads Manager.
• Strong analytical capability with experience using data to drive decision-making, improve conversion rates and optimise marketing spend.
• Experience working with marketing and analytics ecosystems including:
• Google Marketing Platform (Google Analytics 4 including Firebase, Looker Studio, Google Tag Manager).
• Braze, Insider, Hubspot or similar CRM/marketing automation platforms.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills with experience working across Brand, Sales, CRM, Product, and Technology teams.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, test-and-learn environment with clear commercial accountability and performance targets.
• Ability to lead agencies, stakeholders, and cross-functional teams effectively.

Core Interpersonal Skills:

• Emotional Intelligence- proven ability to anticipate the needs of others before they are voiced
• Active Listening- Able to genuinely hear concerns with the ability to defuse tense situations and ensuring members and staff feel heard and valued
• Cultural Awareness and Fluency- understand international norms, etiquette and diverse backgrounds to provide a welcoming environment for our international and VIP members
• Empathy – be able to understand, or and be aware of, someone else’s feelings especially during stressful situations, such as travel delays or billing disputes

Operational & leadership Skills Required:

• Attention to Detail, noticing the small things
• Resilience and Composure, be able to remain calm and optimistic under extreme pressure, during peak or periods or system failures
• Problem solving and conflict resolution – be able to turn challenges into opportunities by thinking and acting quickly to resolve issues before they impact a member’s experience
• Adaptability: be flexible to handle unpredictable shifts in processers, resource changes, last minute VIP guest arrivals, or sudden changes in event plans.
• Relatability – the capacity to connect with diverse stakeholders across all backgrounds
• Situational Awareness – constantly monitoring the environment to identify members who need support or help
• Curiosity- the ability to seek out and transform standard transactions into personalised stories and memorable experiences
• Time Management – the ability to efficiently meet stringent deadlines while maintaining a relaxed and unhurried demeanor for guests.
• Digital Fluency – must be proficient in new age technology and systems