Marketing Strategy Manager

At Batesville, you will be part of a dynamic team committed to excellence and innovation. A recognized leader in the death care industry in North America, we are committed to our mission of helping families honor the lives of those they love®. Batesville has been named one of the Most Trustworthy Companies in America by Newsweek for three consecutive years, reflecting our commitment to quality, integrity, and the trust families and funeral professionals place in us every day.

About the role

As Manager, Marketing Strategy, you will be responsible for strengthening the Market Strategy & Activation (MSA) team's ability to make sound decisions and execute against them effectively. This role spans the full arc of commercial strategy work: generating the market, competitiveness, and customer intelligence that informs go-to-market decisions; translating that intelligence into strategy; and owning the performance monitoring, business planning, and operational frameworks that keep strategy on track. It requires equal fluency in external market dynamics and internal organizational performance — and the analytical rigor and strategic judgment to move fluidly between both.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain the team’s research and insights strategy, roadmap, and infrastructure; build and maintain an insights repository accessible across the marketing organization.
• Lead the customer and consumer research program: study design, vendor management, data collection, and synthesis into actionable insight reports.
• Conduct ongoing market trend monitoring — synthesizing VOC, CSAT, industry publications, and third-party data into regular insights brief for segment leads.
• Own competitive intelligence: monitor competitor pricing, product launches, and market moves; produce quarterly landscape summaries with recommended actions.
• Lead trade area opportunity modeling: identify, score, and prioritize geographic markets using demographic data, death trends, and share opportunity; develop profiles to support segment and field activation.
• Partner with the Director to develop, pressure-test, and refine enterprise and segment-level go-to-market strategies; serve as a strategic thought partner reviewing plans for internal consistency, alignment, and risk.
• Own the team’s performance monitoring framework: track strategy execution against goals, identify where plans are or are not landing, and bring forward root cause analysis and recommended adjustments.
• Translate performance data — revenue attainment, segment share, campaign results, engagement metrics — into strategic insight and lead internal performance reviews for the MSA team.
• Monitor external market signals and internal data on an ongoing basis to ensure strategies remain responsive to changing conditions; collaborate with BI and Data Science to ensure work is grounded in reliable data.
• Lead the annual and quarterly marketing business planning process: coordinate goal setting, consolidate plans across functions, and ensure a complete, aligned plan is ready for CMO review.
• Manage the MSA team budget: budget-vs-actuals, RFF process, forecasting, and financial visibility for leadership; support vendor spend management across the broader marketing organization.
• Design and maintain operating cadences: planning cycles, strategy review rhythms, cross-functional alignment meetings, and performance reporting schedules.
• Serve as the central point of contact for marketing contracts and vendor agreements; ensure commitments are documented, tracked, and renewed on schedule.
• Participate in cross-functional alignment sessions with Sales, Finance, and Product; other duties as required.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, Business, Strategy, Market Research, Statistics, or a related discipline.
• Minimum 5–7 years of progressive experience in marketing strategy, commercial intelligence, market research, or a strategy-adjacent role; or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Demonstrated ability to contribute to strategy development alongside senior leaders — shaping plans, not just tracking them.
• Strong analytical and critical thinking skills; able to interrogate performance data, identify root causes, and connect outcomes back to strategic decisions.
• Proven experience designing and executing primary and secondary market research (surveys, focus groups, interviews, quantitative analysis).
• Strong competitive intelligence capability: monitoring, synthesizing, and translating competitive signals into strategic recommendations.
• Experience with trade area analysis and opportunity modeling (demographic data, spatial analysis, market sizing).
• Experience owning a business planning or budgeting process and translating financial data into operational guidance.
• Exceptional organizational fluency; strong storytelling and presentation skills; ability to distill complex analysis into executive-ready recommendations.
• Proven ability to influence and build alignment in a matrixed organization.
• Experience managing external research vendors and longitudinal research programs; familiarity with consumer data platforms.
• Working knowledge of BI tools and analytics platforms; intellectual curiosity and comfort operating in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance, as well as prescription coverage, short-term disability, and Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
• Generous 401K matching program.
• Paid time off.
• Opportunities for development and advancement.

Pay

The expected base salary range for this role is $105,000-$120,000 per year. Actual compensation within this range will be based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to qualifications, skills, experience, and location.

Schedule

• Travel up to 10% of the time.

Physical Requirements

To perform this job successfully, the physical demands listed are representative of those that must be met by an employee. Reasonable accommodation(s) may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

• Regularly required to sit, stand, walk, use hands to handle and feel, reach with hands and arms, talk, and hear.
• Occasionally required to crouch or lift items as heavy as 25 lbs.
• May require the employee to see with clarity at both near and far distances.