Director Digital Marketing at 5.11 in Costa Mesa, CA

Director Digital Marketing

Born in Yosemite, forged in Quantico and built for adventure. 5.11 is a purpose-driven lifestyle brand, rooted in performance, durability, and versatility. Since 1979, we’ve created gear and apparel for people who live life without limits, delivering gear and apparel that empower them to push boundaries every day.

We're looking for a Director of Digital Marketing to lead our digital growth strategy, maximize paid media performance, and strengthen our organic social presence to drive customer engagement, brand awareness, and profitable revenue growth.

Reporting to the Vice President of Marketing, this role will oversee paid media, organic social, email, SMS, CRM, and affiliate marketing. The Director will lead our internal digital marketing team and external agency partners, working closely with Brand, Creative, Ecommerce, Product, Retail, and Finance to deliver an integrated digital marketing strategy.

The ideal candidate brings deep, hands-on experience in performance marketing, a strong understanding of organic social strategy, and the ability to translate data into actionable business decisions. This leader must be equally comfortable setting strategy, challenging agency recommendations, managing significant media investments, and developing a high-performing team.

What You'll Do:

Paid Media Strategy

• Lead paid media strategy, budget allocation, and performance across paid social, search, shopping, video, display, programmatic, and emerging digital channels.

• Oversee external paid media agencies, establishing clear performance expectations, KPIs, testing strategies, and accountability for results.

• Optimize campaigns to improve customer acquisition, conversion, return on advertising spend (ROAS), and overall marketing efficiency.

• Evaluate campaign effectiveness using customer acquisition cost (CAC), incremental revenue, contribution margin, and customer lifetime value.

Organic Social Content & Community Growth

• Develop and execute an organic social strategy that increases audience reach, engagement, community participation, and brand awareness.

• Oversee organic social agency partners, including content strategy, platform-specific storytelling, publishing calendars, and community engagement.

• Identify opportunities to strengthen brand storytelling through product content, creator partnerships, customer experiences, and platform-native video.

• Use organic social insights to inform paid media creative, audience targeting, and broader marketing strategies.

• Establish meaningful performance metrics to evaluate organic social growth and its contribution to customer demand.

Integrated Digital Marketing

• Align paid media, organic social, email, SMS, CRM, and affiliate marketing to create a consistent customer experience across digital channels.

• Lead digital marketing planning and execution in support of product launches, seasonal campaigns, promotions, and retail initiatives.

• Oversee email, SMS, and lifecycle marketing strategies focused on customer acquisition, segmentation, personalization, retention, and repeat purchases.

Analytics & Reporting

• Own digital marketing budgets, including media spend forecasting, pacing, agency expenses, invoice reconciliation, and financial controls.

• Monitor spending against approved budgets and ensure appropriate approvals are obtained for budget changes.

• Develop and maintain performance reporting across acquisition, revenue, paid media efficiency, organic social growth, retention, and profitability.

Team Leadership

• Lead, coach, and develop the internal digital marketing team, establishing clear priorities, performance expectations, and development opportunities.

• Manage external agency relationships, including performance, scopes of work, deliverables, budgets, and contract renewals.

What You Bring:

• 10+ years of progressive digital marketing experience, including significant leadership responsibility in paid media and performance marketing for a consumer-facing brand.

• Deep hands-on expertise in paid social, paid search, shopping, campaign optimization, creative testing, and performance measurement.

• Experience managing multimillion-dollar annual paid media budgets; experience overseeing $5 million or more annually strongly preferred.

• Demonstrated success developing organic social strategies that drive audience growth, engagement, and community development.

• Proven ability to integrate paid and organic marketing strategies to improve customer acquisition and business performance.

• Strong analytical and financial skills, including experience with CAC, ROAS, marketing efficiency ratio (MER), customer lifetime value, forecasting, and budget management.

• Experience leading internal teams and managing external marketing agencies with accountability for performance and results.

• Working knowledge of email, SMS, CRM, customer lifecycle marketing, and affiliate programs.

• Strong communication, collaboration, and leadership skills, with the ability to influence cross-functional partners and senior leadership.

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Pay Range: $165,000-$185,000 plus bonus

5.11 offers a best-in-class benefits program including: medical, dental and vision insurance; a 401(k) program with employer match; employer-paid basic life and AD&D insurance. Additionally, employees can choose from several voluntary benefits including: Hospital Indemnity/Accident insurance; Flexible Spending Account/Health Saving Account; Employee Assistance Program; Paid Time Off/Paid Holidays/Sick Time; Casual Dress Code; and Employee Discounts.

*If you are a regular full-time employee working at least 30 hours per week, you and your eligible dependents may participate in 5.11’s benefits program.*

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