The role:
UCT Vocational College launches its first student intake in July 2027, offering occupational qualifications designed to build job-relevant skills and create pathways to employment. We are looking for a Growth Manager to build the growth engine that attracts and converts students to it.
This is a role for a builder. There is no existing funnel to inherit, no channel benchmarks and no conversion baselines – you will create them. You will own how prospective students discover UCT Vocational College, how they move from interest to application, and how many of them are enrolled and paying when the doors open.
You will have support: dedicated data, technology and sales resources, external paid media help, and a marketing team around you. We are also honest that a new institution means a good deal is still being worked out. As an early member of the Vocational College team, you will help shape how its growth and sales function operates, within the commercial priorities, budget and brand parameters agreed with the COO and relevant functional leaders.
Key responsibilities for this role include:
Demand generation
- Own paid and organic acquisition across search, social and SEO
- Manage the vocational marketing budget and channel mix, and be accountable for its return on investment
- Develop creative and messaging briefs in partnership with our marketing and creative teams, and keep a continuous testing programme running
- Establish the cost and conversion benchmarks we do not yet have
Paid media
- Set direction for paid media, with day-to-day execution delivered through our digital consultant and delivery partners
- Own the cost-per-conversion and cost-per-enrolled-student numbers
- Ensure paid-media campaigns are properly tracked and optimised towards enrolled students rather than raw lead volume
Funnel and conversion
- Own performance across the full funnel, from first click through to enquiry, application and enrolment
- Work with our technology team on the website and application portal, shaping the flow, forms and the application journey to improve conversions
- Find where prospective students drop off, and drive the fixes
Lifecycle marketing and nurture
- Build the vocational funnel in HubSpot, including lead capture, routing, scoring, pipeline stages and marketing and sales automation
- Design and build nurture programmes across channels such as email and WhatsApp for a decision cycle measured in months
- Use AI within the funnel for personalisation, qualification and re-engagement, within our AI and data protection policies
- Grow and segment the marketing database, ensuring that consent is properly captured and POPIA respected
Working with sales
- Partner daily with our vocational sales team, and help define what a good lead looks like before anyone is measured on it
- Ensure acquisition decisions are informed by downstream sales and enrolment outcomes, rather than lead volume alone
- Establish and act on the lead quality feedback loop
Measurement and reporting
- Define the tracking, attribution and reporting required to manage performance across the acquisition, sales and enrolment funnel, working with Data and Technology on implementation.
- Own the commercial assumptions and funnel inputs underpinning the enrolment forecast, working with the Data team to build and monitor it, and drive delivery against the agreed target.
- Report performance and share what you are learning
Requirements (What you will be expected to know and do):
- 5+ years in growth, performance or lifecycle marketing, including ownership of a paid budget and accountability for a revenue or enrolment target rather than a lead-volume target
- Hands-on marketing automation capability, having personally built workflows and nurture programmes in a mature CRM. HubSpot experience is strongly preferred
- Strong working knowledge of paid media platforms, enough to set direction, audit an account and hold a delivery partner to account
- Full-funnel experience and the ability to account for what happened after the lead was created
- Experience owning or closely leading a sales or conversion function, including pipeline management, follow-up processes and accountability for revenue or enrolment outcomes.
- Practical AI fluency, with examples of how you have applied AI in your own work
- Comfortable working with engineering and delivery teams, briefing work and holding a quality bar on builds you do not own
- Sound analytical practice: self-sufficient in CRM reporting, and numerate enough to spot when a number is wrong
- Structured approach to experimentation and the willingness to stop what is not working
- Strong written communication and copywriting skills
- Comfort with ambiguity and a bias to getting things live
- Knowledge of POPIA and its implications for marketing data and direct communication
- A degree in Marketing, Business or a related field is preferable. Relevant demonstrable experience will be considered on merit in place of a formal qualification
Advantageous:
- Experience in education, EdTech or another considered-purchase category with a long decision cycle
- South African market fluency, including how price sensitivity, payment behaviour and language shape marketing to South African adult learners
- Experience launching a new brand, product or market
- Familiarity with the South African qualifications landscape, including QCTO, SAQA and NQF frameworks
- Hands-on capability in Webflow, Intercom, or landing page and CRO tooling
- Experience using WhatsApp as a conversion channel in an African market
- Experience with seasonal or single-intake demand patterns
- Proficiency in an additional South African official language
Benefits:
- Family member discount on programmes
- Remote working
- Voluntary savings programme
- Half-day birthday leave
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