Associate Director/lead Organic Search

We create category leaders. And you can't lead a category if you're invisible when people search.

Organic Media Leads engineer that leadership through discovery. This is a senior strategic role — leading clients to discovery, and leading the Rise at Seven team to success.

As an Associate director of Organic/Lead, you'll own a portfolio of accounts in a client-centric role, ensuring our Organic Media strategies translate into measurable commercial success. You'll act as the senior strategist on your accounts, working with a team of strategists, creators and analysts to build multi-channel content plans that make our clients the most discoverable brands in their category — with search-first insight at the heart of everything.

You're a performance strategist at heart. You take channel plans and turn them into visions that drive commercial value and industry impact— revenue and category leadership. You talk about money, category opportunity, and growth, not just rankings.

You'll be the senior strategic partner your clients can't imagine working without — challenging thinking, spotting opportunities before they do, raising standards, and helping shape the future of Rise's Organic Media proposition.

At Rise, we separate Demand from Discovery. This role ensures our Discovery strategies continually evolve to maximise visibility, authority and commercial performance — while identifying the biggest opportunities for growth.

What does good look like?

An indispensable strategic leader. You drive client relationships, performance and account growth. You anticipate opportunities before the client asks, regularly identify upsell opportunities and influence budget decisions. You bring every channel together into one cohesive strategy, and you're seen by both the client and internal teams as the strategic authority on the account. Losing you would materially impact the client relationship and performance.

Key Objectives

• Own the commercial success of your Organic Media client portfolio.
• Ensure Organic Media strategies deliver measurable business growth.
• Build long-term client relationships as a trusted strategic partner.
• Identify opportunities to grow client investment and expand our services.
• Develop and mentor Senior Organic Media Strategists.
• Continuously evolve our Organic Media proposition and strategic frameworks.
• Maintain exceptional quality across every Organic Media strategy.

Key Responsibilities

Client Leadership

• Act as the senior strategic lead across your client portfolio.
• Build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders.
• Lead monthly strategic planning, Quarterly Business Reviews and annual/long term strategic planning.
• Ensure every client has a clear growth roadmap aligned to commercial objectives.
• Challenge strategies to ensure we're investing in the highest-impact opportunities
• Unite SEO, social search, Digital PR and content into one cohesive Organic Media strategy per client — not siloed channel plans.

Commercial Growth 

• Develop client growth plans that identify opportunities across SEO, Social, Digital PR and wider Rise services to expand new channels - working the the CS team to open doors for budget and opps
• Spot upsell opportunities within current services based on impact for category leadership
• Monitor and report on portfolio performance, ensuring strategies deliver measurable outcomes working with analysts and performance leads
• Turn executional accounts into strategic, and strategic accounts into partnerships.

Strategic & storytelling

• Personally lead strategies on a number of accounts whilst Reviewing and elevating Organic Media strategies within your portfolio before presentation to clients.

Team Leadership

• Help develop a team of Organic Media Strategists and creators - training, setting process, feedback and quality assurance
• Coach team members through strategy development, client leadership and presentation skills.
• Support resource planning, prioritisation and workload management.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, curiosity and continuous improvement.

Proposition Development

• Help evolve Rise's Organic Media methodology and strategic frameworks.
• Identify new opportunities created by changing search behaviours, AI platforms and emerging technologies.
• Contribute to external thought leadership, internal training and agency-wide innovation.

About You

• You're an experienced strategic leader who combines commercial thinking with exceptional client management.
• You enjoy helping clients solve complex business challenges, not just marketing problems.
• You're passionate about developing people and raising the standard of strategic thinking.
• You understand how SEO, Social and Digital PR work together to drive commercial growth.
• You're confident in influencing senior stakeholders and leading high-value client relationships.
• You're excited by the future of search and the role Organic Media will play in shaping it.

Skills & Experience

• 6+ years' experience in SEO, content strategy or integrated digital marketing.
• Proven experience leading strategic client relationships.
• Strong commercial awareness with experience identifying growth opportunities.
• Experience managing and developing strategy teams.
• Deep understanding of Search Journeys, audience behaviour and Organic Media strategy.
• Strong knowledge of AI Search, LLM visibility and the evolving search landscape.
• Excellent presentation, communication and stakeholder management skills.

Success in this Role

Within 12 months you will have:

• Built a portfolio of clients achieving measurable commercial growth through Organic Media.
• Developed high-performing Senior Organic Media Strategists capable of leading client strategy independently.
• Increased client investment through strategic growth planning and opportunity identification.
• Raised the quality and consistency of Organic Media strategy across the agency.
• Helped shape the continued evolution of Rise's Organic Media proposition.

What We Can Offer You

• up to £70,000
• Generous holiday allowance + public holidays
• Holiday loyalty scheme
• Free mortgage advice through our in-house advisor
• Work from anywhere for up to one month a year
• Your birthday off
• Christmas and New Year office shutdown
• Access to private medical
• Enhanced maternity and paternity leave
• Flexible and hybrid working
• Bucket list scheme — one life experience on us

Equal Opportunities

• At Rise at Seven we celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We welcome applications from all suitably qualified candidates regardless of race, religious beliefs, age, sex, sexual orientation, or disability.