Lead Strategist

I started IMA in 2004. I still personally run strategy on two of our oldest clients, relationships that go back almost twenty years. That's not a normal thing in this industry. Most agencies churn through client relationships every 18 months. Ours don't, because the strategy behind them actually holds up over time.That's the job I'm hiring for.We work with local businesses, primarily home service companies, doing $1.5M to $50M in revenue. Every new client goes through a short, data driven discovery process we call the IdeaMap. Out of that comes a 6 month roadmap tied to their actual revenue goals, not vanity metrics. We back every IdeaMap with a 100% money back guarantee. So the strategy has to be right before we ever spend a client's ad budget.Here's what most agencies get backwards. They spend all their energy on the customers who are ready to buy today. That's the easy half of the market. The much bigger group is the people who aren't ready yet. Most agencies ignore them completely. We built our whole model around engaging that group systematically, alongside the paid search and paid social work everyone else already does. That's where the real growth sits, and it's why clients stick around.We're also rebuilding how the agency runs internally. I've been pushing AI into research, reporting, and workflow across every service line for the last year. At IMA, AI doesn't create our strategy. We have a proven system. Instead AI lets a strategist think at a higher level instead of drowning in spreadsheets. I want someone in this role who treats AI the same way: a tool that removes grunt work, not a replacement for judgment.What you'll doYou'll own strategy for a book of clients. You'll run their custom Digital Marketing Quadrant (DMQ) system. That means digging into the data, finding the actual gaps, and running the tactics that are tied to revenue, not activity.You'll lead client the strategy calls. You'll explain what we're doing and why in plain language a business owner can actually use, not agency jargon that makes you sound smart and leaves them confused.You'll review performance across PPC, Local SEO, social, and content, and call the next move before the client has to ask for it.You'll work directly with our specialists in each channel so the tactics stay lined up with the DMQ. You're not doing their jobs. You're making sure their work adds up to something.You'll use AI tools to move faster on research and reporting, then apply the judgment that makes the output actually useful. If you can't tell good AI output from lazy AI output, this isn't the right seat. We have over 50 skills already running in so you won't be tasked to create your own. However, if you find a better way to do something, we want to hear about it so we can improve.Who I'm looking forYou've planned campaigns, built funnels, and optimized performance of digital marketing campaigns of one type or another, or many. Not just watched the dashboards. Done the work, or led the people doing it.You can read a dashboard of marketing data and explain it to a business owner as a decision, not a report. Most people can do one of those things. I need someone who can do both.You're comfortable running the client call and running the strategy behind it.You've worked with small and midsize businesses before, ideally in a similar revenue range. A $4M plumbing company and a $40M SaaS company need completely different plans, so if you’re experience is purely in SaaS feel free to apply but explain why you’re interested in this this type of local marketing.The most important thing is that you're genuinely curious. This is an amazing, and insane, time to be in digital marketing. The world is literally creating and burning tactics every few months. A fixed mindset will fail. We need you to be curious about our client's business, about what moves the needle, about how AI changes what's possible in this work. I'd rather hire someone who tests something and gets it wrong than someone who never tests anything.Also important, you can pick up the phone and talk a panicked client through a bad week of numbers. That happens more than you'd think, and it's part of the job. The phone is your friend, not something to avoid like the plague. The detailsThis role is fully remote and needs to be U.S.-based.We build long term relationships with clients, and I want the same out of this hire.We're results focused at IMA. Do the work well and the rest takes care of itself. I don’t care if your Slack bubble isn’t green at 1 pm as long as things are getting done and clients are happy.Next stepIf you want to execute digital strategy that actually works, and you're willing to be judged on whether it does, send me your background.Answer these questions too, will you? There's no right answer, I just want to see how you think. And if it’s obvious AI wrote your answers I won’t read them. The robots can’t do all our thinking.It’s month three of a new client’s engagement with IMA. Their campaigns are on track, but they panicked over one bad week of numbers. What do you tell them?What's the most overrated metric in digital marketing right now, and what should we be looking at instead?Where does AI actually make you a better strategist, and where does it hurt?What’s your favorite AI tool/skill/app right now?Tell me about a side hustle, project or business you’ve started. It could be a car washing business when you were 12 (like me) or a failed startup. Tell me why you took it on and what you learned.