Marketing Manager

Reports: Executive Management Team

Location: Winchester, VA corporate office, serving markets across Virginia and West Virginia

Employment Type: Full-Time

Position Summary: The Marketing Manager is a newly established, company-wide role reporting directly to the Executive Management Team. This individual will serve as the primary architect of Aikens Group’s brand identity, digital presence, and marketing strategy across all four business divisions — Hotels, Commercial Real Estate, Residential Real Estate, and H&W Construction — building one Aikens Group brand while honoring the unique identity of each division and property.

This position holds responsibility for Aikens Group’s cultural marketing in both directions: inward, to team members across every division, and outward, to guests, tenants, prospective partners, and the public. The ideal candidate understands how to market a family-owned business authentically, operates with creativity and discipline in equal measure, and is genuinely excited about telling the Aikens Group story across multiple platforms and audiences.

A Phased Role

This role is built as a phased rollout rather than a simultaneous, all-divisions launch. Each phase is fully established and operating before the next begins.

• Phase 1 — Hotel Portfolio: Build and execute a local, market-by-market marketing plan across the hotel portfolio. This is the sole focus of the role until the function is fully established.
• Phase 2 — Residential Real Estate: Scope expands to the residential portfolio.
• Phase 3 — Commercial Real Estate: Scope expands to commercial real estate.
• Phase 4 — H&W Construction: A conditional final phase, contingent on a business determination that the construction division requires dedicated marketing support.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Brand Strategy & Identity

• Develop and maintain a unified Aikens Group brand identity across all divisions while supporting brand-specific standards for H&W Construction and our Hilton, Marriott, and Choice hotel properties.
• Work within the established brand architecture, in which each hotel is marketed under its own flag with Aikens Group as a secondary tag, real estate is marketed as Aikens Group Real Estate, and H&W Construction retains its own brand.
• Build upon established brand guidelines, templates, and visual standards for consistent use across print, digital, and environmental marketing materials.
• Serve as the internal brand champion, ensuring every team member-facing and guest-facing touchpoint reflects the Aikens Group mission.
• Track what competitors and comparable local businesses are and are not doing, and push Aikens Group to stand out in its markets.

Digital Marketing & Social Media

• Own and manage all social media platforms — Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
• Produce and direct video content showcasing renovations, new property openings, community involvement, team culture, and portfolio highlights.
• Manage Google Business profiles, online reputation, and OTA listings across hotel and residential properties.
• Manage on-page SEO across all Aikens Group web properties, including page titles, meta descriptions, header tags, image alt text, and structured data.
• Develop and execute email marketing campaigns for tenant outreach, leasing promotions, hotel group sales, and corporate partnership development.
• Own website content management across the hotel portfolio, expanding to AikensGroup.com as scope grows.
• Monitor and report on digital performance metrics including social engagement, lead generation, and campaign ROI.

Portfolio & Property Marketing

• Evaluate current local hotel marketing across Winchester, Front Royal, and Martinsburg, and build a hyper-local marketing plan from that evaluation.
• Tell the story that Aikens Group’s hotels are award-winning and rank in the top tier of their respective brand systems.
• Ensure hotels are capitalizing on all available media from their franchise brands.
• Market the portfolio’s meeting and banquet capacity, including 5,000 square feet of conference space in both Winchester, VA and Martinsburg, WV, intimate boardrooms, and large-format event space for 250–300 guests.
• Market both hotel restaurants, coordinating directly with each property’s General Manager and F&B Manager.
• Develop on-property marketing material at every hotel, including in-room collateral, signage, table tents, menus, and event space signage.
• Lead marketing efforts for new property openings, completed renovations, and capital improvement milestones across the portfolio.

Community Involvement & Employer Branding

• Build corporate visibility through local sponsorships, charitable partnerships, and civic engagement, including ongoing relationships with area Chambers of Commerce and civic leaders in each market.
• Position Aikens Group as the employer of choice in its markets through employer branding efforts.
• Own and maintain the Aikens Group employer profile on hiring platforms, ensuring it reflects the company accurately and stays current.
• Maintain the Careers page and coordinate with division managers so all active openings are posted accurately and promptly, and removed when filled.
• Ensure all job postings comply with Virginia pay transparency requirements, including accurate wage ranges for every open position.
• Develop recruitment marketing content that goes beyond job listings, including team spotlights, culture videos, and employee recognition content.

Marketing Asset Management

• Establish, organize, and maintain a centralized digital asset library for all Aikens Group marketing content across all four divisions.
• Audit and consolidate existing marketing files distributed across the company’s file system, migrating them into a consistent folder structure and naming convention.
• Serve as the administrator for the marketing file system, controlling access, maintaining version control, and ensuring only current, approved assets are in active use.
• Maintain an organized archive of completed campaigns and marketing plans by property and date.

Weekly Content Commitment

A core expectation of this role is the consistent production and publication of outward-facing content. The Marketing Manager maintains a content calendar and delivers a minimum of one piece of published content per week per division and hotel across the portfolio. Content may include social posts, Reels or video, property feature stories, leasing spotlights, community recaps, email campaigns, blog posts, or press releases. The format and subject will vary; the cadence will not.

Knowledge, Skills, and Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Communications, Business Administration, or a related field required. Advanced degree or professional marketing certifications a plus.
• 5+ years of experience in marketing, brand management, or communications, ideally in real estate, hospitality, or a multi-unit service industry.
• Demonstrated success managing social media channels with a track record of growing engagement and brand presence.
• Strong video production skills, with comfort directing, filming, and editing short-form content.
• Experience creating and managing multi-channel digital campaigns across multiple brands or properties simultaneously.
• Experience working in a family-owned or entrepreneurial business environment is a significant asset.
• Proficiency in social media management tools, Adobe Creative Suite or comparable design tools, and the Microsoft 365 suite.
• Working knowledge of SEO fundamentals and website metadata management.
• Experience with Hilton, Marriott, or Choice Hotels brand marketing standards preferred. Familiarity with Entrata property management software a plus.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to adapt voice and tone across channels and audiences.
• Creative vision balanced with financial discipline, and comfort presenting ideas and results to ownership and senior leadership.

Career Trajectory

This role is built to grow with the person in it. Progression is tied to successfully completing each phase of the rollout, not to tenure alone: from Marketing Manager, Hotel Portfolio, to Director of Marketing, Multi-Division, to Executive Director of Marketing with a standing seat on the Executive Management Team.

Compensation

Base pay for the starting position ranges from $65,000 to $70,000, commensurate with experience, and progresses as each phase of the rollout is established. This position is also eligible for an annual performance bonus.

Team Member Benefits

This role is eligible for the standard Aikens Group Team Member Benefits package, including health, dental and vision insurance, life insurance, a 401(k) profit sharing plan with company match, paid time off and holidays, portfolio-wide employee discounts on hotel stays and apartment rentals, pool and fitness room access at any Aikens Group hotel, and annual recognition programs.