Are you our new Paid Social & Social Media Manager?

We're looking for a new Paid Social & Social Media Manager

About the role

We’re looking for an ambitious Social Media & Paid Media Manager to lead social strategy and performance across two exciting cruise brands, Bolsover Cruise Club and Odysia.

Bolsover Cruise Club is one of the UK’s most established and trusted cruise specialists, while Odysia is our new social-first cruise brand, built around the way modern travellers discover, engage with and book travel.

We’re investing significantly in social media, professional content creation and paid acquisition because we believe social has the potential to become one of the most important growth and customer acquisition channels in our business.

We’re ambitious about where we can take it and we’re looking for someone equally excited by that opportunity — someone who combines strong paid-social expertise and commercial thinking with a genuine understanding of what makes great social content.

You’ll have dedicated creative resource around you, including professional video and content creation. Your role is to bring everything together, developing the strategy, identifying opportunities, planning campaigns, directing creative, managing paid activity, analysing performance and continually improving results.

Paid Social & Performance

Paid social will be a major focus of the role. You’ll take ownership of our activity across Meta and TikTok, with the freedom to test, learn and scale what works.

You’ll:

• Develop and deliver paid-social strategy across Meta, TikTok and emerging platforms.
• Own campaigns from planning and audience strategy through to launch, optimisation and reporting.
• Manage advertising budgets and make informed recommendations about where we invest.
• Build full-funnel campaigns across awareness, acquisition, retargeting, lead generation and conversion.
• Develop audience strategies using prospecting, retargeting, lookalikes, exclusions and first-party data.
• Continually test creative, audiences, messaging, formats, landing pages and calls to action.
• Monitor and optimise performance across ROAS, CPA/CPL, CTR, CPC and other key commercial metrics.
• Use Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads Manager, GA4 and platform analytics to understand what’s working and why.
• Produce clear performance reporting with insights and recommendations, not simply numbers.
• Translate campaign learnings into future creative and media decisions.
• Work with Product and Marketing to identify opportunities for our own acquisition campaigns around key products, destinations and commercial priorities.

Social Strategy & Growth

You’ll lead the social strategy across both brands, balancing Bolsover Cruise Club’s established audience and trusted reputation with Odysia’s social-first approach.

You’ll:

• Develop clear strategies across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.
• Build quarterly, monthly and weekly plans aligned with wider commercial priorities.
• Create forward-looking campaign and content calendars, allowing the team to plan and produce ahead.
• Identify opportunities to grow relevant audiences, engagement, traffic, leads and bookings.
• Connect organic social, paid media and wider campaigns into joined-up customer journeys.
• Develop strategies to grow Odysia’s WhatsApp community and other owned audiences.
• Stay close to platform developments, trends and changing audience behaviour.
• Use data and audience insight to continually evolve the strategy.

Content & Creative Direction

You’ll work alongside dedicated video and content resource to develop high-quality, social-first creative across both brands.

You’ll:

• Develop campaign concepts, content series and social-first ideas.
• Create clear creative briefs for video, design and content.
• Plan filming and content production in advance, building a strong bank of content across both brands.
• Develop hooks, messaging, scripts and calls to action.
• Use paid and organic performance data to inform what we create next.
• Travel on selected cruises, FAM trips and ship visits to lead content planning and capture, ensuring we maximise each opportunity across organic and paid social.
• Balance polished, professionally produced content with authentic, platform-native social content.
• Identify opportunities to make the most of ship visits, destinations, events and FAM trips.

You’ll have plenty of opportunity to be creative, but you’ll also have a talented team around you to turn ideas into high-quality execution.

YouTube & Social Discovery

YouTube is an important part of our future growth strategy.

You’ll help develop long-form and short-form content designed around search, discovery and authority — including cruise line and ship guides, destinations, FAQs and evergreen customer-led content.

You’ll also help us understand how social, video, traditional search and emerging AI-led discovery increasingly work together.

Team Leadership

You’ll lead a small social function and work closely with colleagues across Product, Marketing, Sales, Video and Design.

You’ll:

• Set clear priorities and coordinate activity across the social team.
• Manage and develop our Social Media Executive.
• Work closely with our videographer and content creators.
• Coordinate creative briefs, filming schedules, campaigns, deadlines and approvals.
• Build efficient processes for planning, production, publishing and reporting.
• Encourage ideas and creativity while maintaining clear strategic and commercial direction.

What we’re looking for

Essential –

• 3–5+ years’ experience in paid social, performance marketing or social media management.
• Strong hands-on experience with Meta Ads Manager and TikTok Ads Manager.
• Proven experience managing paid campaigns with measurable commercial results.
• Experience managing advertising budgets and optimising performance.
• Strong understanding of paid-social funnels, audience strategy, prospecting and retargeting.
• Confidence using GA4 and interpreting performance data.
• The ability to turn data into clear recommendations and actions.
• Experience developing organic social strategies across multiple platforms.
• Strong understanding of social-first video and creative.
• Excellent campaign planning and project-management skills.
• Experience managing or mentoring others.
• Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills.
• A proactive, commercially curious mindset and genuine interest in understanding what drives customer behaviour.

Desirable

• Travel, cruise, e-commerce or premium consumer experience.
• Experience scaling paid-social acquisition.
• Creator, influencer or UGC campaign experience.
• Experience with landing pages and conversion optimisation.
• Experience using first-party audiences and CRM data within paid campaigns.
• YouTube strategy and channel-management experience.
• Experience with Sprout Social, Later, Metricool or similar platforms.
• Experience growing owned communities such as WhatsApp.
• Understanding of SEO and social/video discovery.
• Experience using AI tools for analysis, research, content development or workflow efficiency.

Why join us?

This is an opportunity to take genuine ownership of social across two brands at very different and exciting stages of their journey.

You’ll have access to dedicated creative resource, professional video production, established audiences and growing investment in paid media — alongside the freedom to test new ideas, challenge how we work and influence where we go next.

Working in cruise also means getting out there and experiencing the product first-hand. The role includes opportunities to travel, join FAM trips, visit ships and attend industry events, where you’ll work alongside our content team to plan, direct and create high-quality social content. It’s a brilliant part of the role — and gives you genuine first-hand knowledge of the products and experiences you’ll be marketing.

Most importantly, we’re ambitious about what social can do for our business.

We’re looking for someone who wants to combine great creative, intelligent paid media and strong commercial thinking to help us reach new audiences and turn that attention into measurable growth.

If you’re excited by the opportunity to shape and grow social across two distinctive travel brands, we’d love to hear from you.

Pay: From £35,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Company events
• Employee discount
• Free or subsidised travel
• Health & wellbeing programme
• On-site parking

Application question(s):

• This is a full-time, office-based role at our Cruise Centre in Barlborough, North Derbyshire. Are you able to commute to our office Monday to Friday?
• This is primarily a paid social and strategy role. Please tell us about your hands-on experience managing paid social advertising, including the platforms you’ve used, the approximate budgets you’ve personally managed, and any results or successes that demonstrate your expertise.

Work Location: In person