Vertical Marketing Manager, Automotive & Emerging SMB Verticals

CallRail•Atlanta, GA

4d•Hybrid

About The Position

CallRail is looking for a lead engagement platform: we show businesses which marketing drives their calls, forms, and chats, and we help them answer, qualify, and route those leads around the clock. We're looking for a Vertical Marketing Manager to own a portfolio of our emerging markets, with automotive at the center. Think of the role as general manager for that portfolio: you set the strategy, you own the number, and you're the company's go-to on these markets. You'll build the personas, positioning, and messaging for these verticals, verticalizing our go-to-market narrative for each audience. From there you'll partner with demand generation, customer marketing, and content on how it comes to life, and work closely with sales, product, and leadership on what we build and say. Expect roughly equal parts strategy and execution. Automotive is the priority. It's one of our fastest-growing segments, and the aftermarket — repair and service businesses, tire and quick-service shops, collision centers, and the parts suppliers and retailers who serve them — is where you'll go deepest. Alongside it, you'll own a portfolio of our emerging small business verticals. They sit at different stages and require different levels of investment, and determining where to focus is a core part of the role. What connects them is the customer: small businesses that win or lose on the leads they capture.

Requirements

BS/BA degree.
4–6 years of experience in a strategic marketing role focused on small business buyers.
Direct experience marketing to automotive businesses.
A track record of owning a strategy end-to-end and being accountable for results.
Experience entering or evaluating a new market, including sizing opportunities, building cases, and establishing positioning.
Strong analytical instincts and comfort with data to derive insights and build cases.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Confidence and presence to represent your point of view to senior leaders and external audiences.
Demonstrated ability to influence and align cross-functional partners without formal authority.
Comfort operating in a fast-moving environment, prioritizing, making tradeoffs, and shifting between strategic thinking and hands-on execution.
Continuous adoption of AI technologies is essential.

Nice To Haves

Experience marketing to the automotive aftermarket (repair and service businesses, tire and quick-service shops, collision centers, parts suppliers and retailers).

Responsibilities

Act like an owner for your markets, understanding their performance, risks, and opportunities.
Represent your markets in cross-functional and leadership conversations with an informed point of view grounded in expertise, data, and competitive analysis.
Advocate for market needs by building cases, providing rationale and data, and championing initiatives until decisions are made.
Demonstrate deep curiosity and continuous learning about the industry, buyers, and market forces.
Own portfolio strategy and business performance, including go-to-market strategy, positioning, messaging, and hitting acquisition and revenue goals.
Decide on the allocation of time and investment across markets based on their needs and potential.
Monitor key business metrics (customers, new MRR, churn, ARPU, conversion rate, product adoption), identify trends, and develop plans to address issues.
Report on performance to leadership, providing insights and explanations.
Serve as CallRail's subject matter expert on the automotive aftermarket, including buyers, workflows, operations, vendors, and economics.
Own automotive buyer personas, value propositions, positioning, and messaging.
Develop credible proof points like customer stories, benchmarks, and ROI framing.
Continuously track the competitive landscape and feed intelligence to product, sales, and leadership.
Surface market trends and translate them into strategic implications.
Validate market requirements through customer interviews, surveys, win/loss analysis, sales insights, and usage data.
Represent CallRail in the automotive market through trade shows, speaking engagements, webinars, panels, and podcasts.
Own positioning and messaging for other emerging small business verticals, scaling depth based on opportunity.
Monitor the performance of other verticals, identifying wins, losses, and growth potential.
Assess and pressure-test opportunities in existing and new markets, determining size, winnability, and investment requirements.
Provide recommendations for investing in or passing on markets with clear justifications.
Run lightweight tests for promising opportunities in new verticals.
Act as a central hub between sales, product marketing, customer marketing, demand generation, and product development.
Serve as the messaging authority for your verticals, consulting on campaign and content development.
Ensure marketing efforts address customer pain points, strengthen competitive position, resonate with target segments, and drive measurable results.
Partner with product development teams as the voice of the customer, influencing the roadmap.
Enable sales and support teams through training and collateral development.
Leverage AI platforms to streamline operations, solve problems, and stay ahead of industry benchmarks.