Chief Marketing Officer

ROLE PURPOSE 

The CMO will turn iiDENTIFii’s biometric identity expertise, customer credibility and product strategy into a clear market position, trusted commercial narrative and measurable growth engine. This role will assist in converting technical credibility and customer trust into market confidence and commercial growth. You will lead and build at the same time.

This is a senior leadership role reporting directly to the CEO, with full ownership of the marketing function - today spanning brand, content, demand generation, product marketing, events and sales enablement. It is a high-autonomy, high-accountability role: you will operate with significant independence, make consequential decisions at pace, and set the standard for marketing excellence across a technically sophisticated, security-sensitive biometric identity business.

The Chief Marketing Officer owns the “why, what and how” of iiDENTIFii’s market presence: translating company strategy into a coherent, evidence-based marketing portfolio, setting the cadence and quality of content and campaigns, and acting as the connective tissue that keeps product, sales, engineering and operations aligned around a shared commercial narrative.  

WHAT YOU OWN

Brand Strategy & Market Positioning

• Define and own iiDENTIFii’s brand strategy, positioning and narrative across all channels, aligned to company OKRs and the evolving digital identity landscape
• Translate business strategy into clear marketing goals, prioritised campaigns, and measurable outcomes across the full portfolio
• Maintain a structured view of the competitive landscape, regulatory environment, and emerging standards in biometrics and digital identity to keep iiDENTIFii’s positioning sharp and ahead of the market
• Monitor and respond to brand reputation risks and opportunities; measure and report on brand performance with clarity and frequency
• Develop a clear ecosystem visibility plan across industry events, strategic networks, media, analyst conversations, partner forums and executive thought leadership.
• Prevent the company from drifting into inflated category language and ensure claims are supported by product truth, customer proof and regulatory reality.

Trust, Proof & Reputation

• Build iiDENTIFii’s market confidence through evidence-led storytelling, customer proof, executive visibility, PR, analyst and media engagement, issue preparedness and clear messaging around fraud, identity, biometric security and digital trust. 
• Ensure all claims are ambitious but grounded in product truth, customer evidence and regulatory reality. 
  
  

Demand Generation & Revenue Growth

• Own the demand generation engine: lead generation, pipeline nurturing, and conversion optimisation across all channels with alignment to Sales on ICP discipline, lead qualification and on what constitutes meaningful demand. 
• Build account-based marketing programmes for priority enterprise accounts, including stakeholder mapping, tailored content, executive engagement, renewal support, expansion opportunities and sales enablement for complex buying committees. 
• Proactively identify new opportunities for marketing and revenue development through deep understanding of iiDENTIFii’s strategic objectives and target segments
• Partner with Product and Sales to test market appetite, refine GTM, validate buyer pain points and ensure launches are tied to clear commercial use cases rather than feature announcements. 
• Track, report on and drive improvement in marketing-led growth metrics: pipeline contribution, lead quality, cost per acquisition and ROI
• Build and execute advertising and media plans that support commercial objectives, using data to identify target audiences, allocate spend, and measure outcomes
  
  

Account-based Growth & Customer Marketing

• Develop account-based marketing and customer marketing programmes for priority enterprise accounts, supporting retention, expansion, renewal, executive engagement and sales confidence.
• Build tailored assets and engagement plans for complex buying committees across financial services, fintech, payments and other strategic sectors. 
  
  

Product Marketing & Sales Enablement

• Own the education layer that makes the sales conversation easier and more credible by working on buyer education through all marketing channels as part of the strategic intent.
• Own the product marketing narrative across DI and IDV, developed jointly with the Product team — ensuring iiDENTIFii’s capabilities are positioned compellingly and accurately in market
• Equip the sales team with the resources they need to close deals including playbooks, objection handling, competitor positioning, sector-specific narratives, proof points, customer evidence and executive-level collateral. 
• Develop and maintain a sales enablement strategy that defines how iiDENTIFii approaches prospects, handles objections, and communicates value across each stage of the funnel
• Participate actively in pre-sales conversations where narrative, positioning, proof or executive credibility can influence the opportunity. 
• Lead win/loss analysis alongside sales, feeding commercial intelligence directly into campaign and positioning decisions
  
  

Content, Social Media & Digital Presence

• Lead iiDENTIFii’s content strategy across all channels - website, social, PR, blogs, thought leadership, case studies - ensuring it is aligned to brand standards, commercially purposeful, and audience-appropriate
• Build a customer evidence engine that turns customer success, implementation credibility, fraud/risk insights and sector expertise into usable sales and market-facing proof. 
• Own the digital and social media strategy; oversee execution and ensure the brand, executive leadership, particularly for the CEO, and senior technical leaders’ social presence is active, consistent, and building the right audience
• Brief, review and approve content created by internal team members or external partners; set the quality bar and ensure brand consistency across all outputs
• Develop and manage content marketing initiatives that drive traffic, engagement and qualified lead generation; track and measure conversion at each stage
• Stay ahead of social media and digital trends through ongoing learning and external agency partnerships; proactively bring relevant opportunities to the business
  
  

Events & Ecosystem Presence

• Plan, organise and execute events and experiences - internal and external - that build brand awareness, deepen client relationships, and generate pipeline
• Manage iiDENTIFii’s conference and exhibition participation end-to-end: own event strategy, selection, messaging, relationship outcomes, speaker strategy and post-event commercial conversion. Oversee speaker submissions, stand design, collateral, logistics and post-event follow-through.
• Evaluate event and sponsorship proposals with commercial rigour; allocate event budget to opportunities with the highest expected return
  
  

Analytics, Reporting & Budget Management

• Measure, analyse and report on marketing performance and ROI with the depth and frequency that enables real-time decision-making
• Implement marketing-to-sales governance: lead definitions, lifecycle stages, CRM hygiene, campaign attribution, follow-up SLAs and reporting that connects activity to revenue movement. 
• Develop and implement metrics and KPIs that align with business and marketing objectives; use data to continuously optimise strategy and spend
• Manage the marketing budget with rigour: conduct monthly recons, prevent overspend, and optimise cost per acquisition across all channels ensuring the right  investment choices, ROI, supplier value and strategic allocation of spend. 
• Communicate insights and recommendations to the CEO and senior leadership in a clear, data-driven and decision-ready format
  
  

Marketing Operating Model

• Build and run a clear marketing operating rhythm across planning, prioritisation, delivery and reporting. 
• Translate company priorities into quarterly marketing plans, define must-do versus nice-to-have activity, coordinate internal and external contributors, and ensure campaigns, content, PR, events and sales enablement are delivered with pace, quality and commercial purpose. 
  
  

Procurement & Supplier Management

• Identify, evaluate and manage external suppliers, agencies and partners - from digital and creative agencies to event vendors and PR firms
• Negotiate commercial terms that deliver value for iiDENTIFii; maintain supplier relationships with a high degree of professionalism and accountability
• Proactively seek partners that are aligned to the business strategy and can credibly contribute to marketing outcomes
  
  

AI-Augmented Ways of Working

• Use AI fluently and responsibly to improve research, planning, content development, reporting and team productivity, while maintaining human judgement, originality, confidentiality and quality control. 
• Apply AI to accelerate market research, competitive analysis, content creation, campaign ideation and performance reporting
• Use AI to draft, iterate and refine strategic documents, campaign briefs, copy and stakeholder communications with speed and precision
• Model AI-augmented working practices for the broader marketing team and embed them into team norms
• Develop and maintain prompt-engineering fluency; stay current with the evolving AI tooling landscape and proactively identify productivity opportunities
  
  

Team Leadership & Culture

• Lead and build  the marketing team - raising the bar on quality, ownership, pace and continuous improvement. Must be calm in complexity, technically curious, commercially sharp, collaborative without being passive and able to bring structure without bureaucracy. 
• Build a culture of rigour, creativity, ownership and psychological safety across the marketing function
• Develop, implement and measure clear team KPIs and OKRs to drive accountability and continuously uplift performance 
  

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR 

Experience

• 10+ years in B2B marketing, with at least 5–7 years in a senior marketing leadership role (Chief Marketing Officer, Head of Marketing, VP Marketing, or equivalent)
• Proven track record of building, scaling and leading marketing functions in technically sophisticated, fast-paced environments
• Demonstrated success owning a marketing portfolio end-to-end, from strategy and brand through demand generation and commercial outcomes
• Experience in fintech, regtech, identity, cybersecurity, or adjacent B2B technology sectors strongly preferred
• Startup or scaleup experience strongly preferred; comfort operating at pace with ambiguity and limited structure
• Able to support CEO, board and investor-facing narratives by translating market movement, customer proof, competitive dynamics and commercial strategy into clear strategic communication. 
  
  

Technical, AI and Domain Skills

• Ability to translate technical complexity into buyer confidence 
• Credible fluency across martech and marketing operations tooling — CRM, marketing automation, analytics platforms, CMS, social and paid media tools
• Strong data and analytics capability: comfortable building dashboards, interpreting performance data, and making evidence-based recommendations
• Demonstrated, hands-on use of AI tools for research, content, analysis and productivity, with a mindset of continuous AI adoption
• Understanding of the South African/African financial services and regtech market, including compliance requirements (GDPR, POPIA, FICA, KYC) and enterprise buyer dynamics that shape commercial success
• Design literacy: comfortable working in or briefing tools like Figma; able to hold a high creative bar without necessarily producing the work personally
  
  

Education

• A degree in Marketing, Business, Communications or a related field; an MBA or equivalent advanced degree is advantageous but not required where experience speaks for itself 

CULTURE AND BENEFITS 

Why Join Us

iiDENTIFii is solving one of the most consequential technical problems in Africa's digital economy: how do you verify that someone is who they say they are, remotely, at scale, across infrastructure that is inconsistent and high stakes? Our biometric identity platform is trusted by some of the continent's most demanding institutions precisely because we have built something that works.

Benefits

• Your money works harder here. As an iiDENTIFii employee, you gain exclusive access to ABSA's Employee Value Proposition,  including preferential rates on home loans, vehicle finance, and personal loans, putting real financial benefit in your pocket from day one
• Performance pays. Our competitive compensation package is designed to reward people who make an impact,  because we believe exceptional work deserves exceptional recognition
• Family comes first. We offer enhanced family responsibility leave, giving you the time and space that matters most when life calls
• Your annual leave entitlement grows with your tenure
• Cape Town -based; remote-first culture
• A technically excellent, mission-driven team at the frontier of biometric identity technology