Media Strategist & Partner Manager

Location: Des Moines Based / Hybrid

Reports to: CEO

Engagement: Full-Time Employee

Happy Medium is a team of creators, strategists, and problem-solvers united by a shared purpose: helping organizations grow through clarity, creativity, and technology. While operating as a full-service marketing and digital agency, Happy Medium also leads the development of innovative products, including EverDwell, a software that streamlines Housing Finance Agency operations to help increase loan volume and convert more homebuyers into homeowners for state agencies across the country.

We apply the same strategy-first approach to our own business that we bring to our clients, combining insight, design, and data to build measurable impact. Everything we do is designed to deliver proven ROI, helping our clients increase profit, efficiency, and peace of mind.

ROLE OVERVIEW

The Media Strategist & Partner Manager is the engine behind our homebuyer media performance, ensuring our media partners are delivering, our targeting strategies stay ahead of the curve, and our clients always have a clear picture of what their media investment is doing. You'll manage the day-to-day relationships with our paid search, programmatic, and paid social partners while simultaneously driving the forward-thinking audience and channel strategy that keeps Happy Medium and our clients competitive.

This is a full-time role ideal for someone who is equally comfortable holding a vendor accountable in a QBR and building a targeting hypothesis from scratch. You thrive on being close to the data, love finding the insight hiding in a performance report, and bring the kind of curiosity that keeps a team from ever getting too comfortable with the status quo.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Partner Management & Accountability

• Serve as the day-to-day contact for our paid search (Google/Bing), programmatic display, and paid social (Meta) media partners
• Hold partners accountable to performanc, pacing, efficiency, targeting accuracy, and delivery against commitments
• Lead partner reviews with sharp questions and clear expectations; synthesize reporting into insights the broader team can act on
• Identify when a partner is underperforming and navigate those conversations constructively and directly

Homebuyer Targeting Strategy

• Stay ahead of how audiences, platforms, and data signals are evolving in the homebuyer and housing finance space
• Develop and test audience strategies across paid search, programmatic display, and paid social, including life event signals, mortgage intent data, and new-mover triggers
• Build the case for new targeting approaches and bring recommendations to leadership and clients with confidence
• Connect the dots across channels so our media ecosystem works together, not in silos

GA4 Analytics & Client Reporting

• Serve as the agency's point person on GA4 — pulling regular performance reports for clients and translating data into plain-language takeaways
• QA tracking setups to catch gaps or misfires before they become reporting problems
• Build and maintain dashboards that give clients a clear, consistent view of what's working
• Flag anomalies and trends proactively. If something looks off or an opportunity is surfacing in the data, you're the one who catches it

Team & Agency Contribution

• Use modern tools and workflows to synthesize data, surface insights, and move faster than an agency our size has any right to
• Document what's working so institutional knowledge stays with the agency, not individual people
• Contribute to client conversations — you'll know our media strategy well enough to speak to it directly

IDEAL EXPERIENCE & ATTRIBUTES

• 3–6 years of experience in paid media, with real fluency across at least two of our core channels (paid search, programmatic, paid social)
• Experience managing or collaborating closely with external media partners or vendors
• Analytically sharp — comfortable pulling meaning out of performance data and translating it into clear recommendations, including in GA4
• Strong communicator who can write a pointed email, run a tight partner review, and brief a client with confidence
• A genuine interest in real estate, homebuyer audiences, or life-stage marketing — or the hunger to become an expert fast
• Self-motivated and proactive; comfortable managing your own priorities in a fast-moving boutique environment
• Naturally curious about what's next — in media, in data, and in how our category is changing

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

• Media partners are held to clear performance standards with documented accountability processes in place within 90 days
• At least two new homebuyer targeting strategies tested and evaluated within the first six months
• Client GA4 dashboards are standardized, accurate, and delivered on a consistent reporting rhythm
• Leadership spends less time managing media partner relationships and more time on growth
• The agency's media capabilities are visibly sharper — in client results, in partner conversations, and in team confidence

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS (KPIS)

• Partner performance: 100% of media partners reviewed on a regular cadence with documented outcomes
• Targeting velocity: Minimum of 4 new audience or channel strategies proposed and tested per year
• Reporting accuracy: 100% of client GA4 reports delivered on time and free of tracking errors
• Client satisfaction: Media-related client feedback remains positive; zero surprise performance issues
• Agency leverage: CEO and client service team spend less time on media troubleshooting quarter-over-quarter