Customer Success Strategist

WHO WE ARE

A company with deep roots, building like a startup.

Hearst has been in the business of informing and connecting communities since 1887, and we've never been more energized about what comes next. Today, Hearst is one of the most profitable and diversified media companies in the United States, with significant ownership stakes in ESPN, investments across hundreds of businesses, and a newspaper division that has consistently grown by evolving faster than the market expected.

Hearst Connecticut Media Group sits at the center of that evolution. We reach more Connecticut residents than any other local media organization, with 100,000+ paying subscribers, 61 million digital users annually, and the #1 comScore ranking in the state. Our brands (CT Insider, CT Post, New Haven Register, Stamford Advocate, Greenwich Time, and others) are trusted institutions that have served Connecticut communities for generations.

But trust only matters if it translates into results for our advertisers. That's where you come in.

This is not a maintenance role. It's a reinvention role.

The digital advertising landscape in 2026 looks nothing like it did even three years ago. AI is reshaping how campaigns are built, how performance is analyzed, and how client strategies are developed. We are leaning into that shift, aggressively, not cautiously. We are embedding AI-powered tools into our workflow to surface insights faster, identify risks earlier, and deliver smarter recommendations to the businesses we serve.

For this role, AI fluency will be strongest when paired with practical platform fluency. The strategist we hire should be comfortable looking at paid media performance through the lens of real campaign platforms - especially Google Ads and Meta Ads - and translating what those platforms are telling us into smarter client strategy.

The Customer Success Strategist who joins us now will help define how this works in practice, not inherit a finished playbook. If you are energized by building something rather than running something, this role was written for you.

THE ROLE

Customer Success Strategist

This is a proactive, strategy-oriented position focused on helping our sales and customer success teams deliver measurable outcomes for local businesses across Connecticut. You will not manage a reactive book of business. Your job is to stay ahead of the data, ahead of the risks, and ahead of the opportunity, and then equip the people around you to act on what you find.

You will work across SEO, SEM, Paid Search/Google Ads, Paid Social/Meta Ads, Programmatic Display, Email Marketing, and web solutions, interpreting performance, surfacing insights, and translating them into strategies that help our clients grow. You will also be a key user of our AI-powered intelligence tools, developing fluency in how to prompt, interpret, and apply machine-generated analysis in real-world client conversations.

1. Strategic partnership. Serve as a trusted strategic resource to sales and customer success teams, developing proactive, data-backed recommendations that align digital programs to each client's business goals.

2. AI-powered performance analysis. Leverage our AI intelligence tools alongside platform data, Google Analytics/GA4, Salesforce insights, Google Ads, and Meta Ads Manager to identify campaign trends, optimization opportunities, and risk signals before they become problems.

3. Campaign strategy & optimization. Recommend and support digital marketing strategies across SEO, SEM, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Programmatic Display, Email Marketing, and website solutions, with a clear understanding of how each product performs, fails, and improves.

4. Paid media insight development. Review paid search and paid social performance signals such as budget pacing, conversion activity, keyword/search-term trends, audience performance, creative engagement, targeting, landing-page alignment, and lead quality to help teams prioritize the right next action.

5. Client narrative development. Translate data into compelling, clear performance stories for business reviews, renewal conversations, and growth planning sessions, equipping sales teams to walk into every client meeting with confidence.

6. Onboarding strategy. Partner with sales, fulfillment, and operations to confirm client goals, success metrics, product mix, tracking needs, timelines, and launch expectations at the start of every new engagement.

7. Retention & growth intelligence. Proactively identify renewal risks and upsell opportunities through structured customer success planning, data review, and collaboration with account teams.

8. AI fluency & adoption. Actively develop and apply proficiency with AI tools to accelerate analysis, sharpen recommendations, and help the broader team build confidence in data-driven decision-making.

1. Digital fluency. Strong working knowledge of SEO, SEM, Paid Search, Paid Social Advertising, Programmatic Display, Email Marketing, and website performance, including how these products are sold, measured, and optimized for local businesses.

2. Preferred platform experience. Hands-on or working experience with Google Ads and Meta Ads Manager is strongly preferred. Candidates should be comfortable reviewing campaign structure, budgets, pacing, targeting, audiences, creative performance, conversion activity, and optimization opportunities, even if day-to-day campaign execution sits with fulfillment teams.

3. Analytical instinct. Ability to interpret performance data across platforms, diagnose trends, identify root causes, and convert raw numbers into practical strategic recommendations.

4. AI curiosity. A genuine interest in how AI tools are changing the way digital strategy is developed and communicated. Experience with AI-powered analytics platforms or LLM-based tools is a plus, though a demonstrated eagerness to develop that skill is equally valuable.

5. Communication clarity. Exceptional ability to translate complex data and strategy into concise, compelling narratives for both internal teams and client-facing audiences.

6. Cross-functional collaboration. Comfort working across sales, fulfillment, operations, and leadership teams, building trust through follow-through, clear communication, and reliable insight.

7. Platform proficiency. Google Analytics/GA4 experience strongly preferred. Familiarity with Salesforce, performance dashboards, digital reporting tools, Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, and common paid media KPIs such as CTR, CPC, CPA, ROAS, conversion rate, and cost per lead is a significant advantage.

8. Proactive mindset. This role rewards people who act before being asked. If your instinct is to identify the problem before it surfaces, and to propose the solution before it's requested, you'll thrive here.

A college degree is preferred. We are looking for candidates with 3+ years of experience in digital media, customer success, marketing strategy, sales strategy, account management, paid media strategy, or a related client-facing digital advertising role.

Experience interpreting performance from Google Ads, Meta Ads, Google Analytics/GA4, Salesforce, or digital reporting dashboards is strongly preferred. What matters most is not the title you've held. What matters is whether you've sat at the intersection of data and client outcomes and made something better because of it.