Are you a marketing leader who knows how to turn brand visibility into market share, acquisition into revenue, and retention into serious long-term value?
Our client, a fast-growing business in the iGaming and sports betting industry, is looking for an experienced Chief Marketing Officer to lead their marketing strategy from Johannesburg.
This is a senior leadership role for someone who understands the pace, pressure, and commercial reality of the betting sector. The ideal candidate will know how to build a brand, drive performance marketing, lead high-impact campaigns, manage acquisition costs, improve player retention, and create a marketing engine that delivers measurable business growth.
This is not a “make the logo bigger” marketing role. This is a seat at the executive table, with direct influence over revenue, growth strategy, customer engagement, product positioning, and market expansion.
What you’ll be doing
- Develop and lead the overall marketing strategy across brand, acquisition, retention, CRM, performance marketing, content, sponsorships, partnerships, affiliate marketing, events, and customer engagement.
- Own the marketing roadmap for the business, ensuring all activity supports commercial objectives, revenue growth, market share, customer acquisition, customer retention, and long-term brand equity.
- Lead the planning and execution of high-impact campaigns across digital, retail, mobile, social media, paid media, influencer marketing, affiliate channels, sponsorships, activations, and local market initiatives.
- Build and manage a performance-driven marketing function with clear KPIs, strong reporting, disciplined execution, and commercial accountability.
- Oversee customer acquisition strategy, ensuring campaigns are targeted, cost-effective, compliant, and optimised for conversion across key channels.
- Manage retention and CRM strategies to increase player engagement, repeat activity, loyalty, customer lifetime value, reactivation, and churn reduction.
- Work closely with product, trading, operations, customer support, compliance, technology, payments, and finance teams to align marketing activity with business performance.
- Own marketing budgets, campaign spend, media planning, ROI analysis, cost per acquisition, customer lifetime value, conversion rates, retention metrics, and promotional performance.
- Analyse market data, customer behaviour, competitor activity, campaign results, player trends, and regulatory changes to shape smarter marketing decisions.
- Lead brand positioning and messaging to ensure the business stands out in a crowded and highly competitive betting market.
- Oversee sponsorship, media, and partnership opportunities that improve brand visibility, credibility, customer acquisition, and commercial reach.
- Ensure all marketing activity complies with relevant advertising standards, responsible gambling requirements, internal controls, and regulatory obligations.
- Build strong relationships with agencies, media partners, affiliates, influencers, sports partners, suppliers, and other external stakeholders.
- Improve marketing technology, automation, attribution, analytics, segmentation, personalisation, and campaign reporting capabilities.
- Develop clear customer segmentation strategies across acquisition, retention, VIP, casual players, high-value customers, dormant users, and reactivation audiences.
- Drive promotional strategy in collaboration with trading and product teams, ensuring offers are commercially viable, customer-relevant, and performance-led.
- Lead, mentor, and develop the marketing team, creating a culture of creativity, accountability, speed, data discipline, and commercial ambition.
- Present marketing performance, growth plans, risks, opportunities, and strategic recommendations to the executive team and board.
What we’re looking for
The ideal candidate will have senior marketing leadership experience within iGaming, sports betting, online casino, lottery, gaming, fintech, digital entertainment, consumer technology, telecoms, media, or another high-volume B2C environment.
You should have a proven track record of leading marketing teams, managing sizeable budgets, driving customer acquisition, improving retention, building brands, and delivering measurable revenue growth.
You will need to be both strategic and operational. This role needs someone who can shape the big picture, but still knows what a broken funnel, weak CRM journey, inflated CPA, lazy campaign brief, or poor offer mechanic looks like.
You should be confident operating at executive level, influencing senior stakeholders, managing agencies, interpreting data, and making fast commercial decisions in a competitive market.
Experience in the South African betting, gaming, entertainment, telecoms, digital, or consumer market would be highly advantageous.
Key skills and experience
- Senior marketing leadership experience, ideally as a Chief Marketing Officer, Marketing Director, Head of Marketing, Head of Growth, Head of Acquisition, Head of Brand, or Senior Marketing Lead.
- Experience in iGaming, sports betting, online casino, lottery, gaming, fintech, telecoms, digital entertainment, media, FMCG, ecommerce, or high-volume B2C sectors.
- Proven ability to build and execute marketing strategies that drive revenue, customer growth, market share, and brand awareness.
- Strong experience across performance marketing, brand marketing, CRM, retention, affiliate marketing, sponsorships, paid media, social media, content, partnerships, activations, and digital campaigns.
- Deep understanding of customer acquisition, conversion funnels, CPA, ROI, LTV, churn, reactivation, segmentation, attribution, and campaign optimisation.
- Experience managing marketing budgets, media spend, agencies, suppliers, campaign forecasts, performance dashboards, and executive reporting.
- Strong leadership skills, with the ability to build, manage, motivate, and develop high-performing marketing teams.
- Commercial mindset with the ability to connect marketing activity directly to business outcomes.
- Excellent analytical skills, with the ability to interpret customer data, campaign results, market trends, competitor activity, and revenue performance.
- Strong brand-building capability, including positioning, messaging, creative direction, market differentiation, and customer trust.
- Experience with marketing automation, CRM platforms, analytics tools, attribution models, campaign management systems, and reporting dashboards.
- Strong stakeholder management skills, with the confidence to influence executives, board members, agencies, partners, and internal teams.
- Understanding of regulated marketing environments, responsible gambling, advertising compliance, and risk management would be a strong advantage.
- Ability to move quickly, make decisions with imperfect information, and lead in a competitive, high-pressure market.
Why this role stands out
This is a rare opportunity to lead marketing for a serious player in the iGaming and sports betting industry from Johannesburg, one of Africa’s most commercially important markets.
You will have the mandate to shape the brand, sharpen acquisition, build retention, improve customer value, and create a marketing function that drives real business performance.
This role is ideal for a marketing leader who wants more than campaign approvals and pretty dashboards. You will be close to strategy, close to revenue, and close to the action.
For the right person, this is a high-visibility leadership opportunity with the scope to influence growth, brand direction, customer strategy, and long-term market success.
Apply now by sending your CV to contact@initiateinternational.com for this Chief Marketing Officer role. If you wish to view additional Gaming, Betting, & Gambling jobs, please click through to our job section.
