The Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority (DART) is Iowa's largest public transit agency, providing fixed-route bus, paratransit, and on-demand transportation throughout Greater Des Moines. DART connects thousands of people every day to jobs, school, medical appointments, entertainment, and other essential destinations.

Salary Range: $65,000-$75,000

Application Instructions:
Please submit both a resume and a cover letter with your application. Your cover letter should briefly describe your interest in the position and highlight how your experience and skills align with the Marketing Specialist role.

Position Summary:
Under the supervision of the Creative Project Manager, the Marketing Specialist plans, implements and evaluates marketing and communication initiatives that promote ridership, increase awareness of Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority (DART) services, and support the organization's strategic goals and priorities. The position plays a key role in maintaining and optimizing customer-facing communication channels, including DART's website and digital platforms, to ensure information is accurate, accessible, relevant, and engaging.

This position manages multiple concurrent projects, collaborates with internal and external stakeholders, and exercises independent judgment in a dynamic and evolving environment.

Essential Functions of this Position:
•    Support development and execution of marketing campaigns across various channels to increase ridership and promote the benefits of public transportation. Specific responsibilities will include:

o    Advertising: Develop and coordinate the placement of advertising messages. 
o    Digital: Develop, implement, and optimize digital campaigns across paid, owned, and earned channels.
o    Social media: Collaborate with the Communications Specialist to plan, publish, monitor, and evaluate social media content.
o    Promotions: Identify, create and implement marketing promotions.
o    Multimedia content: Plan and coordinate multimedia content development, including photography, video, animation, and digital assets.
o    Event partnerships: Work with the External Affairs team to identify and coordinate materials and logistics for a variety of events DART sponsors or partners with that promote DART and DART’s services in the community.

•    Serve as the primary point of contact for DART's website, rider mobile app, and other assigned digital platforms. Maintain and update content, coordinate new content and form requests, identify and route technical or content issues, and collaborate on digital content strategy, usability, accessibility, customer experience, and platform optimization.
•    Work with External Affairs team members to coordinate the development, implementation, and ongoing maintenance of marketing and communication materials for rider, stakeholder, and staff audiences. 
•    Collaborate to develop concise marketing copy and provide recommendations on the presentation, organization, and adaptation of content to improve customer understanding, engagement, and effectiveness across marketing channels.
•    Develop and implement targeted marketing and outreach strategies for key audiences, including current riders, prospective riders, employers, students, seniors, community partners, and contracted partner populations. Support Unlimited Access, Caravan, and other partnership programs through targeted promotions and outreach efforts.
•    Support public outreach, community engagement initiatives, and the launch of new services, programs, partnerships, and organizational projects.
•    Monitor campaign performance and engagement metrics, prepare reports, identify trends, and recommend improvements.
•    Support customer experience initiatives by identifying broader opportunities to improve how riders discover, understand, and interact with DART.

Additional Functions of this Position:
•    Represent the team on interdepartmental committees and proactively collaborate with internal stakeholders to ensure marketing and communication initiatives are aligned, practical, and reflective of organizational priorities and audience needs.
•    When needed, work with external partners to implement marketing plans, providing clear direction on project goals and expectations as well as oversight to ensure the project’s successful completion. 
•    Maintain relationships with key marketing contacts at other organizations and vendors.
•    Collect, curate, and develop content for a monthly internal employee communications email featuring agency updates, staff recognition, and organizational news, and coordinate its distribution.
•    Manage and monitor project budgets. 
•    Occasionally serve as a representative of DART, assisting in the communication of service changes, transit information, and agency initiatives to the public with clarity, professionalism, and strong customer service.

Education and/or Experience:
•    Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in marketing, communications or a related field. 
•    Minimum of three years’ experience in marketing. 

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Competencies:
Knowledge of:
•    Principles and methods of marketing strategy, campaign planning, audience engagement, and performance measurement.
•    Branding and messaging strategies used in consumer-facing marketing campaigns.
•    Print, digital, social, broadcast, and emerging media channels.
•    Content development and editing best practices.
•    Website content management systems (WordPress preferred), digital content strategy, and user-centered online communication.
•    Digital marketing tools and platforms, including web analytics, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and digital advertising.
•    Personal computers and current office software programs for word processing, presentations, email, spreadsheets and databases. 

Skills and Abilities
•    Have conscientious attention to detail and a genuine team-player mentality.
•    Communicate effectively in writing, including the ability to translate detailed, technical, or program information into clear, engaging, and actionable marketing content.
•    Strong project management skills with the ability to manage multiple projects and competing priorities, independently adjust plans in response to changing business needs and stakeholder feedback, and consistently meet deadlines.
•    Complete tasks in an efficient, cost-effective and professional manner.
•    Analyze complex problems, evaluate alternatives, and make innovative and sound recommendations.
•    Develop and maintain effective and collaborative working relationships with agency partners, contractors, vendors and the public using principles of good customer service.
•    Work independently with minimal oversight.
•    Maintain confidentiality.

Physical Demands:
On a normal workday, this position requires:
•    Prolonged periods of sitting, standing and/or walking.
•    Extensive use of hands, fingers and arms in operations requiring constant handling of paper documents, computing and entering data using a keyboard and operate graphic tools and equipment.
•    The ability to hear normal verbal conversation with or without corrective devices to communicate with co-workers and customers.
•    The ability to speak, read and write the English language clearly and concisely.

Work Environment:
Work is performed primarily onsite in a general office environment, with some flexibility for work/life balance. Occasional “on-call” and night or weekend hours may be required to staff DART events, public meetings, and urgent communications needs.   

Disclaimer:
This is not necessarily an exhaustive list of responsibilities, skills, duties, requirements, efforts, or working conditions associated with the position. While this list is intended to be an accurate reflection of the current position, DART reserves the right to revise the functions and duties of the position, or to require that additional or different tasks be performed when circumstances change (e.g., emergencies, staff shortages, workload changes, rush jobs, or technological developments).

Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority (DART) is an equal opportunity employer. In compliance with federal and state equal employment opportunity laws, qualified applicants are considered for all positions without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, veteran status, non-job-related disability, or any other protected group status.