Global Paid Media & Performance Marketing Lead

Take ownership of global paid customer acquisition, managing substantial media investment across Google, Meta, and other digital channels with a clear focus on CAC, ROAS, revenue, and commercial performance.

Cape Town | Office-Based | Monday–Friday, UK Working Hours | R60,000–R80,000 per month

ABOUT OUR CLIENT

Our client provides career-focused education, helping people develop the skills and certifications required to change or progress their careers.

The business operates across the UK, Australia and New Zealand, with plans for future international markets. Its customer acquisition model combines an established sales-led approach with a growing digital and ecommerce-led journey incorporating career-specific landing pages, live job-market information, ecommerce and an AI sales agent.

The business is developing career-led customer journeys across Cyber Security, Project Management, Data & AI, Business Analysis, and digital and professional skills.

THE ROLE: GLOBAL PAID MEDIA & PERFORMANCE MARKETING LEAD

The Global Paid Media & Performance Marketing Lead will take day-to-day ownership of paid acquisition strategy and performance across multiple international markets.

You will manage a substantial annual media budget and focus on understanding where investment is being deployed, what commercial return it generates and where performance can be improved.

The role will increasingly optimise the complete customer journey from advertising and landing pages through AI-assisted engagement, product recommendations, checkout, purchase and revenue, moving beyond a traditional focus on cost per lead.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own paid acquisition strategy and performance across multiple international markets.

• Manage Google Ads across Search, Performance Max, Display, YouTube and relevant emerging formats.

• Manage Meta advertising across Facebook and Instagram.

• Test and manage additional paid channels where commercially appropriate.

• Manage campaign architecture, bidding, audiences and budget allocation.

• Develop keyword strategies and conduct search-term analysis.

• Manage customer acquisition cost and return on advertising spend.

• Manage conversion tracking and attribution.

• Test advertising creative and messaging.

• Conduct landing-page testing in partnership with the Ecommerce & CRO Lead.

• Develop retargeting strategies across paid channels.

• Segment audiences based on customer intent and behaviour.

• Develop product and career-specific acquisition campaigns.

• Feed relevant commercial insights into product, ecommerce and sales.

• Forecast media spend, customer acquisition and revenue.

• Identify opportunities to scale profitable campaigns.

• Identify and cut inefficient spend quickly.

• Manage agency relationships where specialist external support remains useful.

• Measure paid-media performance against revenue, customer acquisition cost, ROAS, contribution, ecommerce conversion, lead-to-enrolment conversion and customer lifetime value.

• Work with AI, ecommerce and commercial teams to identify which acquisition journeys produce the strongest commercial returns and adjust acquisition accordingly.

• Test and scale career-led acquisition journeys targeting customers researching careers, salaries, skills and employment opportunities.

• Work closely with the Ecommerce & CRO Lead to understand and optimise the economics of the complete digital acquisition funnel.

FIRST 90 DAYS

• Audit existing Google, Meta and other paid-media accounts.

• Understand historical performance by market, channel, campaign, product and lead source.

• Review tracking and attribution.

• Identify wasted or inefficient spend.

• Establish clear performance benchmarks.

• Review agency activity and determine what should be brought in-house.

• Build reporting around CAC, revenue and contribution rather than simply CPL.

• Work with Ecommerce to launch and test new career-led acquisition journeys.

• Develop a structured testing programme across keywords, audiences, creative, landing pages and offers.

• Begin reallocating investment towards the channels and campaigns producing the strongest commercial returns.

ABOUT YOU

• Strong hands-on experience managing substantial paid-media budgets.

• Strong Google Ads experience.

• Strong Meta Ads experience.

• Experience with Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager.

• Experience with conversion tracking.

• Experience with Enhanced Conversions and first-party data.

• Experience with Meta Pixel and Conversions API.

• Strong paid-search keyword strategy experience.

• Experience with Performance Max.

• Experience developing and managing audiences and retargeting.

• Strong understanding of attribution.

• Experience with landing-page optimisation and A/B testing.

• Experience with budget forecasting.

• Strong understanding of ROAS and CAC management.

• Experience with ecommerce or revenue-based campaign optimisation.

• Comfortable working directly within advertising accounts, analysing data and making campaign changes.

• Able to understand commercial outcomes beyond CTR, CPC and CPL, with a focus on customers, revenue and contribution.

• Experience across multiple international markets is highly desirable.

• Able to challenge agency activity, identify performance issues directly and make decisions quickly.