Senior Performance Marketing Manager – Paid Search

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end strategy and execution for paid search on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, plus emerging paid placements on AI/answer engines.
• Manage a multi-million-dollar annual paid search budget with daily, weekly, and monthly pacing toward signup volume, CAC, and paid-conversion targets.
• Build and continuously optimize campaign structure, keyword strategy, match types, bidding, and negative-keyword hygiene to maximize qualified free signups.
• Partner with Creative and Lifecycle to ship a constant cadence of ad copy, RSAs, sitelinks, and landing‑page tests (A/B and multivariate).
• Develop a measurement framework with Analytics that ties spend to free signups, activation, and paid conversion, not just clicks and CPLs.
• Identify and launch new paid‑search channels and AI‑search ad surfaces as the search landscape evolves.
• Manage relationships with Google, Microsoft, and agency/contract partners; negotiate pricing, betas, and account support.
• Forecast monthly and quarterly spend, signup volume, and pipeline contribution; own the paid‑search section of the marketing QBR.
• Stay obsessively current on auction dynamics, Smart Bidding, Performance Max, and AI‑driven match‑type changes and translate them into playbooks for the team.

Qualifications

• Deep, hands‑on expertise in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads at scale ($1M+ annual spend) in a B2B SaaS environment.
• Track record of running paid search for a freemium or product‑led growth motion with high signup volume and short, transactional sales cycles.
• Strong analytical instincts, comfortable in GA4, Looker/Tableau, BigQuery, and spreadsheets; able to build your own funnel views without waiting on Analytics.
• Sharp creative judgment: you can write strong ad copy and brief landing‑page tests, then read the data and call the winner.
• Working knowledge of attribution models (last‑touch, data‑driven, MMM) and their trade‑offs.
• Familiarity with paid placements on AI/answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) and a point of view on where this is going.
• Bias for action, fluent in test‑and‑learn, and comfortable making bets with imperfect data.
• Excellent written and verbal communication — you can explain why we won or lost a week to a VP in three sentences.
• Bachelor’s degree required; Marketing, Business, Economics, Statistics, or a related quantitative field preferred.
• 6+ years of paid search experience, including at least 3 years owning paid search for a B2B SaaS company with a freemium or PLG offering.
• Demonstrated success managing paid search budgets of $1M+ per year against signup, CAC, and pipeline targets.
• Google Ads and Microsoft Ads certifications preferred.
• Equivalent combination of education and high‑volume B2B SaaS paid‑search experience will be considered.