Hire a Senior Performance Marketing Manager

Evaluates and selects which paid media channels deserve investment based on customer acquisition economics, audience alignment, competitive landscape, and business stage. Continuously rebalances channel mix as performance data accumulates and business needs evolve, rather than defaulting to familiar platforms.

Manages total paid media budgets of $100,000 to $1,000,000+ per month, deciding allocation across channels, campaigns, and growth initiatives. Builds financial models that connect spend to customer acquisition, revenue, and profitability, and presents budget recommendations to C-suite leadership.

Defines the metrics hierarchy that the entire marketing organization uses to measure success. Establishes primary KPIs (CAC, LTV/CAC, payback period), supporting metrics (channel-level CPA, ROAS, pipeline contribution), and leading indicators (CTR, conversion rate, lead quality scores) in a framework that connects daily execution to business outcomes.

Leads teams of 3-8 channel specialists, setting goals, defining processes, conducting performance reviews, and developing career paths. Makes hiring decisions, identifies skill gaps, and determines when to add new channel-specific roles. Builds a team culture that balances rigorous accountability with creative experimentation.

Translates complex marketing data into clear narratives for CEO, CFO, and board-level audiences. Presents monthly and quarterly business reviews that explain what happened, why it happened, and what the team is doing about it. Frames marketing investment in business language — revenue, margin, customer economics — not platform jargon.

Builds quantitative models that forecast the relationship between ad spend, customer acquisition, and revenue growth. Models saturation curves, marginal return on ad spend, and the point of diminishing returns for each channel. Uses these models to set realistic growth targets and justify budget requests.

Designs and implements attribution systems that accurately credit conversions across multiple touchpoints and channels. Moves beyond last-click attribution to multi-touch and data-driven models, reconciles conflicting platform-reported data, and builds a unified view of customer acquisition that reflects reality rather than platform self-reporting.

Evaluates, selects, and manages external agencies, freelancers, and technology vendors. Defines SOWs, sets performance standards, conducts regular reviews, and makes the strategic decision about which functions to keep in-house versus outsource based on cost, quality, and flexibility considerations.

Designs a systematic testing program across channels, audiences, creative, and landing pages. Prioritizes experiments based on potential impact and effort, ensures proper test design for statistical validity, and creates a culture where decisions are driven by experimental evidence rather than opinion or platform recommendations.

Connects marketing spend to business-level profitability, not just lead or customer counts. Analyzes how customer acquisition cost, channel mix, and campaign performance affect gross margin, contribution margin, and operating profit. Ensures marketing investment drives profitable growth, not just revenue growth at any cost.

Implements statistical models that measure the impact of each marketing channel on total business outcomes, accounting for external factors like seasonality, competitive activity, and economic conditions. Uses MMM to make budget allocation decisions that complement platform-level attribution data.

Designs and executes experiments that measure the true incremental impact of advertising: geo holdout tests, conversion lift studies, and spend on/off experiments. Distinguishes between customers who would have converted anyway and those who converted because of the advertising, providing the most accurate measure of marketing ROI.

Identifies and engineers self-reinforcing growth mechanisms where the output of one marketing activity feeds the input of another. Examples include referral loops, content-driven SEO that reduces paid dependency, and product-led growth mechanics that lower customer acquisition cost over time.

Builds cohort-level unit economics models that connect customer acquisition cost to lifetime value by channel, campaign, and audience segment. Identifies which customer segments are most profitable to acquire and adjusts budget allocation to optimize for long-term value rather than short-term conversion volume.

Prepares quarterly board presentations that frame marketing performance within the context of overall business strategy. Presents customer acquisition trends, competitive market dynamics, and investment recommendations with the conciseness and strategic framing that board members expect.

Structures the marketing team for optimal performance as the company scales. Determines when to split roles (a generalist becomes a Google specialist and a Meta specialist), when to create new positions (dedicated analytics, creative strategy), and how to organize reporting lines between channel teams, creative teams, and analytics.

Selects, integrates, and manages the marketing technology ecosystem: analytics platforms, attribution tools, CRM systems, CDP, tag management, and BI tools. Makes strategic technology investments that improve measurement accuracy, operational efficiency, and team capabilities.

Works with data engineers and analysts to build data pipelines, warehouses, and dashboards that enable marketing measurement. Defines data requirements, validates data quality, and translates business questions into analytical frameworks that the data team can implement.

The foundational web analytics platform for understanding cross-channel user behavior, conversion paths, and campaign performance. Used for attribution analysis, audience insights, and as the baseline measurement system that all channel-specific data is reconciled against.

Primary business intelligence and visualization tool for building executive dashboards, cross-channel performance reports, and board-level presentations. Connects to Google Analytics, ad platforms, CRM, and data warehouses to create a unified view of marketing performance.

Manages the deployment of all tracking pixels, conversion tags, and analytics scripts across the website. Ensures clean, consistent data collection across all marketing channels and enables rapid implementation of new tracking requirements without developer dependency.

Directly manages or oversees Meta (Facebook/Instagram) advertising, typically the second-largest paid media channel. Even when a specialist handles day-to-day management, the Senior Performance Marketing Manager needs hands-on platform familiarity to evaluate performance and make allocation decisions.

Directly manages or oversees Google Ads (Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube), typically the largest paid media channel by spend. Fluent in the platform's capabilities, limitations, and optimization mechanics to effectively lead the specialist managing it and to make informed budget allocation decisions.

Product analytics platform used for understanding user behavior within the product, tracking activation and retention metrics, and connecting marketing acquisition to product engagement. Especially valuable for SaaS and product-led growth companies where post-acquisition behavior determines LTV.

Alternative product analytics platform providing cohort analysis, retention curves, and user journey mapping. Used to understand which acquisition channels produce the highest-engagement users and to identify the behavioral signals that predict long-term customer value.

Google's cloud data warehouse used for storing and analyzing large marketing datasets. Enables custom attribution modeling, cross-channel analysis, and machine learning applications that go beyond what native analytics platforms can provide.

CRM and marketing automation platform used to track lead-to-customer progression, manage email nurture sequences, and close the attribution loop between marketing spend and sales revenue. Essential for B2B companies where the sales cycle spans weeks or months.

Enterprise CRM providing lead management, opportunity tracking, and revenue reporting. Used in conjunction with marketing data to measure the full funnel from ad impression to closed revenue, particularly for B2B companies with complex, multi-stakeholder sales processes.

Enterprise-grade business intelligence and data visualization platform. Used for building sophisticated analytical dashboards, statistical models, and board-level presentations that require more analytical depth than Looker Studio provides.