What does a Performance Marketing Manager do?
Performance marketing managers run paid search, paid social and other paid channels to acquire customers at a profitable cost.
- Open roles now
- 46
- Remote
- 24%
- Most-requested tool
- TikTok
The job
Performance marketing managers spend money to acquire customers and are judged on what each one costs. They run campaigns on Google, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok and other platforms: structure accounts, set bids and budgets, test creative and audiences, and keep tracking honest.
Platforms now automate much of the bidding and targeting, so the job has moved up a level. The best paid marketers win on creative (testing many angles fast), on measurement (knowing what's actually incremental), and on feeding platforms better conversion data. They also know when a channel is saturated and it's time to find the next one.
Scale matters. At a startup you might manage $20k a month across two platforms and build every ad yourself. At a large consumer brand you might own a single platform with millions in monthly spend and an agency doing the execution.
A typical week
- Check spend, CAC and ROAS by channel and campaign every morning
- Brief and launch a new round of creative tests
- Shift budget toward the campaigns with the best marginal returns
- Reconcile platform-reported conversions with the CRM or analytics
- Plan next month's budget and forecast with finance
How they're measured
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC) or cost per acquisition
- Return on ad spend (ROAS) and payback period
- Spend scaled at target efficiency
- Creative test velocity and win rate
- Incremental lift from holdout or geo tests
Skills that matter
- Platform depth
- Knowing how each platform's auction and algorithms really behave.
- Creative testing
- Creative is now the biggest lever on most platforms.
- Measurement
- Separating real, incremental results from platform claims.
- Budget management
- Pacing and forecasting spend against targets.
- Tracking setup
- Pixels, conversion APIs and UTMs decide what platforms learn from.
- Analysis
- Spreadsheets and SQL to find where returns drop off.
Tools employers ask for
Share of 46 paid acquisition job posts on HeyMarketers in the last 12 months that name each tool.
- TikTok28%
- Generative AI28%
- Google Ads11%
- ChatGPT9%
- Meta Ads7%
Career path
- 1
Paid media specialist or coordinator
Builds and manages campaigns on one or two platforms.
- 2
Performance marketing manager
Owns channels, budget and targets.
- 3
Senior manager or head of paid
Owns the paid mix and a team or agency.
- 4
Director of acquisition or growth
Owns all acquisition, paid and unpaid.
Open paid acquisition roles by level right now: entry level 2%, mid level 28%, senior 28%, lead or director 41%.
How to stand out
- Show spend, CAC and how you scaled without wrecking efficiency.
- Bring a creative test that changed your results and explain why it won.
- Explain how you measured incrementality, not just platform ROAS.
- Know your numbers by channel without looking them up.
Preparing for interviews? See the questions performance marketing managers get asked, or read a typical job description.
Open paid acquisition roles
- Senior Growth Marketing Manager, Paid Social · Brex
- Creative Operations Manager - Paid Social · Ro
- Senior Performance Marketing Manager (Meta & Google) · Scento
- Performance Marketing Activation Specialist · Spotify
- Performance Marketing Manager · Vercel
- Senior Director of Paid Media · Okta
Hiring now: Brex, Duolingo, Faire, Gusto, Inc., HelloFresh, Okta.
See all 46 open paid acquisition jobsQuestions
What does a Performance Marketing Manager do?
Performance marketing managers spend money to acquire customers and are judged on what each one costs. They run campaigns on Google, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok and other platforms: structure accounts, set bids and budgets, test creative and audiences, and keep tracking honest.
Are performance marketing managers remote?
24% of the 46 open paid acquisition roles on HeyMarketers right now are remote. The rest are on-site or hybrid.
What tools do performance marketing managers use?
The tools named most often in paid acquisition job posts on HeyMarketers are TikTok (28% of posts), Generative AI (28% of posts), Google Ads (11% of posts), ChatGPT (9% of posts), Meta Ads (7% of posts).