Manchester - Digital Media Strategist

Own the day-to-day success of paid media across a portfolio of clients by setting clear strategy, delivering high-quality execution, and driving continuous performance improvement. This role is performance-led by default, combining hands-on campaign management with smart delegation, and using testing, data, and insight to turn client objectives into measurable results.

Responsibilities

• Lead paid media strategy and execution across a portfolio of clients.
• Plan, build, activate, and optimise paid media campaigns across paid search, paid social, programmatic, video, and emerging channels.
• Own paid media performance, with a clear focus on outcomes, efficiency, and continuous improvement.
• Balance hands-on delivery with delegation, personally managing complex or priority activity while delegating campaign builds to digital media analysts where appropriate.
• Review and quality-check analyst builds to ensure they align with strategy, platform best practice, and agency standards.
• Lead structured testing across audiences, formats, messaging, and creative, in close collaboration with creative teams.
• Use performance data to assess creative effectiveness and feed clear direction back into future briefs and iterations.
• Set clear KPIs and success measures in line with client objectives, and hold activity accountable against them.
• Ensure paid media activity is delivered on time, on budget, and to agreed performance standards.
• Stay up to date with platform developments across paid search, paid social, and emerging paid media channels.
• Apply testing frameworks, automation, and advanced tools to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
• Provide clear performance updates, insight, and recommendations to clients, grounded in data and testing learnings.
• Work closely with client partnerships and other service teams to deliver integrated paid media solutions.
• Support new business and pitch activity with strong performance-led paid media thinking.
• Operate within a pod structure, with clear ownership and shared accountability.

Skills and Experience

• Agency experience planning, building, and optimising paid media campaigns.
• Strong platform knowledge across paid search and paid social, including Google, Meta, and LinkedIn.
• Clear performance mindset, with confidence owning results and making decisions based on data.
• Experience designing and running creative and audience tests within paid media environments.
• Strong optimisation judgement and performance-led decision making.
• Experience balancing hands-on delivery with delegation to analysts or junior team members.
• Commercially aware, confident managing budgets and performance expectations.
• Confident working with data and insight to inform decisions without losing speed.
• Clear communicator, able to explain paid media performance, testing outcomes, and next actions simply and confidently.

Success Looks Like

• Paid media activity that consistently delivers against agreed performance targets.
• Work delivered on time and to a high standard across all accounts.
• Strong, trusted client relationships built on clarity, consistency, and results.
• Clear evidence of learning and improvement through structured testing, particularly creative testing.
• Strong collaboration with creative teams, resulting in more effective media-led creative work.
• Effective use of analysts to scale delivery without compromising quality.
• Clients who trust the performance logic behind recommendations, not just the results.
• Visible progression in responsibility, confidence, and impact.