Senior Paid Media Strategist

Impression Digital is a multi-award winning, high growth digital marketing agency based in Nottingham, London and Manchester. Our agency wouldn’t be what it is today without our incredible people. Our diverse team encompasses expertise across the digital landscape which enables us to accelerate change and results, driving business growth faster. Our collaborative, creative and inclusive culture helps build our reputation as a leading digital employer and we are committed to nurturing and developing people to their full potential.

We’re looking for an ambitious Senior Paid Media Strategist to join the team and help us continue to deliver award‑winning results for our clients. Impression were recently ranked fourth in UK's Best Workplaces™ for Wellbeing (medium‑size companies), and we continuously strive to ensure the best possible work‑life balance for our team. As a successful candidate, you will be given a clear progression path. We want talent to grow with us and there is ample opportunity for you to progress to the next level. We are also very proud to have been listed on the “Flexa 100” Most Flexible Companies to work for and to be officially recognised as a Great Place to Work®.

The Role: We’re looking for a Senior Strategist to join our team and become the “Account Owner” for some of our most exciting and critical Paid Media accounts. This role is a fantastic opportunity for an experienced digital expert who is ready to take on complex, higher‑value accounts (typically Tier 1) within a highly supportive and collaborative environment. This is a dynamic, dual‑discipline role spanning both Paid Search and Paid Social. While your day‑to‑day focus will naturally flex depending on specific client needs, our goal is to align you with integrated accounts that run both channels, empowering you to build cohesive, cross‑platform strategies from the ground up.

At Impression, your role is about so much more than standard account management. You’ll be a key driver of commercial growth, helping us unlock new opportunities for our flagship clients, while also playing a huge part in shaping our wider Paid Media offering. We want to hear your ideas – whether that’s testing new methodologies, building better cross‑channel processes, or helping us continually evolve how we deliver industry‑leading work. We’re looking for someone who loves the craft of Paid Media. We want you to challenge the status quo, and we’ll give you the backing, trust, and resources to drive superior client results through relentless experimentation. You'll take proud ownership of your portfolio, acting as a technical pioneer, a multi‑channel strategist, and a leader. Most importantly, we believe that Impression is the perfect place to learn. We are deeply committed to your growth, and we’ll provide the tailored training and mentorship you need to flourish within this role.

Key Responsibilities:

• The Craft: Innovation, Technology & Experimentation

• Cross‑Channel Synergy: design and activate integrated strategies across both Paid Search and Paid Social, expertly using the platforms to not only generate demand, but to capture it.
• Technical Mastery: drive results through technology, moving beyond standard platform levers to implement advanced solutions across networks such as custom scripting, feed engineering, advanced creative signalling, offline conversion tracking, and value‑based bidding.
• Challenging Best Practice: actively question platform defaults and legacy industry norms, designing and executing rigorous experimentation roadmaps to uncover incremental performance gains.
• Algorithmic Advantage: act as the architect of the data going into the platforms, ensuring smart bidding and social delivery algorithms are trained on the most sophisticated, commercially valuable business data available.

• The Multi‑Channel Owner: primary lead for complex accounts, taking full, proud responsibility for the end‑to‑end client lifecycle across their Paid Media mix.
• Quality Assurance: provide QA oversight across your portfolio, ensuring output meets Impression’s high standards before it reaches the client.
• Long‑Term Roadmapping: create, maintain, and adapt channel strategies for up to 12‑month cycles, ensuring accounts always move toward a long‑term vision of innovation and growth.
• Strategic Reporting: elevate reporting from simple data extraction to a compelling commercial narrative, delivering effective insights during business reviews.
• Escalation Management: confidently navigate client escalations when necessary, diagnosing performance issues and steering accounts back to health.

• Service Shaping: actively contribute to the evolution of the department, identifying process improvements and helping define what our “best‑in‑class” service looks like.
• Proactive Expansion: spot and flag growth opportunities, strategising ways to scale client investment and increase commercial footprint.
• Pitching & Acquisition: help drive agency growth by producing pitching materials and joining the team to win exciting new enterprise business.

• Orchestration & Delegation: effectively plan tasks, delegating work through the delivery team based on available resources.
• People Mentorship: coach junior team members to adopt an experimentation‑led mindset. Share work and, at times, help upskill the whole department by leveraging experience and client examples to showcase what’s worked well.

About You:

• An Innovative Craftsman: obsessed with the mechanics of Paid Search and Paid Social, gravitating toward beta features, new technologies, and complex problem‑solving.
• A Cross‑Channel Thinker: proven experience strategising and activating across PPC and Paid Social, weaving them together to achieve unified business goals.
• A Platform Expert: strong, hands‑on foundation in core platforms – Google Ads and Meta. Bonus if also experienced with TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn, or Pinterest.
• A Commercial Driver: commercially astute and growth‑minded, constantly seeking ways to scale client accounts and improve the agency’s offering.
• An Autonomous Owner: initiative in day‑to‑day management, acting as the definitive problem‑solver for accounts.
• A Master Orchestrator: excellent planning and organising skills, managing complex Tier 1 accounts while guiding and supporting the team.

Starting Salary: From £37,900 (plus £6,000 for those living in the Greater London area).

What makes us different?

• Flexible, hybrid working options – as per ways of working charter.
• 4.5‑day working week.
• Private medical insurance with access to EAP.
• Impression‑funded specialist therapy sessions – up to 6 sessions with Impression covering 50 % of the cost.
• Enhanced sick pay.
• Access to OpenUp, a virtual therapy platform.
• Enhanced parental leave.
• 28 days annual leave, plus bank holidays.
• Life leave – paid leave for unexpected life events.
• Pregnancy loss and parental bereavement leave.
• Compassionate leave.
• Eye‑care vouchers.
• Opportunity to save on and spread the cost of new tech through Techscheme.
• Travel‑to‑work scheme.
• Railcard salary sacrifice scheme.
• Budget for books, tools and software.
• A full social calendar.
• Summer and Christmas party (off‑site).
• Chance to attend national and international conferences.
• Top Apple equipment to use at work.
• Savings on bikes and accessories through Cycle Scheme.
• Contributory pension scheme.
• The usual agency things – office dogs, drinks fridge, ping‑pong and foosball, tea and coffee, office snacks.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: We’re listening and we’re learning. We’re committed to embracing diversity and promoting equal opportunities, both within our teams and through the services we provide. But we still have work to do. Improving fairness – in our agency and our industry – is something we’re passionate about, and we’re committed to having the conversations, making the changes and helping other businesses to do the same. We pledge to promote equal opportunities and, as per the Equality Act 2010, will not tolerate discrimination on the grounds of gender, gender identity, marital status, sexual orientation, race, colour, nationality, religion, age, disability, caring responsibilities or beliefs. We’ll also make every effort to represent different genders, ethnicities, socio‑economic backgrounds and sexualities at the events, panels and discussions we run.

Agencies: Strictly no recruitment agencies.