Paid Search and Performance Marketing Manager in Bournemouth

PPC | Paid Social | SEO | Lead Generation | £474k Budget to Scale

Full-time | UK-based (Bournemouth preferred) | Remote with regular in-person

You’ve outgrown where you are. Maybe you’re in agency life, juggling 15 accounts and never getting deep enough into any of them to actually move the needle. Or you’re in-house but stuck inside a corporate machine where testing a new idea takes three months of approvals — and the metrics everyone celebrates don’t connect to anything that actually matters.

Either way, you know what good performance marketing looks like. You’ve seen it. You might even have delivered it. You just haven’t had the budget, the autonomy, or the direct line to leadership to do it properly. That changes here.

We’re The Travel Franchise — the UK’s leading travel franchise, voted Best Lifestyle Franchise in the world two years running. We have a £474k performance marketing budget, a clear commercial strategy, and ambitious targets. What we need is the right person to own the engine that drives it all.

A year from now… You’ll have had a great year if you move the needle on these three metrics:

• Cost-per-acquisition down 25–30% — through ruthless optimisation, killing underperformers fast, and scaling what’s working. You’ve done this before. Now you do it here.
• Qualified franchise prospects up from 40 to 60+ per month — maintaining our 35–40% close rate. More pipeline. Better pipeline. Not just more clicks.
• Marketing budget scaled to £600–700k — with ROI maintained or improved. You’re not just spending more. You’re building the case for spending more by proving the returns.

This Role You’ll own the entire digital performance engine for The Travel Franchise. That means a £384k PPC budget, £60k in paid social, and full SEO strategy. Every day you’ll be across Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn — optimising, testing, and making calls.

You’ll work directly with our Co-Founders, who close every franchise prospect personally. That means you get immediate, unfiltered feedback on lead quality. No layers. No Chinese whispers. You’ll know exactly how the campaigns you’re running are landing in real sales conversations.

This isn’t about following a playbook someone else wrote. You’ll build the strategy. You’ll spot the opportunities. You’ll kill the underperformers fast and scale what works. And as the budget grows toward £1M+, you’ll have the opportunity to build a team around you. Your fingerprints will be on everything. That’s the point.

Here’s where we see you need experience to really own this role:

• Proven PPC management at scale — 4+ years in performance marketing, with at least 2 years managing budgets of £250k+ annually. You can show the numbers, not just describe the work.
• A real CPA reduction story — you’ve materially cut cost-per-acquisition before and you can walk us through exactly how. That’s the conversation we want to have.
• Platform depth — Google Ads and Meta Blueprint certified (or equivalent demonstrable expertise). You’re not dabbling in these platforms. You live in them.
• Funnel and sales process fluency — you understand lead generation funnels and multi-stage sales processes. You know that a click is just the beginning.
• Data that tells a story — you can translate performance data into insights that Co-Founders actually understand and can act on. You don’t hide behind dashboards.
• SEO and AI search — solid SEO fundamentals, plus awareness of how AI search (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity) is shifting the landscape and what that means for visibility.
• Self-direction — you don’t need daily instructions. You spot problems, form a view, and fix them. You’re comfortable in a “Freedom & Responsibility” culture where results matter more than hours worked.

The Rewards for You This is a founding marketing hire. You’ll have direct control over a substantial budget, a short line to the people running the business, and genuine autonomy to test, scale, and build.

As we scale toward £1M+ in marketing spend, you’ll be the person who shaped how that money works. And you’ll have the opportunity to build a team around you as the function grows.

Salary: Competitive, depending on experience. Performance bonus: Real upside tied to the metrics that matter. Professional development: A dedicated budget to keep your skills sharp. Holiday and travel: Generous entitlement and genuine travel opportunities — we’re a travel company, after all.

Culture: Netflix-inspired “Freedom & Responsibility”. Context not control. Results not clock-watching. If that excites you rather than unsettles you, you’ll thrive here.

Who Are We? Not Just Travel and The Travel Franchise are multi-award-winning travel companies with over 700 active Travel Consultants across the UK. We operate a unique B2B2C model — our franchisees are independent entrepreneurs who sell holidays to their own customers, supported by our systems, training, and infrastructure.

We’re scaling fast. Twenty franchise sign-ups a month is the target. Getting 75% of our Travel Consultants to full‑time income within their first year is the mission. Your marketing is the engine that drives all of it.

We hire adults, give them context not control, and measure outcomes not activities. You’ll not be asked to justify your working hours. You’ll be asked to show the results.

Ready to own a marketing budget that matters?