Paid Search and Performance Marketing Manager in Bournemouth

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.

The Role at a Glance:

• UK-based, Bournemouth preferred | Remote with regular in-person
• Competitive Salary DOE
• Full Time - Permanent

Your Background / Skills:

• PPC, Paid Search, Paid Social, SEO, Lead Generation, Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, HubSpot, Performance Marketing, AI Search

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.
• Qualified franchise prospects up from 40 to 60+ per month—maintaining our 35–40% close rate.
• Marketing budget scaled to £600–700k—with ROI maintained or improved.

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 kick ass at this role:

• Proven PPC management at scale—4+ years in performance marketing, with at least 2 years managing budgets of £250k+ annually.
• HubSpot expertise—ideally 5+ years' hands-on experience using HubSpot.
• A real CPA reduction story—you’ve materially cut cost-per-acquisition before and you can walk us through exactly how.
• Platform depth—Google Ads and Meta Blueprint certified (or equivalent demonstrable expertise).
• Funnel and sales process fluency—you understand lead generation funnels and multi-stage sales processes.
• Data that tells a story—you can translate performance data into insights that Co-Founders actually understand and can act on.
• 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.

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.
• 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.

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.