Group Director, Paid Social Media

At a glance

The Group Director, Paid Social Media role is a senior level position at Rain, a leading independent full-service advertising agency. The position’s primary focus is leadership, management and talent development of the Paid Social Media channel while developing holistic, performance-minded paid social media strategies and tactical recommendations for clients in partnership with our Client Service, Integrated Planning, Media Investment, Analytics and Project Management teams.

Strategy & Practice Leadership

• Serve as Rain’s senior subject matter expert on the evolving paid social landscape, bringing a clear point of view on platform innovation, AI, creative automation, signal loss, measurement changes, audience behavior, and emerging opportunities.
• Develop paid social strategies rooted in client business objectives (with an emphasis on performance marketing) not just platform tactics; with the ability to connect media investment to growth, efficiency, customer acquisition, brand health, and measurable business impact.
• Define the role paid social plays within integrated omnichannel media plans, ensuring social is connected to broader channel strategy across search, programmatic, influencer, retail media, CTV, YouTube, and full-funnel media ecosystems.
• Lead, mentor, and inspire a team of paid social specialists, building a culture of curiosity, accountability, continuous learning, and pride in both strategic thinking and executional craft.
• Contribute to Rain’s thought leadership, new business efforts, and paid social product development, including pitches, POVs, playbooks, case studies, platform partnerships, and articulation of Rain’s differentiated approach to paid social.

Client Leadership & Business Impact

• Build trusted relationships with senior marketing leaders and client stakeholders, acting as a strategic advisor who can translate complex platform dynamics into clear, confident recommendations.
• Lead executive-level presentations with clarity, credibility, and conviction, including performance readouts, strategic roadmaps, testing plans, growth opportunities, and difficult conversations when performance, investment, or direction needs to change.
• Move the conversation beyond media metrics to business outcomes, helping clients understand how paid social contributes to CAC, LTV, incrementality, revenue growth, audience development, and long-term brand value.

Player+Coach Mentality

• Actively be in the work and execute campaigns to diagnose, guide, and improve performance, including campaign structure, bidding, budgeting, audience strategy, creative testing, optimization cadence, measurement, and reporting.
• Set and uphold best-in-class activation standards across the paid social team, ensuring every account has disciplined QA, smart testing frameworks, clean execution, strong performance narratives, and clear optimization priorities.

Creative Partnership & Performance Mindset

• Champion creative as one of the most important levers in paid social performance, helping clients and internal teams understand that better results often come from stronger ideas, sharper messaging, and platform-native execution, not just media optimizations.
• Demonstrate ability to analyze campaigns and identify all variables impacting performance outcomes – inclusive of what may be missing to truly achieve brand objectives.
• Partner closely with creative, production, and strategy teams to develop social-first ideas, providing feedback grounded in platform behavior, audience insight, creative best practices, and performance data.

What do we look for in a Group Director, Paid Social Media at our agency?

• Bachelor’s degree in advertising, marketing or related field or equivalent combination of education and experience
• 8-10 years of experience, with a healthy mix of hands-on know how and managerial acumen
• Understanding of platform and publisher relationships, data targeting capabilities, buy types and best options to activate paid social media
• Intimate knowledge of and relationships with all social media platforms such as Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, X, Snap, etc
• Proficiency in measurement, trafficking, reporting, and the development of campaign performance insights through evaluating data. Ability to review performance data sets, identify critical storylines and communicate accordingly internally and externally
• A collaborative spirit and an active interest in mentoring and managing team members
• A strong interest in ad tech, digital trends and innovation
• Strong project management skills and high attention to detail
• Appreciation of our Core Values