Performance Marketing Manager, Paid Social Multiple Verticals

About the Role

We’re looking for a paid media strategist with deep paid social experience to drive lead generation across multiple financial services verticals — including insurance, lending, wealth, mortgage/home equity, banking, investing, and credit cards. This is a hands-on, strategic role: you'll build the paid social testing roadmap, launch and optimize campaigns in-platform, partner with data and analytics teams on measurement, and turn performance trends into clear recommendations for stakeholders. This role reports to the Managing Director.

Responsibilities

• Strategy & Campaign Ownership
  • Own paid social strategy, execution, and performance across multiple verticals, aligning campaigns to each vertical's growth targets, funnel dynamics, and audience needs
  • Build campaign structures across Meta, TikTok, and other platforms as needed
  • Set objectives, bidding strategy, audience approach, budget allocation, and conversion events per campaign
  • Manage campaigns end-to-end: setup, QA, pacing, troubleshooting, optimization
  • Build testing plans for new verticals, bidding strategies, conversion events, creative angles, and funnel experiences
• Optimization & Performance
  • Monitor performance and diagnose whether issues stem from creative fatigue, tracking gaps, funnel friction, audience limits, delivery, or data quality
  • Make budget and pacing calls based on performance trends and business priorities
  • Stay current on platform, algorithm, privacy, and ad product changes
• Reporting & Stakeholder Communication
  • Own recurring performance reporting — results, trends, learnings, risks, next steps
  • Translate platform performance into business impact for vertical leads and leadership
  • Communicate tracking issues, data discrepancies, and testing results clearly and proactively
• Data, Tracking & Measurement
  • Partner with data, analytics, and engineering teams to define measurement needs and map new conversion events
  • Troubleshoot discrepancies between platform and backend data (attribution, event firing, duplicates, timing)
  • Help build measurement frameworks that optimize toward lead quality and business outcomes, not just volume
• Creative Strategy
  • Lead creative strategy across verticals: messaging angles, hooks, scripts, static/video/UGC concepts
  • Write creative briefs covering business goal, audience, value prop, and key claims
  • Review assets for clarity and platform fit; give feedback through concept, script, and production stages
  • Build creative testing roadmaps and turn results into next-round recommendations
• Landing Page & Funnel Strategy
  • Evaluate landing pages and funnels for message match, conversion flow, and drop-off
  • Recommend and support tests across landing pages, advertorials, lead forms, quizzes, and prequalification flows
  • Ensure creative, landing pages, and tracking are aligned before launch
• Platform Partnerships & Competitive Research
  • Manage relationships with platform reps; evaluate their recommendations against NerdWallet's goals and data quality
  • Track competitor creative, offers, and funnel approaches; feed insights back into strategy

Requirements

• 5+ years of paid social experience, ideally in performance marketing or lead generation
• Bachelor's degree in marketing, business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Direct, hands-on experience running campaigns on both Meta Ads Manager and TikTok Ads Manager is required
• Proven track record scaling paid social budgets (six figures+ in monthly spend preferred) while maintaining or improving CPA/CAC and ROAS
• Experience managing toward lead gen, revenue, ROAS, CPA/CAC, or funnel-based goals
• Ability to build paid media strategy from the ground up — structure, testing, measurement, creative, optimization
• Strong analytical skills, comfortable with both platform and backend business data
• Experience troubleshooting tracking, attribution, or reporting discrepancies
• Experience writing creative briefs and giving feedback to creative teams or external partners
• Strong project management skills across multiple concurrent verticals and workstreams
• Clear, confident communicator who can translate data into recommendations for non-technical audiences

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience advertising on LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, or X
• Experience in financial services (insurance, lending, wealth, banking, investing, mortgage, home equity, or other regulated categories)
• Experience with lead gen funnels, prequalification/quiz flows, marketplace models, or affiliate/partner revenue models
• Experience optimizing toward backend events — funded loans, booked appointments, matched leads
• Experience with CAPI/server-side tracking and conversion signal quality
• Experience with UGC creative, creator partnerships, or video production workflows
• Comfort working with legal, compliance, or brand review processes in regulated industries

Schedule

This role will be remote (based in the U.S.).

Benefits

• Work Hard, Stay Balanced
  • Industry-leading medical, dental, and vision health care plans for employees and their dependents
  • Rejuvenation Policy – Flexible Vacation Time Off + 11 holidays + holiday company shutdown
  • New Parent Leave for employees with a newborn child or a child placed with them for adoption or foster care
  • Mental health support
  • Paid sabbatical after 5 years for Nerds to recharge, gain knowledge, and pursue their interests
  • Health and Dependent Care FSA and HSA Plan with monthly NerdWallet contribution
  • Monthly Wellness Stipend, Cell Phone Stipend, and Wifi Stipend (Only remote Nerds are eligible for the Wifi Stipend)
  • Work from home equipment stipend and co-working space subsidy (Only remote Nerds are eligible for these stipends)
• Have Some Fun!
  • Nerd-led group initiatives – Employee Resource Groups for Parents, Diversity and Inclusion, Women, LGBTQIA, and other communities
  • Hackathons and team events across all teams and departments
  • Company-wide events like NerdLove (employee appreciation) and our annual Charity Auction
• Plan for Your Future
  • 401K with 4% company match
  • Be the first to test and benefit from our new financial products and tools
  • Financial wellness, guidance, and unlimited access to a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) through Northstar
  • Disability and Life Insurance with employer-paid premiums