Explore a career at Candlefox.

The Paid Media Manager is responsible for the strategy, execution, and optimisation of all paid media activities across Candlefox’s marketplaces and new websites. This newly created role will take full ownership of the multi-million-dollar ad budget, ensuring efficient allocation, continuous performance improvements, and alignment with business growth objectives.

This role requires a highly experienced, data-driven leader who can balance strategic oversight with hands-on execution. The Paid Media Manager will be instrumental in building and scaling the paid media function, leading a team of specialists while collaborating with internal stakeholders to ensure paid efforts complement broader marketing strategies.

The ideal candidate has extensive experience managing large-scale ad spend (preferably 8-figure budgets), deep expertise across multiple paid channels, and a strong understanding of performance marketing within the EdTech or lead generation space.

Key Responsibilities

Paid Strategy Development & Execution

• Develops and executes a high-impact paid media strategy, ensuring alignment with Candlefox’s growth goals.
• Owns and optimises campaigns across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and emerging channels.
• Drives continuous improvement by testing new channels, formats, and bidding strategies.

Budget Management & Allocation

• Manages an 8-figure annual ad spend, ensuring budgets are efficiently allocated and optimised for ROI.
• Monitors spend pacing, performance trends, seasonal fluctuations and market fluctuations, making data-driven adjustments.
• Works closely with ops, finance and leadership teams to forecast, report, and justify spend allocation.

Campaign Optimisation & Performance Tracking

• Implements rigorous A/B testing to refine ad creatives, targeting, and bidding strategies.
• Leverages data insights to optimise CPC, CPA, ROAS, and LTV across all paid channels.
• Ensures full-funnel tracking and attribution, utilising tools like Google Analytics, Tableau, and other performance dashboards.

Cross-Channel Marketing Integration

• Works alongside SEO, lifecycle marketing, and content teams to ensure paid efforts align with organic, CRM, B2B, partnerships and brand strategies.
• Ensures messaging consistency across search, display, social, video, and native advertising channels.

Data-Driven Decision Making

• Leads regular performance reviews, providing detailed reporting and insights to key stakeholders.
• Monitors market trends, platform updates, and competitor activity, ensuring Candlefox remains ahead of industry shifts.
• Develops forecasting models and scenario planning to assess potential paid media opportunities.

Landing Page & CRO Alignment

• Works closely with the product and UX teams to optimise landing pages, ad-to-page relevancy, and conversion paths.
• Utilises heatmaps, session recordings, and analytics to improve page performance and reduce drop-off rates.
• Ensures that all paid campaigns are driving high-intent traffic to high-converting pages.
• Works with the product team to align website updates with ad performance, ensuring continuity each sprint and supporting rollout across ad accounts.

Team Coordination & Leadership

• Represents the content function as part of the Senior Leadership Team, reporting on key projects, performance insights, and strategic priorities to stakeholders.
• Builds and leads a high-performing paid media team, providing mentorship and development opportunities.
• Works closely with internal paid media specialists and external agencies (when required), ensuring alignment with strategy and performance goals.
• Leads the recruitment and expansion of the paid media function as the team scales.

Encouraging Testing of New Paid Channels

• Explores emerging paid media opportunities, including new ad networks, AI-driven bidding strategies, and audience expansion tactics.
• Develops and manages a structured testing roadmap, ensuring data-driven validation of new investments.
• Drives innovation by pushing creative boundaries, exploring interactive ad formats, and leveraging automation tools.

Desired Skills & Experience

Essential

• At least 5+ years experience in Digital Marketing, mainly focusing in Paid Media
• 2-3+ years leadership experience
• Proven experience owning and managing large-scale paid media budgets ($10M+).
• Deep expertise in Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn, TikTok Ads, and other paid channels.
• Strong analytical skills with experience in data-driven optimisation and performance forecasting.
• Familiarity with marketing attribution models, audience segmentation, and customer journey mapping.
• Experience collaborating with SEO, CRM, content, and product teams to drive cross-channel marketing efficiency.
• Proficiency in Google Analytics, Tableau/PowerBI, Google Tag Manager, and performance tracking platforms.
• Strong leadership and team-building experience, with a track record of mentoring and growing high-performing teams.

Desirable

• Experience in EdTech, lead generation, or marketplace businesses.
• Understanding of CRO principles and landing page testing methodologies.
• Experience working with AI-driven automation tools and emerging paid media platforms.
• Ability to pitch and validate new paid media investments, balancing risk and opportunity.
• Experience working within an agile team.

About the role

Student Enrolment Advisors are the frontline of helping people make the decision to take the leap into further education. You will make outbound calls to people who have enquired on one of our websites to discover where they are in the decision-making process. You will engage them in meaningful conversations about their motivations and life experience and to make sure that the course is right for them.

Responsibilities

• Ensure enquiries are followed up in a timely manner
• Manage and nurture pipeline of prospective students
• Manage student enrolments
• Achieve targets and KPI’s
• Ensure compliance measures are met
• Maintain CRM with accurate data

Desired Skills and Experience

• 2-5 years’ experience in outbound sales – B2C or B2B
• Experience working towards targets and KPI’s
• Experience with consultative and needs-based selling
• Self-motivated with a great attitude
• Coachable – willingness to learn new skills and continuously refine capabilities
• Team player
• Hard working