Performance Marketing Manager

Salary: R 900 000,00 to R 1 300 000,00 per annum (depending on experience)

Location: South Africa (Remote) – occasional travel to the US

Overview:

A fast-growing, venture-backed AI-powered MarTech startup is looking for a Senior Performance Marketer to own and scale high-impact D2C acquisition campaigns for international clients. Although this is a US-based company, its founders are proudly South African and intentionally building a team that keeps their origin story rooted here – which means you get the excitement and exposure of a US startup, while still being part of a South African-led success story.

In this role, you’ll operate as a strategic marketing partner to their clients – not just “running ads”, but shaping performance strategy, interrogating deep funnel data, and guiding smarter decisions across the entire customer journey.

This is a senior, hands-on position for someone who lives and breathes performance marketing, especially Google media buying, and is excited by AI-driven marketing, complex funnels, and fast iteration. You’ll work primarily with US-based clients, so there will be US hours overlap, and you’ll collaborate closely with growth, product and data teams to turn rich insights into actions that genuinely move the needle.

If you’re the person who understands both the numbers and the narrative – who can architect campaigns, dive into CAC/LTV economics, and clearly communicate what to do next – you’ll thrive here.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Lead hands-on performance marketing execution across Google Ads (non-negotiable) and Meta for D2C clients, with a strong focus on acquisition.
• Architect and optimise micro-campaign structures tailored for D2C funnels: keyword strategy, audience building, bidding strategies (tCPA, tROAS, bid caps), retargeting, and funnel sequencing.
• Manage budgets, pacing, and in-platform optimisation to hit growth and efficiency targets (CAC, ROAS, conversion rate, etc.).
• Use advanced, identity-stitched and AI-driven data tools to analyse the full funnel (click → lead → call → quote → sale → churn) and make unit economics-based decisions.
• Act as a trusted marketing partner to client teams: translate data into clear insights, propose tests, and guide them on scaling what works and cutting what doesn’t.
• Create structured A/B and multivariate test plans across creatives, audiences, landing pages, bidding strategies, and funnel steps, and roll out winning variants.
• Produce clear, insight-led performance reports and recommendations that highlight opportunities to scale, reduce CAC, and improve conversion efficiency.
• Collaborate closely with internal data, product and engineering teams, feeding back real performance marketing needs to help shape tools, attribution models, and workflows.
• Stay on top of D2C, performance marketing and AI trends, proactively suggesting new channels, formats, and tactics where relevant (e.g. paid social, programmatic, new betas).
• Represent performance marketing best practice internally – helping standardise processes, codify learnings, and potentially grow a specialist team around you over time.

Requirements:

• 5-10 years’ hands-on performance marketing experience (exceptional candidates with 4-5 years of deep execution experience will be considered).
• Expert-level Google Ads buying experience for D2C acquisition – this is essential.
• Strong experience with D2C performance funnels, ideally in high-intent and/or high-consideration categories (e.g. finance, insurance, subscription, or similar).
• Proven track record running complex, high-scale campaigns across paid search and paid social, including campaign setup, optimisation, troubleshooting and scaling.
• Solid understanding of digital acquisition channels: paid search, paid social, retargeting, funnel sequencing, and basic programmatic concepts.
• Strong analytical mindset with the ability to work beyond platform vanity metrics – comfortable with CAC, LTV, retention, quote-to-sale type funnels, and other drivers of unit economics.
• Comfortable using marketing and data tools such as CRMs, CDPs, analytics platforms, and attribution systems.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to translate complex data into clear, actionable strategies for non-technical stakeholders.
• Thrives in a fast-paced, startup-style environment: high ownership, high urgency, comfortable with ambiguity, and biased toward action and experimentation.
• Familiarity with AI-based marketing tools (e.g. LLMs, AI bidding, generative creative).

Please note: Due to the high volume of applications, only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted. If you do not hear from us within two weeks, please consider your application unsuccessful at this time. We thank you for your interest in the role and wish you the best in your career search.

Salt is acting as an Employment Agency in relation to this vacancy.