Manager, Paid Media

Overview:

The ideal candidate will lead a data-driven approach to media buying across the entire GC enterprise, fostering a test-and-learn culture. They will be responsible for implementing media buying best practices-including measurement, creative strategy, and campaign execution-to support diverse business objectives across digital, retail, and lead generation efforts. This role requires strong analytical skills, as well as the ability to collaborate with internal teams to navigate the complexities of creative development, promotional strategies, and performance measurement.

This is an excellent opportunity for a seasoned ecommerce digital media buyer to manage substantial budgets in-house while gaining expertise in online-to-offline measurement. The position offers significant visibility within the digital organization and the opportunity to influence the strategic direction of the enterprise.

Key Responsibilities:

• Campaign Design and Execution: Possess a deep understanding of the required campaign structures and creative for various campaign types (e-commerce, store traffic, lead generation) and funnel stages (upper, middle, lower).

• Creative Strategy: Help drive performance-oriented creative best practices within the Guitar Center marketing organization. Partner with creative resources to create a test and learn feedback loop between the paid media team and creative partners.

• Strong Understanding of Digital Ads Ecosystem: Possess a strong understanding of the digital advertising ecosystem to effectively leverage it for optimal results. Proactively identify and engage the right technologies, vendors, and stakeholders, utilizing them in innovative ways to drive ad performance for Guitar Center.

• Data Driven Decision Making: Effectively manage Guitar Center's marketing budget by ensuring optimal allocation of every dollar for maximum efficiency. Success in this role requires not only strategic budget management but also fostering a test-and-learn culture and leading ad experimentation initiatives.

• Platform Expansion: Serve as the team's leader in expanding our media buying tactics to new platforms and placements. Testing and growing on new inventory sources will be a large driver of growth in 2025, and this person needs to be comfortable on the frontier.

• Performance Analysis: Continuously analyze campaign and site performance to identify opportunities for growth and improvement. Provide actionable insights and recommendations to enhance campaign effectiveness.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE & REQUIREMENTS:

• Bachelor's degree in marketing, Business, or a related field.

• 4-6+ years experience as a media buyer and budget allocator of $1MM+ annual budgets.

• Mastery of Meta and Google ad platforms with the ability to easily take learnings to new media sources. Continuous learning - candidate must be professionally curious and interested in new trends in digital advertising.

• Experience with measuring the impact of online advertising on in-store visits and sales is highly desirable.

• Advanced understanding of attribution modeling for both ecommerce and retail advertising.

• Expert data analysis skills using tools such as Omniture, Google Analytics, Tableau, and SQL.

• Comfort with integrating marketing automation tools to streamline campaign workflows.

• Proven ability to achieve results under tight deadlines and in dynamic, ambiguous environments.

• Highly process-oriented, with strong multitasking skills to manage and track multiple projects and deliverables simultaneously.

• Experience using AI solutions to speed up workflows.

• Music industry experience not required but a strong plus.