Director of Paid Media & Performance Marketing

Bradenton, FL (On-site)

Salary Not AvailableDirector/Executive8+ years expFull time

Posted 4 months ago

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Job Summary

Drive strategic paid media leadership to grow enrollment and revenue across IMG Academy programs with rigorous budgeting, testing, and cross-functional execution.

  • Own roadmap, budget, and performance analytics for paid media strategy.
  • Must-have: 8+ years in paid media with leadership experience
  • Standout: MMM/MTA and AI-driven optimization experience

Job Description

Responsibilities

  • Develop and lead the paid media and performance marketing strategy for IMG Academy aligning acquisition initiatives with enrollment, revenue, and growth objectives across campus programs, digital products and recruiting services.
  • Identify scalable customer acquisition opportunities across global markets while establishing performance goals, acquisition targets, and channel strategies that drive efficient growth.
  • Build and manage annual and monthly paid media roadmaps, budgets, and forecasts, ensuring media investments maximize return and support business priorities.
  • Lead agency relationships and cross-functional collaboration with product, brand, and web teams to execute integrated paid media strategies across search, social, programmatic, affiliate, and emerging channels.
  • Provide thought leadership on paid media strategy staying ahead of platform and industry trends, and fostering a culture of experimentation and continuous performance improvement.

Campaign Management & Optimization

  • Oversee the execution and performance of paid media campaigns, ensuring delivery against timelines, budgets, and defined performance goals.
  • Guide agency partners on performance improvements through structured testing and optimization across creative, landing pages, bidding strategies, audience targeting, and channel mix.
  • Implement and refine audience segmentation and lifecycle targeting strategies to deliver the right message to the right audience at each stage of the funnel.
  • Establish and drive a rigorous testing framework including A/B testing, creative experimentation, and audience expansion to continuously improve campaign performance.
  • Partner closely with web and product teams to optimize landing pages and digital experiences, improving conversion rates, supporting ecommerce initiatives, and ensuring paid traffic is directed to high-performing, conversion-focused destinations.

Budget Management & Performance Analytics

  • Own and manage the paid media budget, ensuring efficient allocation of spend across channels to maximize ROI and support business priorities.
  • Analyze campaign performance and provide regular reporting, insights, and strategic recommendations to senior leadership, leveraging AI-driven analytics and automation to identify optimization opportunities.
  • Establish KPIs, attribution frameworks, and measurement strategies, including Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) and Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA), to evaluate channel effectiveness and guide future investment decisions.
  • Allocate and manage test-and-learn budgets to evaluate emerging platforms, new audience segments, and incremental growth channels, using data-driven experimentation to accelerate scalable results.
  • Integrate AI tools and automation to streamline reporting, optimize budget allocation, and improve forecasting accuracy across campaigns

Cross-Functional Collaboration

  • Partner with Product, Brand, and Creative teams to develop high-impact ad creatives that align with business objectives and brand standards.
  • Collaborate closely with Web, Ecommerce, and Digital Product teams to optimize landing pages, user experiences, and conversion paths, ensuring paid traffic drives maximum engagement and revenue.
  • Work with Data & Analytics teams to evaluate campaign performance, uncover actionable insights, and refine media strategies, including identifying growth opportunities across products, sports, and geographies.
  • Align with Product and Sales teams to ensure paid media initiatives support broader business, revenue, and customer acquisition goals.
IMG Academy logo

IMG Academy

IMG Academy is the world-leading provider of academic, athletic and personal development programs. With expert instruction, a proven training methodology, professional-grade facilities and a challenging and motivating learning environment that brings together individuals of all ages and backgrounds, IMG Academy provides the ultimate foundation for future success.The Bradenton, Fla.-based campus annually attracts nearly 200,000 training athletes, coaches, event participants and spectators from 100 countries. IMG Academy offers sports camps and academy programs, in addition to training opportunities for adult, collegiate and professional athletes, as well as teams and leagues. IMG Academy is also the host venue for countless international amateur and professional sporting events.IMG Academy also includes NCSA College Recruiting, the world's largest college recruiting platform, and IMG Academy+, which provides online coaching utilizing the same elite instruction delivered on campus for 40+ years.

Founded in 1978
Bradenton, Florida, USA
1.2K employees (92 in marketing)

Traffic Signals

Monthly Visitors
348K
Monthly Google Ads Budget
$21.2K
Traffic Source Mix
Search
49.7%
Direct
40.3%
Referral
7.2%
Social
1.9%
Paid
0.7%

Headcount Trend

Current headcount: ~1.2K

Marketing Team

Marketing Team Size
78 (6% of company)
Median Career Experience
9 years
Median Tenure
2.9 years

Funding

Last Raise
Private Equity, 2 years ago

Funding History

  • Nov 2023
    Private Equity

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