Performance Marketing Lead - SMARTLY

A bit about Smartly, a Datacom Company
Smartly helps thousands of Kiwi businesses pay their people right — and we’re on a journey to become one of New Zealand’s most trusted multi-product SaaS brands. We’re passionate about combining smart tech, human insight, and exceptional service to make business simpler, faster, and more connected.

About the Role (your why)

The Performance Marketing Lead will own the end-to-end paid acquisition engine at Smartly, spanning search, social, display, and retargeting, and will craft strategies that deliver a steady stream of qualified pipeline while continuously reducing CAC and increasing return on ad spend. You will manage the day-to-day execution of campaigns, allocate and optimize budgets across channels, and lead creative and audience testing to uncover what moves prospects through the funnel. Beyond activation, you’ll build rigorous attribution, go-to dashboards, and clear reporting that translate performance into actionable business insights for leadership, sales, and product teams.

This role blends strategic vision with hands-on execution. You’ll own the optimization lifecycle—from hypothesis and experimentation to iteration and scaling—turning learnings into repeatable playbooks that drive efficiency and growth. You’ll collaborate closely with product, analytics, and creative to ensure compelling messaging, landing pages, and offers that maximize conversion, while continuously testing new channels and tactics to expand our high-performing footprint. The result is a predictable, scalable source of marketing-sourced pipeline where conversion rates, cost efficiency, and overall ROI keep improving. If you’re data-driven, thrive in a fast-paced environment, and want to directly influence Smartly’s growth trajectory through paid media, we’d love to hear from you

What you’ll do
As Performance Marketing Lead, you will be focused on:

• Managing Channel Budget Allocation and ROI
  You own the allocation of performance marketing budget across channels and campaigns, making data-informed investment decisions to maximise pipeline ROI. You provide clear, regular reporting on spend efficiency, channel performance, and budget utilisation.
• Designing and Executing Creative and Audience Testing Programmes
  You design and run structured testing programmes across creative formats, messaging variants, audience segments, and landing experiences. You build a repeatable testing cadence that generates actionable insights and drives measurable improvements in conversion performance.
• Build Attribution and Performance Reporting
  You own performance marketing attribution and reporting — ensuring clear visibility into how paid channels contribute to pipeline, conversion, and revenue outcomes. You partner with RevOps and Data to build and maintain dashboards that track campaign performance against targets
• Planning, Execution, and Optimisation of Paid Acquisition Campaign: You own the end-to-end management of Smartly’s paid acquisition channels - including Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, and display/retargeting. You plan campaigns against pipeline and CAC targets, execute with precision, and continuously optimise bidding, targeting, creative, and landing page performance to improve efficiency.
• Integrating Paid Acquisition with Lifecycle Marketing
  You ensure paid acquisition is tightly integrated with marketing automation, lifecycle entry funnels, and the broader funnel architecture. You work closely with the broader Acquisition team to ensure leads generated through paid channels are routed, scored, and nurtured effectively.

What you’ll bring

• Paid Media Strategy and Execution – Deep hands-on expertise in planning, executing, and optimising paid acquisition campaigns across search, social, display, and retargeting channels.
• Data-Driven Optimisation – Strong analytical capability to interpret campaign data, identify optimisation opportunities, and translate insights into action that improves CAC and conversion performance.
• Creative and Audience Testing – Experience designing structured testing programmes that systematically improve creative performance, audience targeting, and landing page conversion.
• Attribution and Reporting – Ability to build and maintain accurate attribution models and performance dashboards that provide clear visibility into paid channel contribution to pipeline and revenue.
• Budget Management and ROI Focus – Disciplined approach to budget allocation, spend tracking, and return on ad spend optimisation
• Analytical Rigour - Makes decisions based on data, not assumptions. Continuously monitors and acts on performance signals.
• Curiosity and Experimentation - Actively tests new channels, creative approaches, and targeting strategies to find incremental efficiency gains

Why join us at Smartly?

We’re more than just payroll — we’re building tools to make Kiwi business life easier, and we’re growing fast.

As part of the Smartly team you’ll:

• Work on big-impact projects with decision-making room and real ownership.
• Be part of a culture that values curiosity, experimentation, and data-driven insight.
• Enjoy flexibility, social events, and plenty of opportunity to grow your skills.
• Collaborate with talented, passionate people across multiple disciplines.

This is a defining career opportunity to lead at the intersection of creativity, technology, and commercial growth — turning curiosity into conversion and potential customers into long-term advocates