Performance Marketing Manager, Consumer Lending

Role Summary:

We're looking for a paid media lead with a history of success in SEM, youtube, and display, to drive customer acquisition across multiple financial services verticals. Experience driving marketing results with Claude or Chat GPT is highly desirable.

This is both a hands-on and strategic role: you'll build the roadmap, launch and optimize campaigns , and partner with analytics, business, creative, and engineering to continuously drive value for our customers and business. Success here requires strong data/creative/ monetization skills, a high degree of initiative, and a vision for paid marketing tactics and experiences in the age of AI.

This role reports to the Managing Director.

Where you can make an impact:

Strategy & Campaign Ownership

• Own paid marketing strategy, execution, and performance across multiple verticals, aligning campaigns to each vertical's growth targets, funnel dynamics, and audience needs

• Build campaign structures across SEM, youtube, display, Open AI, and other platforms as needed

• Set objectives, bidding strategy, audience approach, budget allocation, and conversion events per campaign

• Manage campaigns end-to-end: setup, QA, pacing, troubleshooting, optimization

• Build testing plans for new verticals, bidding strategies, conversion events, creative angles, and funnel experiences

AI Utilization

• Use AI tools to enhance and accelerate traditional marketing functions

• Use AI as your own personal agency - building high quality creative, data insights, and landing pages, etc to overcome blockers and limited resources

• Combine your own deep understanding of paid marketing with AI tools for novel and innovative purposes.

Optimization & Performance

• Monitor marketing performance and diagnose CTR, CVR, and Revenue and monetization issues, data/tracking issues, funnel friction, monetization problems, and/or lead quality.

• Make budget and pacing calls based on performance trends and business priorities

• Stay current on platform, algorithm, privacy, and ad product changes

Reporting & Stakeholder Communication

• Own recurring performance reporting — results, trends, learnings, risks, next steps

• Translate platform performance into business impact for vertical leads and leadership

• Communicate tracking issues, data discrepancies, and testing results clearly and proactively

Data, Tracking & Measurement

• Partner with data, analytics, and engineering teams to define measurement needs and map new conversion events

• Troubleshoot discrepancies between platform and backend data (attribution, event firing, duplicates, timing)

• Help build measurement frameworks that optimize toward lead quality and business outcomes, not just volume

Creative Strategy

• Lead creative strategy across verticals: messaging angles, hooks, scripts, static/video/UGC concepts

• Write creative briefs covering business goal, audience, value prop, and key claims

• Review assets for clarity and platform fit; give feedback through concept, script, and production stages

• Build creative testing roadmaps and turn results into next-round recommendations

Landing Page & Funnel Strategy

• Evaluate landing pages and funnels for message match, conversion flow, and drop-off

• Recommend and support tests across landing pages, advertorials, lead forms, quizzes, and pre-qualification flows

• Ensure creative, landing pages, and tracking are aligned before launch

Platform Partnerships & Competitive Research

• Manage relationships with platform reps; evaluate their recommendations against NerdWallet's goals and data quality

• Track competitor creative, offers, and funnel approaches; feed insights back into strategy

Your experience:

• 5+ years of paid search experience, ideally in lead generation.

• Proven track record of utilizing AI tools (such as Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini) to accelerate marketing functions, gain data insights, and optimize creative processes.

• Forward-thinking vision regarding how and where to market in the age of AI and video, demonstrating the ability to craft tactics for finding consumers as search behaviors shift beyond standard search engines.

• Demonstrated experience in video marketing, with a track record of driving performance through short-form video content, emerging ad formats, and platforms like YouTube to capture audiences outside of traditional Google Ads.

• Bachelor's degree in marketing, business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Proven track record scaling paid search (7 figures in monthly spend preferred) while maintaining or improving CPA/CAC and ROAS.

• Experience managing toward lead gen, revenue, ROAS, CPA/CAC, or funnel-based goals.

• Ability to build paid media strategy from the ground up — structure, testing, measurement, creative, optimization.

• Strong analytical skills, comfortable with both platform and backend business data.

• Experience troubleshooting tracking, attribution, or reporting discrepancies.

• Experience writing creative briefs and giving feedback to creative teams or external partners.

• Strong project management skills across multiple concurrent verticals and workstreams.

• Clear, confident communicator who can translate data into recommendations for non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience and success outside of Google or Bing

• Experience in financial services (insurance, lending, wealth, banking, investing, mortgage, home equity, or other regulated categories)

• Experience with lead gen funnels, prequalification/quiz flows, marketplace models, or affiliate/partner revenue models

• Experience optimizing toward backend events — funded loans, booked appointments, matched leads

• Experience with server-side tracking and conversion signal quality

• Experience with UGC creative, creator partnerships, or video production workflows

• Comfort working with legal, compliance, or brand review processes in regulated industries

What Success Looks Like:

• Campaigns launch with clean setup, strong creative, accurate tracking, and aligned stakeholders

• New revenue streams outside of traditional SEM are discovered and scaled

• Creative & LP testing is structured, insight-driven, and tied to business outcomes

• Tracking issues are caught early and resolved in partnership with data teams

• Stakeholders have a clear read on performance, risk, and next steps at all times

• New verticals have a clear, de-risked path to testing and scaling paid social

WHERE:

• This role will be remote (based in the U.S.).

• We believe great work can be done anywhere. No matter where you are based, NerdWallet offers benefits and perks to support the physical, financial, and emotional well being of you and your family.

WHAT WE OFFER:

Work Hard, Stay Balanced (Life’s a series of balancing acts, eh?)

• Industry-leading medical, dental, and vision health care plans for employees and their dependents

• Rejuvenation Policy – Flexible Vacation Time Off + 11 holidays + holiday company shutdown

• New Parent Leave for employees with a newborn child or a child placed with them for adoption or foster care

• Mental health support

• Paid sabbatical after 5 years for Nerds to recharge, gain knowledge, and pursue their interests

• Health and Dependent Care FSA and HSA Plan with monthly NerdWallet contribution

• Monthly Wellness Stipend, Cell Phone Stipend, and Wifi Stipend (Only remote Nerds are eligible for the Wifi Stipend)

• Work from home equipment stipend and co-working space subsidy (Only remote Nerds are eligible for these stipends)

Have Some Fun! (Nerds are fun, too)

• Nerd-led group initiatives – Employee Resource Groups for Parents, Diversity, and Inclusion, Women, LGBTQIA, and other communities

• Hackathons and team events across all teams and departments

• Company-wide events like NerdLove (employee appreciation) and our annual Charity Auction

• Our Nerds love to make an impact by paying it forward – Take 8 hou