Creative Strategist

Forward Role; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job summary

Forward Role is seeking a Paid Social Creative Strategist in Manchester City Centre with hybrid work options. You will own the creative strategy and testing roadmap for Meta and TikTok ads, turning performance data into scalable, direct-response creative decisions.

Ideal candidates bring proven performance creative and strategic thinking, with experience briefing creators and internal teams. Strong understanding of consumer psychology and ad formats is essential.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in performance creative or strategy.
• Experience with high‑volume paid-social testing.
• Strong grasp of direct‑response creative principles.
• Ability to translate data into creative direction.
• Experience briefing creators, UGC talent and internal teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the creative strategy and testing roadmap across Meta and TikTok ads.
• Analyse performance data to understand why creatives win or lose.
• Identify new angles and build structured tests around them.
• Develop briefs for creators and internal content teams.
• Turn insights into compelling creative concepts.
• Track fatigue and continuously feed new concepts into the pipeline.
• Iterate winning creatives into scalable variations.
• Align messaging strategies by product, audience and funnel stage.
• Stay ahead of new formats and competitor creative.

Skills

Performance creative

Creative strategy

Paid social testing

Data-driven decisions

Meta & TikTok fluency

Job description

Paid Social Creative Strategist

Salary £40-50k DOE

Manchester City Centre – Hybrid

Forward Role are working with a fast-growing beauty retail business to find a Creative Strategist to own and drive their performance creative strategy across Meta and TikTok paid ads - someone who can turn customer insight and performance data into creative that genuinely scales.

This is a deliberately niche brief, and that's by design. My client isn't looking for a content person or a creative who follows trends and produces nice-looking assets. They need someone who sits at the intersection of creative, performance marketing, data and consumer psychology - someone who understands direct-response creative and consumer behaviour, is comfortable living in the numbers, and can make strategic creative decisions because of what the data tells them, not instead of it.

This is a genuinely key hire for them, one at the heart of some ambitious growth plans over coming years – if you’re interested in taking your career to the next step in a rapidly growing, genuinely exciting eCommerce brand then this might be the role for you…

Key Responsibilities

• Own the creative strategy and testing roadmap across Meta and TikTok ads
• Analyse performance data to understand why creatives are winning or losing - hooks, angles, formats, messaging, offers, CTAs and more
• Identify new creative angles and hypotheses, and build structured tests around them
• Develop briefs for creators, UGC, designers and the internal content team that are genuinely performance-led
• Turn customer pain points, reviews, objections, trends and insights into compelling creative concepts
• Work closely with the Performance Marketer to connect creative decisions directly to CAC, ROAS/MER, CTR, CVR and ultimately revenue
• Track creative fatigue and continually feed new concepts into the pipeline
• Take winning creatives and iterate and scalably produce variations, rather than constantly starting from scratch
• Develop different messaging strategies by product, audience and stage of funnel
• Stay ahead of emerging TikTok and Meta formats and competitor creative, without simply copying trends
• Help build a proper creative testing and reporting framework, so the team knows exactly what's working and why

What You'll Bring

• Proven experience in a performance creative, creative strategy or similar role, ideally with a fast-growing DTC/eCommerce brand
• Experience within beauty, wellness or FMCG is a strong plus
• A track record of managing a high volume of paid-social creative testing
• Strong understanding of direct-response creative principles and what actually drives performance, not just engagement
• Confidence analysing performance data (CAC, ROAS/MER, CTR, CVR) and translating it into creative direction
• Experience briefing creators, UGC talent, designers and/or internal content teams
• A genuine understanding of consumer psychology and what makes people buy
• Deep familiarity with Meta and TikTok ad formats and how they evolve
• Strong commercial instincts - able to connect creative output back to revenue and acquisition goals

This isn't about someone who can look at the numbers and report on what happened - it's about someone who can look at the numbers and know what to do next, creatively. If you're genuinely data-driven but still a creative thinker at heart, and you want to be judged on revenue and performance rather than just creative output, get in touch.