Senior Media Strategist

Location3; Denver (CO); Remote; USD 105,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Location3 seeks a Senior Media Strategist to own paid media strategy and hands-on SEM for enterprise and multi-location clients. You’ll lead TAM sizing, audience profiling, and channel mix decisions while guiding an account team and presenting data-driven plans to clients.

You will manage SEM across Google and Microsoft Ads, optimize bids, tracking, and budgets, and develop scalable SOPs. Collaboration and strong presentation skills are required in a fast-paced agency environment.

Qualifications

• 5-7+ years of experience spanning media strategy, planning, and hands-on paid search.
• Ability to size TAM, build audience profiles, and translate research into strategy.
• Experience creating client-facing playbooks, testing frameworks, and channel recommendations.
• Fluency in core performance metrics (CPA/CPL, ROAS, CVR, impression share).
• Deep command of SEM fundamentals including keyword strategy and match types.
• Experience with GTM, conversion tracking, and data feeds.

Responsibilities

• Lead media strategy for enterprise and multi-location clients, TAM sizing and audience profiling.
• Build and maintain client playbooks documenting approach and budget logic.
• Design testing frameworks (TELO) and translate findings into scalable recommendations.
• Set channel and budget allocation across paid search, paid social, programmatic, display, and video.
• Translate market and consumer data into actionable strategic direction for clients and teams.
• Present strategies and performance narratives directly to clients with data-backed insights.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align strategy with execution.
• Monitor emerging trends and bring new ideas to clients and the agency.
• Elevate junior practitioners by sharing standards and best practices.
• Manage hands-on SEM execution across Google and Microsoft Ads.
• Own SEM architecture, bid strategies, keywords, and match types.
• Run disciplined optimization cadence and manage budgets.
• Report on core SEM metrics and complete paid search audits.
• Help develop SOPs for SEM tasks and identify automation opportunities.

Skills

Media strategy

Paid search management

SEM fundamentals

Audience profiling

Client storytelling

Data-driven insights

Tools

Google Ads

Microsoft Ads

GTM

Analytics

Job description

Senior Media Strategist

Location3 | US Remote

About Location3

Most agencies are built for one brand talking to one audience. We are built for brands that grow through local operators, where the marketing has to work in hundreds of different local markets at once and the people spending the budget are independent owners rather than a corporate team. That is a harder problem, and it is the one we have spent twenty five years on. We also build LOCALACT, the platform those owners use to run their own local marketing.

Position Summary

The Senior Media Strategist owns the strategic direction of paid media programs for Location3's enterprise and multi-location clients. This role sets the why behind every media plan: sizing total addressable markets, building audience cohort profiles, mapping media consumption habits, and translating research into the channel and budget allocations that move client business forward. This role combines media strategy and planning, along with hands-on management of search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns, keeping the strategist close to platform performance and credible in front of clients.

This is a senior, client-facing role. You will build and maintain client playbooks and testing frameworks, present media strategies backed by data-driven insights directly to clients and guide the broader account team on how strategy translates into execution. The right person brings strong strategic and analytical range alongside hands-on SEM expertise while comfortable moving between long-range planning and in-platform work.

What You'll Do

Media Strategy and Planning

• Lead the development of media strategy for enterprise and multi-location clients, sizing total addressable market (TAM), building audience cohort profiles, and mapping media consumption habits to inform channel selection.
• Build and maintain client playbooks that document strategic approach, channel mix, budget allocation logic, and testing priorities for each account.
• Design structured testing frameworks, such as TELO (Test, Evaluate, Learn, Optimize), to validate strategic hypotheses across channels, then translate findings into recommendations that scale across the account portfolio.
• Set channel and budget allocation recommendations across paid search, paid social, programmatic, display, and video, grounded in audience research and performance data.
• Translate market research, consumer behavior data, and competitive landscape analysis into clear, actionable strategic direction for clients and internal teams.
• Present media strategies and performance narratives directly to clients, explaining what happened, why it happened, and what should change next, backed by data-driven insights.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align strategy with execution and with each client's broader marketing objectives.
• Monitor emerging trends in media consumption and the wider digital advertising landscape, bringing new ideas to clients and to the agency.
• Elevate the work of junior practitioners by contributing to shared standards, templates, and best practices.

SEM Campaign Management

• Manage hands-on-keyboard SEM execution across Google (Search, Performance Max, GDN, YouTube, Demand Gen, and Shopping) and Microsoft Ads (Bing), in service of the strategy you set.
• Own SEM account architecture, bid strategy, keywords, and match types, connecting each lever back to client business goals.
• Run a disciplined optimization cadence across accounts, diagnosing the root causes behind performance shifts and optimizing bidding, targeting, ad copy, and account structure to protect and improve results.
• Manage SEM budgets with precision: pacing accurately, anticipating risk before it affects delivery, and reallocating spend to where demand and efficiency are strongest.
• Report on core SEM metrics (CPA/CPL, ROAS, CVR, impression share) and complete and present paid search audits.
• Help develop and refine SOPs for SEM tasks and identify opportunities for automation.

What You'll Bring

Strategy and analytical expertise

• 5-7+ years of experience spanning media strategy and planning and hands-on paid search management, ideally with enterprise or multi-location clients.
• Demonstrated ability to size total addressable markets, build audience and cohort profiles, and craft compelling narratives that translate research and consumer data into media strategy.
• Experience building client-facing strategic deliverables such as playbooks, testing frameworks, and channel or budget recommendations.
• Fluency in core performance metrics (CPA/CPL, ROAS, CAC, CVR, impression share, lost impression share), with a track record of using them to drive strategic decisions, not just report on them.
• Deep command of SEM fundamentals: keyword strategy, match types, auction dynamics, Smart Bidding, and search term analysis.
• Experience with GTM, conversion tracking, and data feed management.
• A holistic understanding of the digital advertising landscape and a habit of staying current on media consumption trends.

How you work

• You are a confident, polished presenter who can stand in front of clients and translate complex performance data into recommendations that resonate with marketing and executive stakeholders alike.
• You are proactive. You take ownership and bring an account-first mindset to both strategy and execution.
• Strategic and execution-minded, comfortable setting direction and doing the in-platform work to bring it to life.
• Highly organized with strong QA discipline and documentation habits across complex, multi-location account portfolios.
• A collaborative team member who shares what you're learning and helps junior practitioners grow.

Compensation and benefits

• $105,000 to $120,000 base depending on experience, plus commission on new business.
• This is a full-time, exempt position. Eligible for the annual company bonus, paid on company performance.
• Medical, dental and vision cover.
• A 401(k) with company match.
• Wellbeing stipends, paid time off, and support for remote working.