Performance Marketing Manager

Zaio Institute of Technology; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 480,000 - 720,000; Full time

Job summary

Zaio Institute of Technology in South Africa is seeking a hands-on paid acquisition specialist to own the paid media stack. You will manage Google Ads, Meta and TikTok campaigns, and own conversion tracking from GTM to GA4 to server-side events.

You will work with an in-house team, handle budgets, and drive enrollments through rigorous measurement, offline conversion imports, and data-driven optimization. A quick, decisive, no-nonsense approach to testing and reporting is essential.

Qualifications

• 3+ years running paid acquisition with real budget responsibility, edtech a bonus.
• Deep knowledge of Google Ads including Performance Max and bidding strategies.
• Strong on TikTok or Meta and able to work hands-on with GTM/GA4.

Responsibilities

• Google Ads end to end: Search, Performance Max, brand, budgets, bidding, negatives.
• TikTok and Meta: campaign structure, audiences, budget splits, scaling and cutting.
• Conversion tracking end to end: GTM, GA4, platform pixels and server-side events.
• Own what each conversion action actually counts.
• Feed offline conversions from CRM back into ad platforms.
• Weekly creative cycle with content/UGC team: brief, launch, read, replace.
• Weekly reporting that ties spend to enrolled students.
• Landing page and funnel tests with the web team.

Skills

Paid media management

Google Ads

GA4 / GTM

Meta Ads

TikTok Ads

Excel/Sheets

Data-driven decisions

Offline conversions

Tools

Google Tag Manager

GA4

CRM data integration

Job description

cybersecurity, cloud and digital marketing, and helps them get hired. Paid ads are

how most of our students find us. We are bringing paid media in-house and you will

own it.

This is not a support role. You get the accounts, the budget and the decisions.

WHAT YOU WILL OWN

• Google Ads end to end: Search, Performance Max, brand, budgets, bidding, negatives.
• TikTok and Meta: campaign structure, audiences, budget splits, scaling and cutting.
• Conversion tracking end to end: GTM, GA4, platform pixels and server-side events.
• You will own what each conversion action actually counts.
• Feeding real outcomes back into the platforms: offline conversion imports and click-ID matching from our CRM, so bidding optimises on enrolled students instead of clicks.
• A weekly creative cycle with our content and UGC team: brief it, launch it, read it, replace what is dead.
• Weekly reporting that ties spend to enrolled students, not platform-reported conversions.
• Landing page and funnel tests with the web team.

WHAT WE NEED

• 3+ years running paid acquisition, in-house or agency, with real budget responsibility. Bonus if you have worked in edtech.
• Deep Google Ads: search structure, Performance Max, match types, negative keyword discipline, bidding strategies and when to stop trusting them.
• Strong on TikTok or Meta, competent on the other.
• Hands-on Google Tag Manager and GA4. You can build a tag, debug an event that fires twice and explain why a conversion count is inflated.
• You have imported offline conversions from a CRM back into an ad platform, or you can explain exactly how you would.
• Fluent in Google Sheets or Excel.
• You argue with numbers, not opinions.
• You use Claude and ChatGPT as part of the actual job, every day. Ad copy variants at volume, tearing through search-term and creative reports, drafting creator briefs, sanity-checking data. We will ask you to show us how you use them. "I have played with it a bit" is a no.

NICE TO HAVE

• Lead generation for a considered purchase: education, property, finance, insurance.
• High-volume creator or UGC content pipelines.

HOW WE WORK

Small marketing team, no layers, decisions the same day you raise them. You report to the person who runs marketing. Your numbers are visible to the whole business,