Performance Marketing Manager

Zaio Institute of Technology; Wes-Kaap; On-site; ZAR 600,000 - 850,000; Full time

Job summary

Zaio Institute of Technology in Cape Town is seeking a lead paid acquisition specialist with 3+ years of hands-on experience managing large ad budgets. You will own Google Ads end to end (Search, Performance Max, brand) and coordinate TikTok and Meta campaigns, with a focus on driving enrollments.

You will work in a small marketing team, report to the head of marketing, and have direct visibility of results across the business.

Qualifications

• 3+ years running paid acquisition with real budget responsibility.
• Deep Google Ads knowledge including Performance Max and match types.
• Experience with TikTok or Meta campaigns.
• Hands-on GTM and GA4 setup and debugging.
• Ability to import offline conversions from a CRM.

Responsibilities

• Own Google Ads end-to-end campaigns.
• Structure campaigns on TikTok and Meta and manage budgets.
• Set up conversion tracking with GTM/GA4 and ensure accurate attribution.
• Provide weekly reports linking spend to enrollments.
• Collaborate with content team for briefs and tests.

Skills

Google Ads end to end

Budget ownership

TikTok & Meta ads

GA4 & GTM

Data-driven decision making

Excel / Google Sheets

Tools

Google Tag Manager

GA4

Excel

Job description

Cape Town | Full-time, on-site

Zaio trains South Africans into careers in software development, data science, 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.
• 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.

You will own what each conversion action actually counts.

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, which cuts both ways.