Director, Paid Media

We’re looking for a Director, Paid Media to lead our paid media function and Google Ads strategy across a portfolio of law firm clients. This role reports into the Performance team and is responsible for leading, developing, and holding accountable a team of paid media professionals while maintaining oversight of campaign strategy, execution, and client outcomes.

This role is focused primarily on Google Search in some of the most competitive and expensive legal markets, where every click, dollar, lead, and signed case matters. Success is not measured by impressions or traffic. It is measured by qualified leads, signed cases, efficient acquisition costs, and sustainable client growth.

The ideal candidate combines deep Google Ads expertise with strong people leadership, analytical thinking, strategic decision making, and a consistent drive to improve performance. They know how to establish clear standards, coach a team, identify performance gaps, and use data, automation, and AI to build a stronger paid media function.

What You’ll Do

Team Leadership

Lead, coach, and develop a team of paid media professionals responsible for campaign strategy, execution, optimization, and reporting.

Establish clear performance expectations, operating standards, quality controls, and accountability across the paid media team.

Review team capacity, account assignments, campaign performance, and execution quality to ensure client needs are being met.

Provide regular feedback, training, and development while addressing performance or execution gaps directly and promptly.

Support hiring, onboarding, and continued development of paid media team members.

Serve as the senior escalation point for complex campaign, performance, tracking, budget, and client issues.

Paid Search Strategy

Lead Google Search strategy across the client portfolio, ensuring campaigns are designed to generate qualified leads and signed cases.

Establish standards for campaign structure, keyword strategy, audience strategy, bidding, account architecture, testing, and optimization.

Guide the development of scalable paid search strategies aligned with each client’s business goals, market, case priorities, and growth objectives.

Review and approve major campaign launches, restructures, recovery plans, and strategic budget changes.

Campaign Performance and Optimization

Oversee analysis of Quality Score, Auction Insights, search terms, competitor activity, conversion data, and overall campaign performance.

Ensure campaigns are continuously improved through keyword expansion, negative keyword management, ad testing, audience segmentation, bid optimization, landing page recommendations, and Google Ads experiments.

Identify declining account performance early and lead the development of clear, measurable recovery plans.

Evaluate emerging Google Ads features, automation, and AI capabilities to determine where they can improve performance, efficiency, or lead quality.

Establish a disciplined testing approach and ensure learnings are documented and applied across the portfolio.

Conversion Tracking and Analytics

Oversee the implementation and maintenance of offline conversion tracking that connects qualified leads and signed cases back to Google Ads.

Partner with internal teams to ensure accurate tracking across Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics 4, CRM platforms, and reporting tools.

Ensure reporting focuses on business outcomes rather than vanity metrics.

Maintain confidence in data accuracy and resolve tracking or attribution issues that could affect optimization or client reporting.

Use portfolio level data to identify trends, opportunities, risks, and repeatable strategies.

Budget Planning and Forecasting

Oversee media budgets across the client portfolio with a focus on maximizing return on investment and business impact.

Guide monthly forecasting for spend, lead volume, acquisition costs, signed cases, and performance trends.

Identify opportunities to scale efficiently while protecting lead quality and client profitability.

Provide strategic budget recommendations based on performance, market competition, client goals, and expected return.

Ensure clients understand how budget allocation affects growth, lead quality, market coverage, and overall campaign performance.

Client Partnership

Serve as a senior strategic paid media advisor for key clients and executive stakeholders.

Lead high level performance discussions, strategic reviews, and difficult client conversations when results are below expectations.

Present campaign performance, recommendations, risks, and growth opportunities clearly and confidently.

Ensure the paid media team communicates proactively, accurately, and consistently with clients.

Collaborate with Performance, SEO, content, creative, technology, and client success teams to improve overall marketing outcomes.

Qualifications

Required

7 or more years of experience managing Google Ads campaigns with a strong focus on lead generation.

Previous experience leading, coaching, and developing paid media professionals.

Experience managing high budget search campaigns in highly competitive markets.

Deep understanding of Google Ads, Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, and conversion tracking.

Experience implementing offline conversion tracking and value based bidding strategies.

Strong understanding of Quality Score, Auction Insights, bidding strategies, audience targeting, campaign structure, search intent, and Google Ads experiments.

Demonstrated ability to diagnose declining performance and lead effective account recovery strategies.

Experience using AI to improve campaign creation, optimization, reporting, analysis, and team efficiency.

Strong analytical, problem solving, leadership, and decision making skills.

Excellent client communication, executive presentation, and relationship management skills.

Preferred

Experience managing paid media for law firms or other local service businesses.

Experience building automated CRM to Google Ads conversion workflows using Zapier or similar platforms.

Experience auditing and improving landing page performance.

Experience with Meta Ads and Local Services Ads.

Familiarity with Performance Max and value based bidding strategies for lead generation.

Success in This Role

The successful Director, Paid Media builds a high performing and accountable team, establishes clear standards, and consistently improves paid media outcomes across the client portfolio. They understand that every optimization should improve business results, not simply campaign metrics. They make decisions backed by data, embrace AI as a competitive advantage, and create repeatable strategies that improve lead quality, efficiency, signed case volume, and return on ad spend. Most importantly, they know how to lead a team that wins in highly competitive markets where thoughtful strategy and disciplined execution consistently outperform larger budgets.

Pursuant to applicable pay transparency laws, the Company reasonably expects the salary range for this position to be $125,000 to $135,000 annually.

In addition to base salary and commission, FirmPilot offers:

100% premium cost for employee health, dental, and vision coverage

Discretionary paid time off

11 observed holidays and 2 floating holidays