Paid Search Lead

Sweetwater, the nation's number one online retailer of music instruments and pro audio gear, is seeking a Paid Search Lead to join our Performance Marketing team and take ownership of our paid search strategy and execution across a large, complex retail operation. The Paid Search Lead will be the internal subject matter expert and strategic owner for SEM efforts at Sweetwater. This role will work closely with our long-term search agency, providing day-to-day leadership, strategic direction, performance oversight, and constructive feedback to ensure our paid search program continues to deliver strong business results.

Reporting directly to our Director of Performance Marketing, this role will sit at the intersection of strategy, analytics, agency management, and channel execution. You'll be expected to understand the details of paid search while also thinking strategically about how the channel should evolve as consumer behavior, technology, and the search landscape change.

Job Responsibilities

• Own the day-to-day strategy and direction for Sweetwater's paid search program across Google Ads, Google Search Ads 360, Microsoft, and other relevant search platforms.
• Serve as the primary internal point of contact and strategic partner for our paid search agency.
• Oversee agency performance, ensuring campaigns are aligned with business goals, channel strategy, and financial objectives.
• Review and provide thoughtful feedback on agency recommendations, reporting, campaign structure, bidding strategies, creative, keyword strategy, and optimization opportunities.
• Develop and maintain a forward-looking paid search roadmap, including new opportunities, tests, capabilities, and areas for optimization.
• Identify and recommend opportunities to improve efficiency, scale growth, and strengthen the overall customer acquisition strategy.
• Develop and champion a culture of testing, using data and sound experimentation principles to evaluate new approaches.
• Stay closely connected to developments in search advertising, including changes to platforms, automation, AI, consumer search behavior, measurement, attribution, and emerging search experiences.
• Partner with Analytics, Merchandising, Creative, Marketing, and other cross-functional teams to ensure paid search supports broader business priorities.
• Monitor and communicate channel performance, trends, opportunities, and risks to the Director of Performance Marketing and other stakeholders.
• Ensure the agency is appropriately leveraging available platform capabilities while maintaining strong strategic and financial discipline.
• Help establish and evolve measurement frameworks, KPIs, and reporting that clearly demonstrate the impact of paid search.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of hands-on experience managing paid search efforts, ideally with progressively increasing responsibility.
• Proven experience managing paid search at large scale, with significant budgets, campaign complexity, and product / keyword volume.
• Experience managing paid search in a retail or e-commerce environment with at least 5,000 SKUs.
• Strong understanding of Google Ads, Google Search Ads 360, Microsoft Advertising, shopping/product advertising, bidding strategies, campaign structure, keyword management, audience targeting, and paid search measurement. Experience with Google Tag Manager and tagging/tracking technology is preferred.
• Experience working directly with and managing an external paid search agency or other strategic partner, including a demonstrated ability to evaluate agency recommendations, identify opportunities, and provide clear strategic direction.
• Strong analytical skills and the ability to translate performance data into actionable business recommendations, including experience developing and executing testing strategies across paid search.
• A strong understanding of the economics of retail paid search, including ROAS, profitability, customer acquisition, conversion rates, and the relationship between media performance and merchandising/business objectives.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work effectively with both highly technical channel experts and senior business stakeholders.

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience in specialty retail, particularly categories with passionate and highly engaged customers such as music, sporting goods, outdoor, automotive, gaming, or other enthusiast-driven categories.
• Experience managing paid search across a very large and frequently changing product catalog.
• Experience with feed optimization and product data management for shopping campaigns.
• Experience with incrementality testing, attribution, media mix modeling, or other advanced approaches to measuring paid media impact.
• Experience navigating the evolving intersection of search, AI, and emerging search experiences.
• A genuine interest in music, musical instruments, recording, audio, or the broader creator economy.

Sweetwater "Ideal Team Player"

• WOWs The Customer – You possess a deep passion and desire for creating amazing customer & colleague experiences
• Gets Things Done – You have a great work ethic and move through tasks with a sense of urgency
• Obsesses over the Details – You are committed to paying attention to the details
• Drives Continuous Improvement – You are always focusing on effective and efficient work and ways to get better
• Develops the Future – You are committed to the pursuit of growing personally & professionally and have a focus on bringing your colleagues along in that journey

We function best as a unified team, so relocation to our state-of-the-art campus in Fort Wayne, IN is required. Interested and qualified candidates, please apply. We look forward to exploring your #FullTimeDream with Sweetwater!

Sweetwater’s culture is one that is built on the creation and celebration of music, which unifies people from all walks of life. Our individual differences make Sweetwater stronger as a company and a better place to work. Having a truly diverse workforce allows us the opportunity to collectively respect, learn and grow from each unique perspective and experience. We have welcomed thousands of employees and families who have joined the Sweetwater team from all over the nation and the world, and we welcome you, too, to find out why we consider a career at Sweetwater the full-time dream.