Paid Search Lead

Job Requirements

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 s 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.

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 s 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 changes.

• 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 optimisation opportunities.
• Develop and maintain a forward‑looking paid search roadmap, including new opportunities, tests, capabilities, and areas for optimisation.
• 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 behaviour, 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.

• 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…