As a performance marketing recruitment agency, we help businesses hire PPC, paid media and growth marketing professionals who improve campaign performance and scale customer acquisition. Whether you're strengthening your paid media team or hiring your first performance marketer, we’ll help you find people who turn marketing spend into measurable growth.
Overview
Performance marketing roles sit close to revenue. These professionals manage paid acquisition channels, optimise campaigns and improve metrics such as CPA, ROAS and conversion rates.
Two candidates may both list Google Ads, paid social or growth marketing experience, yet their level of ownership and commercial impact can vary significantly. Understanding who can truly scale campaigns and who has simply supported them is rarely clear from a CV.
As a specialist performance marketing recruitment agency, we help businesses hire PPC specialists, paid media managers and performance marketing leaders who understand how to improve acquisition performance and deliver measurable growth.
Our disciplines
Alongside our performance marketing recruitment expertise, we also support hiring across digital marketing, social media, PR, client services and commercial roles to help businesses build stronger marketing and growth teams.
The problem
Paid budgets often grow faster than efficiency. Campaigns expand across channels, yet CPA rises and marginal gains become harder to find. Hiring someone who can operate advertising platforms but cannot diagnose performance issues can leave spending increasing while results plateau.
Performance marketing results rarely sit with one person alone. Creative, landing pages, attribution and budget decisions all influence outcomes. CVs often reference strong campaign metrics, yet it can be difficult to understand what the candidate personally owned and what was delivered by a wider team.
Many candidates know how to manage campaigns within Google Ads or paid social platforms, but fewer understand how marketing performance connects to revenue targets, margin pressure or customer acquisition cost. Without that commercial perspective, campaigns can grow while profitability declines.
Performance marketing titles vary widely between agencies and in-house teams. Two Paid Media Managers may have very different levels of ownership, budget control or strategic responsibility. Screening those differences internally can quickly become time-consuming.
How we can help
When businesses increase paid budgets, efficiency often becomes harder to maintain. We prioritise candidates who have managed larger budgets, tested new channels and improved acquisition efficiency as campaigns scale.
We look beyond platform familiarity and job titles. Our assessment focuses on budget responsibility, optimisation decisions and the role candidates played in improving metrics such as CPA, ROAS and conversion rates.
Strong performance marketers understand how campaigns influence revenue, margin and customer acquisition cost. We prioritise candidates who connect channel activity with commercial performance, not just platform execution.
We do not send large volumes of CVs. Each candidate is briefed on the role expectations, performance targets and salary before the interview. That keeps the hiring process focused while you continue managing campaign performance.
Case studies
"We'd never made a digital hire before in the marketing team, so we needed Digital Waffle to get this one right. They got the brief straight away. The process moved quickly, they kept us in the loop the whole way through, and the person they brought in has been brilliant. Knew what they were doing from day one, hit the ground running, and a real fit with the team. Couldn't have asked for a better start."
"We've been hiring across marketing, digital and the wider team for the last 18 months, and Digital Waffle have been our go-to partner throughout. They've placed 82 people for us, from juniors right through to director level, perm and freelance. It's a lot of moving parts for one agency to handle well, and they've kept on top of it the whole way through. We'll be using them again."
"Digital Waffle just got us. They understood the pace we work at and the kind of marketing leader we needed. The shortlist was strong and arrived fast, and the person we hired has settled in brilliantly. It was one of the smoothest senior hires we’ve made."
"Digital Waffle were a real help when we were building out our engineering team. It was a fast-moving period, with a lot happening across our website and apps, and they quickly understood the kind of people we needed. They supported us with both perm and contract hires, kept things moving and made the whole process feel straightforward. Really easy team to work with."
"We brought Digital Waffle in on a retained basis to help us scale at Gnosis. Over twelve months they delivered 28 roles, sourcing the right candidates for each one across functions that aren't always easy to recruit for in this space. They showed a deep understanding of our requirements from the start. Happy to recommend them to anyone hiring at scale."
"We needed a specific mix of skills for a senior social hire, which isn't always easy to find in the market. Digital Waffle listened, asked the right questions, and came back with candidates who genuinely matched the brief. Communication was clear throughout and we had the right person in place inside three weeks. Great to work with."
"We needed to grow headcount by 50% in 6 months, including hard-to-fill tech roles, which wasn't something we were going to do on our own. Digital Waffle filled the gap properly. They got us the people we needed at the pace we needed them, and at significantly less cost than building out our own recruitment function. We hit the target on schedule."
"Zak has been a real help in building out our talent pool at Commify. His ability to source candidates across diverse roles has been genuinely impressive. His professionalism and commitment to our recruitment needs have made a real difference to the quality of people we've been able to hire."
Our services
Businesses hire growth and paid media specialists in different ways depending on their team structure, hiring timeline and internal resources. Whether you're strengthening an existing marketing team, adding channel expertise or appointing senior leadership, we’ll help you secure the right hire.
Meet the team
Our performance marketing recruiters understand the channels, metrics and commercial pressures that shape modern growth teams. They work closely with employers to understand the role, campaign ownership and performance targets, making sure every shortlist is relevant from the start.
Salary guides
Salaries in this space are shifting quickly, and the most in-demand specialists know exactly what they’re worth. Without clear benchmarks, it’s easy to lose strong candidates to competing offers.
Our 2027 UK performance marketing salary guide gives you the insights you need to make competitive offers and secure the right hires.
With year-on-year comparisons from 2026, projections for 2028 and a full market overview, it helps businesses make informed decisions when building performance marketing teams.
LATEST INSIGHTS
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FAQs
Performance marketing recruitment is the process of sourcing and hiring specialists responsible for managing paid digital acquisition channels such as PPC, paid social, programmatic advertising and affiliate marketing. As a performance marketing recruitment agency, we help businesses identify professionals who can optimise campaigns, manage media budgets and improve performance metrics such as CPA, ROAS and conversion rates to support measurable digital growth.
Businesses hiring in performance marketing typically recruit specialists responsible for managing and improving paid acquisition channels. Common roles include:
These professionals are responsible for managing advertising spend, optimising campaign performance and scaling digital acquisition strategies across multiple marketing platforms.
Yes. We recruit PPC and Paid Search specialists, Paid Social Managers, Paid Media Managers, CRO specialists, Growth Marketers and performance marketing leaders. We assess platform ownership, budget responsibility and the effect candidates have had on CPA, ROAS, conversion rate and customer acquisition.
Hiring experienced performance marketing professionals can be challenging because demand for paid media and acquisition specialists has grown significantly in recent years. Candidates with proven campaign results and media budget ownership are often approached by multiple employers. This creates a competitive hiring market where businesses need clear role scope, competitive salaries and a well-structured recruitment process.
Assessing performance marketing candidates requires looking beyond platform familiarity. During our recruitment process we evaluate campaign outcomes, budget ownership and the candidate’s role in improving performance metrics such as CPA, ROAS and conversion rates. We also explore how they approach testing, attribution and optimisation to determine whether they can genuinely improve marketing performance.
Campaign budget ownership is often one of the most important factors when hiring performance marketing professionals. Managing a £5,000 monthly budget requires very different decision-making to running six-figure paid media campaigns. During our recruitment process we explore the size of budgets candidates have controlled, how they allocated spend across channels and the impact their optimisation decisions had on campaign performance.
Yes. Many businesses approach us when they want to improve the efficiency and scale of their digital acquisition. We focus on candidates who have experience managing large media budgets, testing new channels and improving performance metrics across multiple campaigns. This helps ensure new hires can contribute to growth rather than simply maintain existing marketing activity.
Hiring timelines vary depending on the seniority of the role and current market conditions. For mid-level roles such as PPC Managers or Performance Marketing Managers, we can often deliver a shortlist within one to two weeks. Senior hires such as Head of Performance Marketing typically take longer due to the smaller candidate pool and the strategic nature of these leadership roles.
Get in touch
If you're strengthening your paid media team or hiring someone to improve acquisition performance, our recruitment team can help.
Share a few details about the role and we’ll be in touch to discuss your hiring requirements.
Prefer to talk? Call us on 0121 517 0357.
