Summary of the Manager, Paid Social job at Smalls

Smalls is on a mission to make nine lives ten, building a brand that genuinely improves the lives of cats and their people. Today, many of the cat people who find Smalls find us on Meta. It's our largest acquisition channel and we’re looking for someone to fully own it.

We're hiring a Growth Manager to help us acquire new customers efficiently and at scale. This is a channel-agnostic role: you won't own a single platform. Instead, you'll go wherever the opportunity is, whether that's launching a new channel, rescuing an underperforming one, or finding the next lever across our portfolio.

You'll sit on the Performance Marketing team, reporting to the Director of Performance Marketing, and work closely with analytics, creative, product, engineering and finance. Our mix spans paid social, search, TV and CTV, podcast, direct mail, affiliate, app networks, and inserts, and it keeps evolving. We want someone who thinks in terms of customers, CAC, and payback, not in terms of one ad platform.

What you'll do:

• Own acquisition goals across a rotating set of channels, accountable for new customers, spend, CAC, and payback. You'll view performance holistically reporting on the full picture not just platform metrics.

• Direct channel strategy, setting the role, goals, and budget for each channel within the overall acquisition mix.

• Find, test, and scale new growth opportunities, from emerging channels and partnerships to new audiences, offers, and formats.

• Design and run structured experiments, including incrementality and holdout tests, and turn results into clear budget decisions.

• Build forecasts and pacing plans, and reallocate budget across channels based on marginal returns.

• Develop project roadmaps for growth initiatives, track progress against milestones, and report on status, results, and next steps.

• Partner with analytics to improve measurement and attribution, reconciling platform-reported results with what actually drives the business.

• Lead creative concepting and write clear creative briefs, partnering with the creative team on concepts, messaging, and offers that convert. Report on which creative works and why, and feed those learnings back into the next round of briefs across channels.

• Manage relationships with agencies, vendors, and media partners, holding them to clear goals and timelines.

• Communicate performance, insights, and recommendations to leadership in a clear, concise way.

Who you are

• 3 to 5+ years in growth, performance marketing, or acquisition, ideally at a DTC or subscription business.

• Hands-on experience across several paid channels, with proof you've launched or scaled at least one from scratch.

• Strong analytical skills: comfortable in spreadsheets and dashboards, and able to build a forecast or test plan without hand-holding.

• A solid grasp of unit economics (CAC, LTV, payback, contribution margin) and how they shape spend decisions.

• Working knowledge of attribution and measurement, including its limits, and a healthy skepticism of platform-reported numbers.

• A bias to action: you move quickly, test often, and learn from what doesn't work.

• Clear, structured communication, written and verbal, with partners at every level.

• Nice to have:

  • Familiarity with incrementality testing, geo-holdouts, or media mix modeling.

  • Experience at a business with a subscription model.

  • A passion for pets, especially cats.

What you’ll love about us:

• Mission-Driven Company: We love cats and we're here to make nine lives ten.

• People-Driven Company: We treat our people like people; we're committed to Smalls, and we work hard but also respect everyone’s lives outside of work.

• Data-Driven Culture: We love using data to guide decision-making where appropriate, but we also know when to move quickly and go with our gut.

• Competitive Salary: Make some $$$.

• Very Competitive Benefits: Fully paid Health, Vision, and Dental insurance. 4-day work week. Unlimited PTO.

• Fully Remote Office & Culture: Our team is spread across the US day to day, but we travel for department & company off-sites and retreats.

• Free Product: Free cat food every month.