Performance Marketing Specialist - Google Ads

About Pillar

Pillar is an Italian startup founded on February 13, 2025. In less than a year, we raised €15.2 million to revolutionize the construction industry, and we are growing fast. Our mission is to rebuild its foundations. Our ambition is to manage 1 in 3 construction sites in Europe. We are Italian, but with a European vision 🚀

The Italian construction industry is the backbone of the country's economy, involving nearly 5 million people, yet it is still managed with outdated tools.

Pillar was built to solve this problem at its root. We have built an all-in-one platform that allows construction companies to oversee every job site and monitor profitability in real time.

Why Join Us Now

Google is where customer intent lives, and it's one of our biggest opportunities for growth.

Until now, Google Ads has been managed alongside other responsibilities. But this channel deserves dedicated ownership. We're looking for someone who can turn search intent into qualified pipeline, teaching Google's algorithms to distinguish a curious click from a potential customer.

This isn't a role where you simply set up campaigns and send monthly reports. You'll own a critical growth channel, directly influencing how efficiently Pillar acquires customers and scales across markets.

The Team

You'll report to the Performance Marketing Manager and join our central Growth function, working alongside the specialists managing Meta, TikTok and Google, a frontend developer focused on landing pages, an SEO specialist, and a data analyst.

You'll also collaborate closely with the Brand & Content team and our SDRs to ensure that every lead is relevant, actionable, and capable of becoming a real sales opportunity.

Our Growth function supports every market Pillar enters. What you build for Italy today can become the playbook for Spain and the countries that come next.

What You'll Do

In practice:

• Own Google Ads end to end: manage Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen and YouTube campaigns, alongside Microsoft Ads, covering account structure, budgets, bidding strategies, search-term analysis, negative keywords and experimentation.

• Turn conversion data into growth: connect campaign performance with what happens after a form submission, from qualified leads and meetings held to signed contracts. You'll work on offline conversion imports, enhanced conversions and value-based bidding to help Google's algorithms optimize for real business outcomes.

• Capture demand at the right moment: identify opportunities around regulatory changes, updated price lists, tax deadlines and industry events, building campaigns that reach potential customers when they need us most.

• Build effective funnels: work with the team to align triggers, ads, landing pages and conversion tracking, creating a consistent journey from the first search to a qualified opportunity.

• Optimize the post-click experience: collaborate with our frontend developer to improve landing pages, forms and loading speed, with a particular focus on mobile conversion.

• Scale across markets: manage the Spanish account and help build a repeatable acquisition playbook for future markets, working with local teams and native speakers.

• Make every euro count: monitor performance weekly, focusing on cost per qualified lead and pipeline contribution rather than just cost per lead. Understand what's driving results and turn insights into action.

Your one goal: grow the pipeline generated through Search while reducing the cost of each qualified opportunity.

Your First 90 Days

• Month 1: understand our customers by joining sales calls and visiting a construction site. Audit the Google Ads account and conversion tracking setup, then implement the first improvements.

• Month 2: launch an improved account structure, feed downstream conversions into bidding strategies, and start running structured experiments.

• Month 3: take ownership of the channel's weekly performance reviews, manage the Spanish account, and define the next opportunities to scale.

Who We're Looking For

We're looking for someone who combines analytical thinking, hands-on execution, and a strong sense of ownership.

• You understand that Smart Bidding is only as effective as the conversion data behind it, and you've worked with a CRM to connect advertising activity with actual business outcomes.

• You know how to analyze search terms, identify intent clusters, refine match types and uncover opportunities others might overlook.

• You follow the lead beyond the form submission. You work closely with Sales, understand lead quality, and use feedback to improve campaign performance.

• You know how to distinguish meaningful trends from short-term fluctuations and make decisions based on reliable data.

• You can write clear, specific ads in natural Italian, focusing on the problems customers actually want to solve.

• You take ownership of results, move quickly, experiment, measure impact and proactively address issues.

Requirements

• 3–5 years of hands-on experience managing Google Ads, either in-house or at an agency, with budgets that require a rigorous, data-driven approach.

• Experience in lead generation with a sales team behind it, ideally in B2B, B2B2C or considered-purchase B2C environments.

• Practical experience with offline conversion imports or enhanced conversions for leads, integrated with a CRM such as HubSpot.

• Strong knowledge of GA4 and Google Tag Manager, with confidence working with spreadsheets and performance data.

• Native-level Italian and fluent English.

Nice to Have:

• Spanish proficiency or experience managing campaigns across multiple countries.

• Experience with Microsoft Ads, performance-oriented YouTube campaigns, Google Ads scripts or APIs.

• Familiarity with HubSpot, PostHog, Looker Studio or BigQuery.

• Experience targeting small business owners or working in traditional industries.

• Experience using AI to accelerate campaign analysis, scripting and ad-variant generation, while understanding its limitations.

• Previous experience in a startup or high-growth environment.

You don't need to know what a SAL is. You need to be curious about the problems that keep our customers awake at night.

How We Work at Pillar

At Pillar, we row in the same direction: when one of us accelerates, we all move forward. We're ambitious, we raise the bar, and we take ownership of our work.

We offer clear goals, the tools to succeed, direct communication and honest feedback. We move fast, challenge assumptions and avoid unnecessary bureaucracy.

Pillar isn't for you if you want clearly defined boundaries, already-perfect processes, a calm pace, or someone telling you exactly what to do every day.

What We Offer

• Compensation: €30,000–€40,000 gross annual salary, depending on experience and impact.

• Benefits: €1,000 in fringe benefits, €1,000 in welfare benefits, and €8/day meal vouchers.

• Ownership: real responsibility for a critical growth channel, with a direct impact on acquisition efficiency and business results.

• Growth: meritocratic progression, where impact drives advancement.

• Location: Milan (Italy)

• Team: a young, ambitious and collaborative team focused on building something meaningful.

• Offsites: team gatherings every six months.

Our Hiring Process

1. An introductory conversation with our Talent Acquisition team.

2. A practical case based on real, anonymized data from our account. You'll explain what you would change and why, working independently for approximately two hours.

3. A technical interview with our Growth Marketing Manager, starting from your case.

4. A final conversation with our VP of Growth.

Ready to Apply?

Skip the long list of certifications. Tell us one account story in five lines: the market, the budget range, what you changed, what happened to cost per qualified lead, and what you would do differently today.

If you want to manage campaigns someone else has already structured, this probably isn't the right role.

If you want to turn Search into one of Pillar's most efficient sources of customers, across every market we enter, we'd love to hear from you.

Let's build something great. Together. 🧱🚀