Senior Paid Social & Participant Acquisition Strategist

Role Overview:

Component is seeking a Senior Paid Social & Participant Acquisition Strategist to build and manage a direct recruitment program for paid, in-person research sessions. The consultant will combine acquisition strategy with hands-on campaign execution, initially reaching college students and other young adults in the Greater Boston area who can attend sessions in Waltham, Massachusetts. Participants in the current study receive a $100 gift card for an approximately two-hour, in-person session. Component is also considering referral incentives to support recruitment.

The role offers the opportunity to establish paid advertising from the ground up, launch quickly, and refine campaigns through continuous testing. Success will center on cost-effective acquisition of qualified participants who attend sessions, contributing to Component’s overall recruitment goal of approximately 4,000 participants per month (about 1,000 per week). 

Working closely with the Head of Strategy and Operations and her team, the consultant will complement existing recruitment vendors and use Component’s established screening and booking infrastructure.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and execute a paid social acquisition strategy to recruit qualified participants for in-person research sessions, initially focused on college students and other young adults in the Greater Boston area.
• Recommend the initial channel mix, testing budget, and acquisition benchmarks, evaluating Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and other relevant platforms.
• Set up advertising accounts and campaigns from scratch, then manage targeting, bids, budgets, launches, and ongoing optimization.
• Build a practical testing plan across channels, ad formats, creative concepts, and messaging, using early results to guide investment and scale effective campaigns.
• Translate Component’s existing messaging into ad copy and campaign assets, ideally creating and iterating on most day-to-day visuals independently and coordinating additional creative support for more complex production needs.
• Partner with Component’s internal team to connect campaigns to its existing screening and booking flow and define measurement needs; Component will handle technical tracking implementation.
• Monitor and report on qualified registrations, bookings, attendance, and acquisition costs, using downstream outcomes to improve campaign performance.
• Work closely with the Head of Strategy and Operations and her team as an embedded fractional partner, sharing clear recommendations and moving quickly from ideas to live campaigns.

Qualifications:

• Senior-level experience developing and executing paid social or performance marketing campaigns, with a strong record of consumer acquisition.
• Hands-on expertise in Meta/Instagram advertising and experience evaluating or managing additional channels such as TikTok and Reddit.
• Demonstrated ability to reach college-age audiences and use geographic targeting to drive local participation.
• Experience driving research participation, appointments, event attendance, or other in-person conversions
• Strong analytical skills, including campaign testing, budget management, conversion analysis, and cost-per-acquisition optimization.
• Strong preference for a strategist who can independently turn messaging into effective ad copy and platform-appropriate creative assets, including static ads, simple short-form video edits, and testing variations, using tools such as Canva, CapCut, or Adobe Express; ability to brief a designer for more complex needs.
• A resourceful, responsive, collaborative working style, with the ability to launch quickly, work independently, and improve campaigns through ongoing experimentation.

Company profile:

Component conducts research and data collection on behalf of companies and academic institutions, with an emphasis on client confidentiality. Its current facility in Waltham, Massachusetts hosts in-person research sessions. The company is building a direct participant acquisition program to complement its existing recruitment vendors, broaden its participant pool, and support continued growth.