Freelance PPC Strategist – South Africa (German-speaking)

Brafton is one of the world's leading content marketing firms, with offices in Boston, London, Toronto and Sydney. We aspire to continually raise the bar on what people consider "marketing content." We create result-focused strategies and content to drive SEO, social engagement and leads for our clients. Our teams continuously build expertise across new media formats, including video, blogs, infographics and web design.

About the role

We're looking for a freelance PPC strategist to own paid media strategy and day-to-day campaign management for a B2B client's EMEA business.

This is not a translation or copy-adaptation role. You will be the strategist on the account and the client's primary day-to-day contact, working with them in German. You'll build and run the EMEA strategy independently of our US and APAC programmes, while plugging into Brafton's wider global team for knowledge sharing, SEO input and shared learnings.

We want someone with the judgment and confidence to build the right approach for EMEA from first principles.

Scope of work

• Own end-to-end strategy, build and optimisation of Google Ads across EMEA — Search, Performance Max and Display, with additional channels considered where the case is there.
• Join regular calls, reporting sessions and written updates in German.
• Write, adapt and test German ad copy that holds brand tone and reads natively — not translated-sounding.
• Build campaign structures that work across multiple EMEA markets, languages, currencies and time zones, and keep budget pacing sensible across them.
• Brief and coordinate with separately contracted native French and Italian localisation support (you do not need to speak those languages yourself).
• Feed into landing page and localisation decisions alongside our SEO team, including market-appropriate messaging and hreflang / localised page considerations.
• Produce regional reporting that stands on its own for the client while rolling up cleanly into our global PPC reporting framework.
• Partner with our US and APAC strategists to share learnings in both directions, without being dependent on their playbook.

Core competencies

• Native or near-native German (C2), spoken and written , with the confidence to lead client calls and present performance in German. Fluent professional English for collaboration with our team.
• Proven hands-on Google Ads experience across Search, Performance Max and Display, in a B2B lead generation context (not primarily e-commerce).
• Genuine local keyword research capability for German-speaking markets — using in-market tools, search behaviour knowledge and judgment, not machine translation of English lists.
• Strong analysis of German-language search term and keyword data to drive optimisations, negative keyword strategy and match type decisions.
• Sound conversion tracking and measurement practice, including GA4, EU consent requirements and GDPR-compliant tracking setups.
• Comfortable in Google Ads Editor, GA4 and Looker Studio (or equivalent reporting tooling).

Strategic and analytical capabilities

• Able to build an EMEA paid media strategy from first principles — targeting, account structure, bidding and messaging — rather than executing a plan handed down.
• Willing and able to challenge or adapt global playbook tactics where they don't suit local market norms, competitive dynamics or the client's brand-risk tolerance, and to explain that reasoning clearly to both client and agency stakeholders.
• Strong client-facing communicator: can give clear written context behind optimisations and hold a strategic conversation, not just report numbers.
• Comfortable collaborating asynchronously across time zones with an English-speaking team.

Professional requirements

• 4-5 years in paid media, ideally agency-side, with experience managing international or multi-market campaigns.
• Experience in a client facing role - you will be communicating with the client regularly.
• Track record with multinational or B2B clients where German-speaking or wider EMEA markets were a core target region.
• Reliable overlap with UK business hours and some overlap with US Eastern time for internal calls.

Nice to have

• Experience in B2B manufacturing
• Experience working alongside an in-house or agency SEO team.
• Familiarity with paid channels beyond Google in EMEA (LinkedIn, Bing, local platforms).