Expertise / Paid & Growth

Paid & Growth

Growth starts with the economics, not the advertising platform

I have worked with performance marketing and acquisition for most of my career, from hands-on campaign execution to ownership of budgets, strategy, international scaling, creative and cross-functional growth initiatives.

I have worked across B2C, ecommerce, lead generation and B2B, with paid marketing in more than 25 markets.

My approach does not start with the question: “Which campaign should we set up?” but with: “Which customer do we want to acquire, what is that customer worth, and where in the customer journey should paid make a difference?”

That might lead to direct conversion, lead generation, remarketing, new creative concepts or an entirely different acquisition model.

25+markets with paid marketing

€17M+cumulative social ad spend through my career

B2B + B2Cecommerce and lead generation

Paid Social
Paid Search
Lead Generation
Ecommerce
Acquisition Strategy
Creative Testing

View Paid & Growth cases →

Paid as part of the business

ROAS is a signal, not the whole strategy

Performance marketing is quickly reduced to CPM, CPC, CPL and ROAS. Those metrics matter, but they do not always tell the whole story.

That is why I also work with the relationship between:

acquisition cost
lead cost
conversion rate
order economics
customer value
budget allocation
creative performance
funnel
CRM
retention

The right acquisition strategy depends on the business model.

For an ecommerce business, it may be about profitable sales and repeat purchases.
For a B2B business, it may be about lead quality, MQL/SQL and Sales handoff.
For a longer B2C customer journey, a lead can be more valuable than optimising everything for an immediate purchase.

Paid is therefore not an isolated advertising channel. It is part of the overall commercial model.

Acquisition strategy

What should paid actually do?

I typically work with different roles for paid across the customer journey.

Demand & awareness

Creating demand and introducing a product, brand or category to relevant audiences.

Lead generation

Bringing a potential customer into a journey where CRM or Sales can continue the relationship.

Direct conversion

Driving a purchase or another concrete action when intent is high enough.

Remarketing

Responding to previous interest and helping the customer back to the next relevant action.

Launches & campaigns

Building momentum around product launches, events, seasons or commercial periods.

The different objectives require different:

audiences
messages
creative
landing pages
bidding strategies
KPIs

That is why I do not try to force every campaign into the same conversion model.

Acquisition economics

The cheapest lead is not necessarily the best lead

Paid should be assessed on the value created after the click. Among other things, that means I look at:

CPL

What does it cost to generate a lead?

CAC / CPA

What does the desired action or customer cost?

Conversion

What share moves on to the next step?

Customer value

Which customers or segments have the greatest commercial potential?

ROAS

How much revenue can be linked to the marketing investment?

Journey economics

How do CRM, repeat purchases or Sales affect the total value after acquisition?

This becomes especially important when comparing different acquisition models. At Dirks, for example, we shifted the focus from primarily:

paidonline storepurchase

towards more:

lead generationCRMnurturepurchase

because lead acquisition and CRM together could create a better commercial model than optimising only for first-order conversion.

View the Dirks case →

Creative & performance

Creative is a performance variable

Much of performance marketing is not about the technical setup in the ad platform. It is about what the customer actually sees.

That is why, throughout my career, I have worked closely with:

creative concepts
ad copy
static ads
video
UGC formats
lifestyle photography
product photography
landing pages
hooks and messages
content production
creative testing

I have both produced marketing material myself and worked with designers, content teams and external agencies. That allows me to treat creative as an integrated part of the performance strategy rather than a separate output from a creative department.

The question is not only: “Does it look good?” but: “Which hypothesis is this creative testing?”

Testing & optimisation

Performance marketing is a system of hypotheses

I work iteratively with, among other things:

audiences
creative
messaging
offers
landing pages
lead forms
campaign structure
channels
placements
budget allocation

A test result only becomes valuable when it changes the next decision. That may mean:

moving budget
changing creative direction
changing the audience
changing the offer
choosing lead generation over direct conversion
changing the landing page
moving part of the customer journey into CRM

My starting point is not loyalty to a particular campaign structure. If the data shows that another model works better, the model should change.

International performance

One framework. Different markets.

I have worked with acquisition across more than 25 markets. International performance requires a balance between standardisation and local adaptation.

A central setup can create

shared KPIs
campaign structure
reporting
creative principles
testing methodology
governance

Markets can vary in

price
competition
audiences
lead quality
creative response
platform mix
brand awareness

I therefore try to make performance marketing comparable without assuming that all markets are the same.

Cases

Paid & growth in practice

Four projects where paid played four different roles.

Ageras

International acquisition with stronger creative and structure

At Ageras, I was Global Performance Marketing Manager and worked with performance marketing across international markets. My work included:

Facebook/Meta Ads
LinkedIn Ads
ad creative and ad copy
market-level reporting
coordination across local marketing teams
collaboration with design, BI, Growth and Sales

Part of the work was about creating a more consistent and scalable approach to performance and creative across markets.

17%lower CPL

View the Ageras case →

Roccamore

Paid, ecommerce and creative production had to work together

As Head of Paid Marketing at Roccamore, I was responsible for paid marketing across Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The work included:

paid media and budgets
annual campaign planning
product launches and seasonal campaigns
sales
creative production and paid content
collaboration with ecommerce and social media

Roccamore launched new products continuously, which created a large need for creative. One of the central challenges was therefore not media buying alone. It was creating a better workflow between:

campaign plancreativecopyproductionpaidecommerce

So the performance team had the right material when campaigns needed to scale.

Dirks

When lead generation changed the acquisition model

Dirks shows another side of paid growth. Here the answer was not to get better at the existing direct-response model. It was to change the model. We shifted more focus from paid → online store → purchase to lead generation → CRM → nurture → purchase. That made it possible to build the relationship earlier and use both CRM and remarketing throughout the customer journey. At the same time, I worked with:

audience strategy
Meta Lead Ads
conversion campaigns and remarketing
campaign planning
CRM and creative
lifestyle photography
webshop

+201%growth YoY

28%lower marketing budget

View the Dirks case →

SMILY

Acquisition was only the first step

When SMILY launched, the customer journey was longer than a normal ecommerce purchase. Paid had to create interest and leads, but afterwards the customer had to move through an online test, a booking and on into the treatment journey. That is why acquisition was built together with CRM and marketing automation.

Paid created the entry point to the journey. Automation and CRM helped move the customer forward.

8,000+leads

38xROAS

Millionsin revenue

View the SMILY case →

Elektron

Paid in practice: lower CPL, more sales

At Elektron, CPL was reduced by 70% while total sales grew by 200%.

−70%CPL

+200%total sales

“Andreas is ambitious, structured and an expert in Facebook marketing. It was a pleasure to work with Andreas, and I can highly recommend him.”

Lasse Kristensen · CMO, Elektron

Lead generation

B2C and B2B require different definitions of a good lead

I have worked extensively with lead generation throughout my career.

In B2C, paid can generate, for example:

newsletter leads
offer-based leads
booking leads
test/assessment leads
enquiries

In B2B, the lead is often only the beginning of a longer sales process. Here I have worked with the relationship between:

acquisitionleadscoringMQLSQLSales

and with behavioural signals as input to qualification and nurture.

Performance should not be judged only on the number of leads. Lead quality and the downstream funnel result matter at least as much.

Paid + CRM

Acquisition does not end at the conversion

My CRM background shapes the way I work with growth. Not because every paid project should become a CRM project, but because acquisition gets stronger when you understand what happens after the first conversion.

Paid can be used for

building audiences for CRM
lead acquisition
remarketing
reactivation
cross-channel activation

CRM can give paid better signals about

engagement
customer value
lifecycle stage
purchase history
relevant audiences

That makes it possible to think more in terms of customer economics and less in terms of isolated channel metrics.

View CRM & Lifecycle →

Data & measurement

Reporting should make the next decision easier

I have worked with performance data across campaigns, markets and channels, and with dashboards and reporting through, among others:

ad platforms
GA4
Looker Studio
Power BI
CRM data

In my view, reporting should not just show what happened. It should help decide:

where budget should move
which markets to prioritise
which creatives to develop further
which audiences to change
where the funnel problem lies
whether the KPI is the right one at all

View Data, CDP & MarTech →

Platforms

Hands-on experience with the paid stack

I have worked with, among others:

Paid Social

Meta
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn

Paid Search

Google Ads

Measurement

GA4
Google Tag Manager
Looker Studio
Power BI

Creative

Figma
Adobe Creative Cloud
AI-assisted production

CRM / Growth

Klaviyo
HubSpot
ActiveCampaign
Salesforce

I have worked with performance marketing in more than 25 markets and with more than €17 million in cumulative social ad spend through my career.

Where I typically add value

When acquisition needs to be more than running campaigns

I am particularly relevant when a company needs to:

develop or rethink its acquisition strategy
scale paid across several markets
reduce CPL or CAC
connect paid with CRM and lifecycle
build a lead generation model
improve paid creative
establish a better creative testing process
plan launches and seasonal campaigns
improve reporting and KPI structure
analyse acquisition economics
create a better workflow between paid, creative and ecommerce
connect Marketing and Sales around B2B leads

Shall we talk about growth?

If acquisition needs to scale, performance has stalled, or paid needs to work better with creative, CRM and the rest of the customer journey, you are welcome to get in touch.

Senior roles · Interim · Selected projects

View my cases →About me

Contactao@andreasottesen.com +45 27 42 68 12 LinkedIn: Andreas Ottesen