Samantha Njoku · Oklahoma City

I'm Sam.

I build growth systems, and the people who run them.

Nine years in paid acquisition. Three at an agency running 14 accounts, then in-house, where I took a paid search program that was losing money on every dollar and rebuilt it into one that pays for itself.

Today I own channel planning across paid search, paid social, SEO, content and lifecycle, plan a marketing budget approaching $1M across media, agencies and technology, and direct two agency partners who report into me. I have built the measurement, the process and the teams underneath all of it, including the promotion path three people climbed out of entry level on.

I also run a consumer brand of my own. It keeps me honest about what it feels like to spend your own money on advertising and wait to find out whether it worked.

ExperienceNine years, agency and in-house

Budget$968K total marketing

TeamTwo now, up to five, plus vendors

AlsoFounder, two consumer brands

Audience growth is a business outcome. Here is how I prove it.

Budget in, closed revenue out, and the loop that sets next quarter's spend. Click any stage.

Budget

I plan and pace it. My senior vice president owns the P&L above it.

A marketing budget approaching $1M across media, agencies, technology and production. I build the allocation, pace it through the year, and defend it quarterly. The P&L reporting above it sits with my senior vice president, and I am the input to it. What changed under me is the basis of the argument: the split is no longer last year's split, it is what the attribution loop says each channel actually returned.

Scope: $968K total marketing budget

Click any stage. Each one says what I actually do there, and where it is shared.

The numbers

0.16→1.44

Return on ad spend, three fiscal years

At 0.16, every dollar of paid search was destroying value. What matters is not the multiple, it is crossing 1.0, the line where paid media stops costing the company money and starts making it. I did it while spending less.

7 ×

Revenue, on a smaller budget

18.7 ×

Pipeline generated per dollar invested

$968K

Total marketing budget I plan

Promotions in six years

+48%

Opportunities, year over year

+41%

Closed-won deals

+70%

Closed-won revenue

+67%

Return on ad spend

Experience: Nine years, agency and in-house
Budget planned: $968K total marketing
Team: Two now, up to five, plus two vendors
Reports to: CEO and CFO cadence
Industries: Healthcare, public sector, energy, financial services

The system → the turnaroundNone of those numbers were true three fiscal years ago. Here is what the same program looked like when the loop was broken.

The turnaround

What it looked like when the loop was broken.

The paid search program was running at a 0.16 return on ad spend. The real problem was not the campaigns. It was that nothing downstream of the click was connected, so no decision could be defended. Scroll through what I changed, in the order I changed it.

Where it started

Spend went in. Nothing came back.

Ad platforms reported conversions. The CRM held revenue. Nothing joined the two, so every channel could claim credit and none could be disproved. Budget got set by argument.

Move one

Trace before you optimize.

I wired ad spend through to CRM opportunity and closed-won revenue before touching a single campaign. It felt like a detour. It was the job.

Move two

Rebuild on what the data actually said.

Keyword architecture rewritten around buyer intent. Bidding moved onto return and cost-per-acquisition targets. Continuous testing on landing pages and creative. Anything that could not clear the bar got killed rather than nursed.

Where it landed

A loop that sets its own budget.

Closed revenue now feeds allocation. Five fiscal years, sustained, not a spike. The same model became the forecast leadership uses for annual planning.

0.16

Return on ad spend

—

Cost per closed deal

Broken

Attribution

Figures are expressed as ratios rather than absolute dollars, since the underlying revenue belongs to my employer. Full detail available on request.

The turnaround → the pathFixing it once was not the accomplishment. Doing it every year, on a budget that kept shrinking, is the part that took nine years to learn.

The path

Nine years, and the through-line.

Every move added one piece of the same system. That is the reason the loop exists: I have worked inside every stage of it at some point, on both the agency side and the client side.

Still mine today Function eliminated by the company

Nine years, and one thing I never did: hand something back. The only bar that ends is the one the company ended.

2017 – 2020

Ad operations, agency side

More than 14 client accounts and over $2M in media spend across Google Ads, Meta, programmatic and social formats most B2B marketers never touch. Retail, hospitality, travel and B2B. Promoted Coordinator to Specialist to Team Lead in three years.

Added: channel mechanics, and how agencies actually work from the inside

2020 – 2022

Digital marketing, then demand generation

Moved in-house. Took ownership of paid search and paid social, and started asking where the leads went after the form.

Added: the funnel below the click

2022 – 2024

Head of, then director of demand generation

Built the closed-loop attribution model connecting ad spend to CRM opportunity and closed-won revenue. Took on the sales development team, built the company's first sales academy, and created a promotion path that did not exist before.

Added: measurement, the operations to sustain it, and people who report to me

2024 – now

Director of marketing

Channel planning across the full function, two vendor partners reporting in, and a seat on the revenue leadership team. Built the forecasting system leadership now uses to set the annual budget, an AI visibility program before the practice had a name, and the dashboards and agent workflows a small team runs on.

Added: the budget, the forecast, and the argument in front of the CFO

Alongside

Independent: a local operator, from zero

Built the full digital presence for a startup dog daycare and boarding business. Website from scratch, local SEO, Google Business, paid search and Meta, the booking system, the content calendar, and in-house events. Occupancy doubled.

Added: the operator's side of the table, where marketing spend is the same money as payroll

2022 – now

Founder, The Party Sets and The Wedding Sets

A custom decor business in Oklahoma City. I do the design, the social, the paid promotion, the pricing and the books.

Added: what it feels like when the ad budget is your own money

The path → the craftScope that keeps accumulating has to be run by somebody who can still do the work. This is what I can run myself.

Craft

What I can actually run.

Filed by capability rather than employer, because the useful question is what I can run.

Paid search

Account architecture, intent segmentation, ROAS and CPA bidding, geo expansion, search term hygiene, budget pacing at seven figures.

Paid social & programmatic

Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and DSP environments, across both B2B pipeline and consumer conversion.

Attribution & forecasting

Closed-loop models, multi-touch definitions, scenario planning, pipeline floors, and the executive conversation that follows.

SEO, AEO & content

Content planning, technical and content SEO strategy, llms.txt frameworks, AI visibility tracking, and migrations that do not lose traffic.

Lifecycle & marketing ops

Marketo to HubSpot migration led end to end, lead scoring, nurture design, and the Salesforce plumbing underneath.

Vendor & agency direction

A paid search vendor and an SEO agency report into me. I set the strategy they execute against, scope the work and hold the reporting cadence. Three years on the agency side first, so I know what a vague brief costs.

AI systems & enablement

Dashboards that pull scattered sources into one view, documented process where none existed, and agent workflows built for a small team that had been working in silos. This is where most of my building time goes now.

Consumer & local operator marketing

Local SEO, Google Business, booking funnels, and paid social for businesses where one slow month is felt. Built one from zero to double occupancy, and run two consumer brands of my own.

Creative direction & testing

Landing page and ad creative testing programs, plus the judgment to know when the problem is the offer and not the headline.

The craft → the peopleChannels are the part I am fastest at. People are the part that outlasts me.

Leading people

The system I am proudest of has nothing to do with ads.

For a stretch I had the sales development team reporting to me alongside marketing. They were early-career, ambitious and there was no defined way up. Nobody could tell them what promotion actually required. So I built the path, and then I built the program that got them through it.

Start

Sales development

Early-career reps, one per vertical at peak. Held to activity and pipeline targets I set and tracked.

→

Step one

The academy

A two-day immersive program I designed and secured budget for. Leaders from every department explained how their work fits the service we sell.

→

Step two

The pitch

A live pitch competition in front of the full leadership team, including the senior vice president and CEO. You had to prove you understood what we actually do.

→

Promotion

Associate AE

A role that did not exist until I built it with my senior vice president, gated on closing real outbound business, not tenure.

People promoted through it

1st

Sales academy in company history

2 days

Cross-department immersion

Largest team managed

The other half of the job is less pleasant and I will say it plainly: I have also exited people who were not hitting the bar. I would rather set the standard clearly, coach hard against it, and be honest early than let someone drift for a year. Both halves are the same belief, which is that people deserve to know exactly where they stand.

The people → their wordsYou should not have to take my word for any of that.

What people say

Better said by someone else.

“Samantha is a fantastic boss, mentor, and ultimately team leader. Her dedication to not only my individual success, but the overall success of everyone around her speaks volumes.”

Jordan FloydFormer sales development rep, promoted to account executive

“She does an amazing job at empowering her team to find their own voice and take ownership of what they do. I always felt supported and knew she had my best interests in mind.”

Jorden Stephens BalkeFormer direct report

Full references available on request.

All of it → todayEvery stage above still connects back to the first one. That loop is the whole job, and it is how I got here.

About

Oklahoma City. Still opening the ad accounts myself.

I am a University of Oklahoma journalism and advertising graduate, which is probably why I still care whether the copy is any good and not just whether the funnel converts.

The thing I am actually good at is refusing to accept a number I cannot trace. Most of the wins on this page started as someone saying a channel was working, and me asking how we knew.

Lately most of my building time goes into AI systems for a small marketing team: dashboards that pull scattered data into one place, written process where there was only habit, and agent workflows that get people out of their own silos. Nobody asked me to do this. It is just the highest-leverage thing available when the team is small and the ambition is not.

Outside of work I run The Party Sets and The Wedding Sets. It keeps me honest about what it feels like to spend your own money on advertising and wait to find out if it worked.

Based in: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Currently: Director of marketing, B2B services
Stack: Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, HubSpot, Salesforce, GA4, Looker Studio, SEMrush
AI: Claude and ChatGPT daily; dashboards, agents and documented workflows
Education: University of Oklahoma, BA Journalism in Advertising

Contact

Happy to talk shop.

A role, a problem you are stuck on, or a second opinion on an attribution model that is not adding up.

samanthaturner305@gmail.com 405-761-7855 LinkedIn