Michael Cruz
Muntinlupa City
Summary
Paid media and growth marketing strategist with 4+ years scaling direct-to-consumer brands across Meta and TikTok. Owns the full loop creative brief, media plan, attribution read, reinvestment decision and builds the structured testing systems that determine which concepts earn budget and which get cut. Pairs paid execution with organic growth, including posting systems that compounded reach and audience size without additional spend. Seeking to own budget, creative strategy, and the reporting cadence for a brand or portfolio positioned to scale profitably.
Overview
1
1
Certification
8
8
years of professional experience
Work History
PAID MEDIA & GROWTH MARKETING STRATEGIST
Mcmae Brands
Indianapolis, Indiana
08.2025 - 09.2026
- Own full-funnel paid strategy across Meta and TikTok for a multi-brand portfolio setting campaign architecture, budget allocation, and bidding approach per brand, then revising those decisions against weekly performance data rather than leaning on platform defaults.
- Built a batch-based creative testing system in Figma and nextframe.io: concepts are briefed, produced, and launched in structured batches so results read at the concept level hook, angle, format instead of ad-by-ad guesswork. Proven angles get isolated and scaled; underperformers are retired before they drain budget.
- Scoped creative requests for designers, assigned production tasks, and maintained a continuous pipeline of fresh concepts for testing rather than relying on reactive bursts.
- Drove Cost Per Acquisition down through disciplined audience and creative testing, isolating the demographics, placements, and messaging angles that actually convert and consolidating spend behind them.
- Automated weekly reporting and data extraction using AI tooling (Claude, Manus), replacing manual pulls with a repeatable process that delivers founders the same metrics, defined the same way, every week eliminating the inconsistency that erodes confidence in reported numbers.
- Translate multi-platform datasets into decisions rather than dashboards: spend pacing against target, what is genuinely incremental versus what attribution is double-counting, and where the next increment of budget should go.
- Grew organic social into a compounding acquisition channel, lifting views, reach, and follower counts through deliberate content cadence instead of paid amplification.
- Created and implemented a mass-posting workflow that significantly increased one brand's views and reach, transforming organic distribution into a reliable top-of-funnel source for paid retargeting.
PAID MEDIA BUYER (META, TIKTOK, GOOGLE) / SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIST
Vinta Solutions
Alabang
03.2022 - 03.2025
- Directed full-funnel campaign strategy across Meta, TikTok, and Google, managing monthly budgets end to end and consistently clearing client KPIs and growth targets.
- Established a single source of truth for performance reporting by reconciling GA4, Northbeam, and Triple Whale against platform-reported results resolving the attribution conflicts that stall scaling decisions and giving clients one defensible number to act on.
- Structured audience and creative tests for clean reads one variable, adequate spend, a defined decision threshold cutting CPA by identifying the high-performing demographics and placements worth concentrating budget behind.
- Introduced AI into the creative pipeline (Midjourney, ChatGPT, Gemini) to multiply testing velocity, pushing more concepts into market per cycle at lower production cost and lifting Click Through Rates across accounts.
- Delivered comprehensive weekly performance reporting, including spend pacing against forecasts, incrementality analysis, and actionable recommendations for scaling or adjusting campaigns based on performance diagnostics.
FRAUD PREVENTION ANALYST - ESCALATIONS
JPMorgan Chase
BGC Taguig
01.2020 - 02.2022
- Adjudicated high-value check deposits, reviewing account history, transaction patterns, and risk signals to make hold-or-release decisions on funds under tight turnaround.
- Partnered with anti-fraud management to design a new fraud prevention framework, translating research on emerging fraud typologies into practical detection criteria.
- Maintained a researched database of active fraud trends that fed directly into refining escalation thresholds and prevention processes for the wider team.
CUSTOMER SERVICE TEAM MEMBER
PayPal (Venmo)
Alabang
03.2019 - 12.2019
- Handled email, chat, and inbound support in Zendesk, contributing to a 4% increase in Venmo users through measurable service quality improvements.
- Investigated and resolved unauthorized transaction disputes, protecting account security and retaining customers through high-sensitivity situations.
- Presented weekly team performance analysis in Google Slides, surfacing quality gaps and converting them into concrete action plans.
Education
BACHELOR'S DEGREE - HOTEL & RESTAURANT MANAGEMENT
University of Perpetual Help Las Piñas
Las Piñas, PhilippinesSkills
- Meta Ads Manager
- TikTok Ads Manager
- Google Ads
- Meta Business Suite
- LinkedIn Ads
- Northbeam
- Triple Whale
- Google Analytics (GA4)
- GHL reporting
- Figma
- Nextframeio
- Midjourney
- Higgsfield
- Claude
- ChatGPT
- Gemini
- Canva
- CapCut
- Descript
- Otter AI
- N8n
- ManyChat
- Notion
- Asana
- Trello
- Google Workspace
- Buffer
- Harvest
- Zendesk
Certification
- Advanced Marketing Attribution & Data-Driven Decision Making
- The Digital Advertising Masterclass
- FAMA Facebook Ads Masterminds (2024)
- Facebook Ads & Facebook Marketing Mastery, Coursenvy (2023)
- Content Marketing: Business Growth with Content Marketing + AI, Udemy
- The Upwork Freelance Masterclass with Digital Marketing
Custom
Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads Manager, Google Ads, Meta Business Suite, LinkedIn Ads, GoHighLevel, Northbeam, Triple Whale, Google Analytics (GA4), GHL reporting, Figma, nextframe.io, Midjourney, Higgsfield, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Canva, CapCut, Descript, Otter AI, n8n, ManyChat, Notion, Asana, Trello, Google Workspace, Hootsuite, Buffer, Harvest, Zendesk
Timeline
PAID MEDIA & GROWTH MARKETING STRATEGIST
Mcmae Brands
08.2025 - 09.2026
PAID MEDIA BUYER (META, TIKTOK, GOOGLE) / SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIST
Vinta Solutions
03.2022 - 03.2025
FRAUD PREVENTION ANALYST - ESCALATIONS
JPMorgan Chase
01.2020 - 02.2022
CUSTOMER SERVICE TEAM MEMBER
PayPal (Venmo)
03.2019 - 12.2019
BACHELOR'S DEGREE - HOTEL & RESTAURANT MANAGEMENT
University of Perpetual Help Las Piñas