Open to Head of Growth / VP Growth roles

Growth leader who builds the systems that turn new customers into compounding revenue.

Building performance marketing systems at scale since 2011. $35M+ in annual acquisition spend managed across portfolios, $125M+ in attributed revenue for a single national account, and a track record of 100%+ lead growth without sacrificing efficiency. Currently completing MIT Professional Education's Applied Agentic AI for Organizational Transformation.

See Case Studies mwristvedt@gmail.com
Mike Ristvedt — Performance marketing leader
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Annual acquisition spend managed
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Attributed annual revenue
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YoY lead volume lift
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Years scaling growth
What I bring

Acquisition systems, not just campaigns.

I build the structural pieces, testing frameworks, attribution, creative ops, funnel optimization, that let paid media scale efficiently year over year. Then I lead the teams that operate them.

Acquisition & Media

  • Paid Social leadership (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Pinterest, Snap, X)
  • Cross-channel orchestration
  • High-volume lead gen & e-commerce acquisition
  • Audience mapping, bidding, and budget allocation at $25M+/yr

Growth Systems

  • Creative testing frameworks & LPO programs
  • Marketing analytics, attribution, incrementality
  • Revenue forecasting & efficient-growth modeling
  • Funnel optimization & CRO

Leadership

  • Led teams up to 12 across media, creative, analytics
  • Executive-level reporting & stakeholder management
  • Consultative selling, account growth, retention
  • Cross-functional alignment with sales, product, data
Selected work

Two programs. Nine figures of revenue influenced.

Snapshots of the kind of scale and discipline I'd bring to a Head of Growth seat.

National Home Improvement

National Home Improvement — Corporate Acquisition Program

Owned strategy and execution of a $25M+ annual Meta acquisition program for the largest home improvement advertiser in the BMG360 portfolio. Built the testing architecture across creative, audience, bidding, and landing pages that drove year-over-year efficiency at scale.

$25M+
Annual Meta spend
$125M+
Attributed revenue
~20%
Cost of marketing
  • Designed structured experimentation across creative, audience, bidding, and LPO
  • Partnered with analytics on attribution and budget reallocation decisions
  • Delivered executive reporting framed around efficiency, lead quality, and revenue
Enterprise Retail

Fortune 50 Retailer — Paid Social Lead

As Associate Director of Paid Social at GroupM/EssenceGlobal, led one of the largest retail paid social programs in the industry. Ran a 12-person team and drove holiday-season revenue at a ratio that defined the program's ROI story for years.

$50M+
Paid social, 2016
$150M+
2017 holiday revenue
10x+
Holiday ROAS
  • Led campaign strategy, execution, and optimization across the social portfolio
  • Partnered directly with the client's internal media, creative, and analytics teams
  • Built scalable acquisition + branding playbooks across always-on and tentpole moments
AI Initiatives

Bringing applied AI into the growth org.

The next generation of growth orgs won't just use AI tools — they'll be architected around them. That's the transition I'm built for.

In Progress · Completion June 2026

MIT Professional Education — Applied Agentic AI for Organizational Transformation

A cohort program focused on deploying agentic AI systems inside organizations: workflow redesign, governance, change management, and measuring transformation outcomes. Directly applicable to operationalizing AI inside a growth org.

  • Designing agentic workflows that augment marketing, analytics, and ops teams
  • Frameworks for evaluating, deploying, and governing AI inside a P&L
  • Change management for AI adoption at the team and leadership level
Started · 2026— %Complete · June 2026
Live · In Practice

AI-Powered Media Planning & Reporting

Used today across client work to accelerate insight extraction, forecasting, and reporting, turning what used to be multi-day analytics cycles into hours.

  • LLM-assisted creative brief generation tied to performance signals
  • Automated executive reporting with narrative + numbers
  • Forecasting and budget allocation supported by AI co-pilots
Live · In Practice

Agent-Assisted Career & Growth Ops

Built an end-to-end agentic pipeline (Claude Code) that evaluates opportunities, drafts tailored deliverables, manages a tracker, and runs on recurring schedules. A working example of the kind of agent-native ops I'd bring inside a growth org.

  • Multi-agent workflows with structured scoring and human-in-the-loop review
  • Recurring jobs, dedup logic, and integrity checks across data layers
  • Same patterns applicable to lifecycle, paid media QA, and pipeline ops
Live · Side Venture

GBP Management Agency — Local SEO Productized Service

Launched April 2026. Productized Google Business Profile management for HVAC, plumbing, roofing, and electrical contractors in the Minneapolis–St. Paul metro, applying the same acquisition rigor at the local level, augmented by AI tooling for prospect research and reporting.

Career

A 14-year arc from Facebook's early ads team to multi-account growth leadership.

2019 — 2026 · 7 yrs
Client Strategy Director
BMG360 / Five Mill — Remote
Led performance strategy across a portfolio of high-growth brands. Oversaw $35M+ in annual acquisition spend, drove 140% YoY lead growth, and built the cross-functional cadence connecting media, creative, analytics, and sales.
2017 — 2019 · 2 yrs
Associate Director, Paid Social
GroupM / EssenceGlobal — Target Corporation
Lead paid social strategist for one of retail's largest social programs. Managed $35M+ in 2017, and led a 12-person team supporting the client's internal media, creative, and analytics partners.
2014 — 2017 · 3 yrs
Director, Paid Social
ZOG Digital / Investis
Led paid social for Fruit of the Loom, Hotwire.com, IMG Academy, Wyndham Vacation Rentals, Rack Room Shoes, Pep Boys and others. Partnered with creative, search, and programmatic teams on cross-channel performance.
2012 — 2014 · 2.5 yrs
Account Manager (Contract)
Facebook — Facebook for Business
Early member of Facebook for Business during the rollout of self-serve advertising. Advised advertisers on campaign strategy, targeting, and optimization at platform scale.
2010 — 2011
Digital Media Specialist
FullSwing Solutions
Drove website revenue growth through traffic partnerships and content distribution deals, while launching early paid social campaigns during Facebook's initial advertising rollout.
Portfolio

40+ brands across retail, home services, fashion, fintech, education, and CPG.

Filter by category to see the kind of acquisition problems I've owned.

Get in touch

Looking for a growth leader who can scale acquisition and bring AI into the org?

I'm exploring Head of Growth, VP Growth, and Senior Director of Growth Marketing roles. Happy to share case studies, walk through specific account work, or talk shop on agentic AI inside marketing teams.

mwristvedt@gmail.com 952.250.1762 linkedin.com/in/mikeristvedt Resume Upon Request