Get to Know the Team: Meet Heather

Today’s team spotlight is on none other than Heather, our star pay-per-click specialist. Today, learn more about Heather’s background in analytics and how she utilizes it. Let’s see how Heather uses her background in analytics and data to manage and track high performing international PPC accounts here at PlusROI.

Now, you’ve been a member of the PlusROI team throughout the majority of your university time, including while getting your Masters in Epidemiology (congrats on recently finishing that by the way!) How long has it been now since you first started working with PlusROI?

It’s been seven and a half years; I think it was March of 2013 that I started!

Here at PlusROI you specialize in data-driven advertising. For those who may be new to PlusROI, can you tell them what your role entails and what you most commonly work on?

So my work is what we call “PPC”, which is pay-per-click advertising. The general goal of my job is developing digital strategy online for people and companies. I mainly work on platforms like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to develop online marketing strategies for brands.

Basically, I look at all of our advertising data and make decisions to use PPC to increase the brand awareness, lead generation, and customer outreach of businesses. From there I analyze our results and get to work on the ads portion, which is the best part!

What would you say is your favourite part about being a member of the PlusROI team?

I guess my favourite part about working on the team is my team members! They’re so supportive and have so much knowledge, and have been in the industry for so long. Whenever I need someone to give advice or help out they’re always there to lend a hand. Plus, I love the flexibility [the position] offers. I’ve been able to travel, work, and go to university at the same time!

I also love seeing small businesses grow and succeed. The most exciting part is going back to a company and saying, “Look at what we’ve been able to grow!” There are even some companies we’ve worked with during my whole 7+ years of being at PlusROI, so it’s an awesome feeling to see those results (and relationships!) grow.

What originally drove you to pursue a career in data-driven advertising?

I just fell into it! Rian, who is another team member here at PlusROI, is actually my brother. While I was in university he asked if I’d be interested to do a little work on the side, so I started helping out with small things on the PPC end for PlusROI… and it snowballed into a full-time role for me! I’ve been really lucky. They’ve really supported me in growing my career.

Talk to us a bit about why data-driven advertising is so important and what businesses miss out on when they don’t embrace it.

I think the best thing about this kind of advertising is the direct results. You can run experiments and correlate the data to the results in a way that traditional advertising just can’t do. I can track every single thing that we accomplish and we can prove our value through our data.

We’re in a world where data is everything now. We have access to so much great information and we can tailor our strategy to each individual client based on these analytics.

Last but certainly not least, what’s a fun fact about yourself that would surprise people to hear?

I think it often surprises people that I just finished my Masters in Epidemiology because it’s not obviously linked to PPC!

A question I get a lot is where the overlap between PPC and epidemiology is, but I think there’s a ton of it: epidemiology is all about tracking population trends and PPC is almost a solely data-tracking career. In both you’re following hot spots, looking at where you’re consumers are, and watching general data trends. They’re actually really similar at heart!