Amar Shekhar Pathak
Verified Expert in Marketing
Marketing Expert
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Toptal member since August 20, 2024
Amar is a healthcare growth marketer with 10+ years turning paid media into measurable customer acquisition. He's generated 700,000+ leads with 20% better lead quality, 33% more signups, and 40% more activations—all at a stable CPA. He scaled Google and Meta Ads spend from near-zero to $400,000+ monthly while improving lead quality, and grew organic traffic to 30,000+ monthly clicks and 2+ million impressions in regulated, HIPAA-sensitive verticals: telehealth, online pharmacy, weight loss, etc.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Data Analytics
- Digital Marketing
- Digital Marketing Strategy
- Facebook Ads
- Google Ads
- Lead Generation
- Meta Ads
- eCommerce
Work Experience
Freelance
Digital Ashva
- Scaled monthly lead volume for a high-LTV healthcare startup by 8.4x on Google Ads, from 651 leads monthly to 5,456 leads while growing monthly CLV by 326%.
- Reduced combined CPA across Google and Meta Ads by 31.23% in six months (from $88.12 to $60.60) for a healthcare client, while sustaining over $150,000 in monthly ad spend.
- Took Google Ads for a medication delivery startup from scratch to $400,000+ in monthly spend, maintaining consistent lead volume and quality for nearly a year, in a category with strict prescription-advertising compliance requirements.
- Generated 700,000+ leads across regulated healthcare verticals (telehealth, pharmacy, men's/women's health, weight loss, GLP-1, birth control, ED) with 20% better lead quality, 33% more signups, and 40% more activations, all at a stable CPA.
- Built compliant, HIPAA-sensitive acquisition systems from the ground up for sensitive categories like weight loss and TRT, covering the full funnel from awareness through consult booking, approval, and subscription retention.
- Scaled Meta ads campaigns for a client in education from the ground up to almost $700,000 in quarterly spend while improving the lead volume and lead quality over the years.
- Built acquisition funnels for a GLP-1 and weight loss brand, scaling Google and Meta Ads from $10,000 to $300,000 in monthly spend while navigating strict platform policies around prescription weight-loss advertising and improving CAC by 17%.
Head of Growth
DooU Health
- Scaled monthly lead volume for this startup by 8.4x on Google Ads, from 651 leads monthly to 5,456 leads, while growing monthly CLV by 326%.
- Reduced combined CPA across Google and Meta Ads by 31.23% in six months (from $88.12 to $60.60) while sustaining over $150,000 in monthly ad spend.
- Built acquisition systems from the ground up for sensitive categories like weight loss, GLP-1, Women's Health, and erectile dysfunction, covering the full funnel from awareness through consult booking, approval, and subscription retention.
- Built acquisition funnels for a GLP-1 and weight loss brand, scaling Google and Meta Ads from $10,000 to $300,000 in monthly spend while navigating strict platform policies around prescription weight-loss advertising and improving CAC by 17%.
Head of Digital Marketing
Pocket Pills
- Generated over 700,000 leads with 20% better lead quality, 33% more sign-ups, and 40% more activations, all while maintaining a stable CPA.
- Scaled Google ads campaigns from almost scratch to over $400,000 in monthly spend while improving the lead volume and quality within a year.
- Led SEO and content efforts in the early stages, scaling the monthly organic clicks to 30,000 and organic impressions to over 2 million.
- Collaborated with product, engineering, and sales teams to optimize the customer acquisition funnel, resulting in higher conversion rates and scalable growth for one of Canada's leading digital healthcare platforms.
- Increased new patient sign-ups by 33% and improved activation rates by 40% through full-funnel optimization, landing page testing, and attribution-driven campaign management.
Senior Strategist
Archive Digital
- Managed SEO and paid media for some of their largest clients, averaging over $3 million in ad spend.
- Led and redesigned their entire SEO process from the SEO audit process to checklists and setups. I also trained team members to take up SEO roles.
- Held the responsibility of the entire campaign setup lifecycle, which included goal setup, account structuring, targeting and audiences, creatives and ad copy, performance metrics deep dive, pixel and tracking setup, budget and bidding review, etc.
- Scaled Google Ads campaigns for a client in education to almost $200,000 in quarterly spend while improving lead volume and quality, while testing different landing pages, ad copy angles, keywords, campaign types, etc., across programs and geos.
- Scaled Google Ads campaigns for a client in education from the ground up to almost $300,000 in quarterly spend while improving lead volume and quality and testing different landing pages, ad copy angles, and audiences across programs and geos.
Head of Search & Marketing
Ittisa
- Built media plans for their clients for traffic, lead, and revenue growth based on past performance, industry benchmarks, and budget scenarios. Set realistic and measurable growth targets backed by historical data.
- Lead the development of a data-backed search and social strategy (SEO, SEM, and SMM), identifying high-opportunities and performance gaps in existing marketing efforts.
- Monitored and analyzed key metrics like CTR, CPC, ROAS, CAC, CVR, etc. across paid, social, and organic channels. Used insights to refine campaigns, reallocate budgets, and improve overall marketing efficiency.
- Analyzed user journeys across channels to determine the true contribution of each touchpoint (first-click, assisted, last-click, and more). Used attribution data to inform strategy for channel mix, campaign messaging, and retargeting logic.
Project History
Scaling Lead Volume by 740% with Improved ROAS for a High-LTV and Long Purchase-cycle Startup
- 98.9% — Yearly Growth Rate
- 145% — YoY ROAS Growth
- 81x — Growth in Spend
- 8.3x — Growth in Lead Volume
A healthcare startup operating in a very competitive market segment approached me in Q2 2024 to take over and improve their newly-launched Google Ads campaigns. The account was underperforming, with a limited search impression share and suboptimal conversion value per cost.
Immediate problems that I had to address were:
• Delayed purchase cycle
• Conversion drop along a multi-step long funnel
• Google ads restrictions due to the nature of the industry
• High competition and CPA
• Low ROAS from early-stage or signup conversions
Intent-driven Value-based Budgeting and Bidding
• Assigning value to funnel steps and campaign budget based on users’ intent.
• Consolidated fragmented campaigns into a simplified, value-based structure.
• Introduced Performance Max and Dynamic Search Ads to cover intent gaps.
• Adjusted conversion values of necessary funnel steps to reflect their relative worth.
• Updating landing page and ad copy to reflect latest program changes based on competitor landscape analysis and monitoring.
LTV and Purchase Cycle-based Approach
• Shifted budgets from less-performing campaigns to high-converting ones to capitalize on performance.
• Standardizing inconsistent targeting, such as device, age, gender, etc., and level bidding based on performance.
• Negating out the targeting and keywords that are likely to result in low-LTV and longer decision windows.
• Increased bids on top-performing keywords to grow impression share from missed opportunities.
• Identified and removed low-quality placements in Display and PMax.
Their monthly lead volume went up by 8.4x from 651 in May 2024 to 5,456 in June 2025. Their quarterly ROAS also went up by 326% from 0.19 in Q2 2024 to 0.81 in Q2 2025, as I also scaled campaigns where Google ad spend went up 81x from $1,923 in May 2024 to $156,190 in June 2025.
Post-COVID Digital Turnaround: Scaling Google Ads by 610%
- 185% — Increase in Conversion Value Over Three Years
- 56.17% — Annualized Growth Rate
- 240% — Increase in Spend While Maintaining ROAS
During and post-COVID-19 times, this in-store brand with a few stores struggled to keep up with its in-store sales when the world took to staying at home and remote working. Their business had almost come to a standstill and experienced a dramatic drop in foot traffic and revenue. With minimal to almost no online infrastructure in place, they risked shutting down operations entirely.
I was brought in with a clear mandate:
• Fix their digital infrastructure spanning across multiple digital assets.
• Launch and scale digital marketing campaigns.
• Achieve this with minimal turnaround time and budget.
Building the Digital Foundation
• Cleaned their website data points and tracking within 10 days.
• Integrated inventory management and data feed to sync products with the website and store, and make them available for marketing.
• Set up GA4, Google Ad Tracking, Google Merchant Center, etc.
• Refined email and SMS marketing systems. Also used their first-party data to initiate email and SMS flows.
Quick-launch Marketing Strategy
• To start with, a branded campaign along with a generic PMax campaign for all products was launched.
• Optimization involved excluding low-priced items (<$20), low inventory items, off-season products, high return rate items, etc.
• Ran conversion campaigns focused on best-selling in-store products to boost initial orders. Also, bundled the best-sellers with other products to increase AOV and cart value.
• Created product sets based on the product types and allocated budget towards different campaigns based on performance.
• Create audience signals based on first-party data and existing customer database for segmented email campaigns and automations
Long-term Optimizations
• Introduced TripleWhale as a single source of truth.
• Taking SEO beyond the website by optimizing feed, Google shop, social shops, and UGC Signals.
• Started tracking funnel metrics such as new and old customers, CAC, ROAS, AOV, etc.
• Used data feedback loop for CRO optimization.
• Started using product analytics to improve ROAS, bundled items, sell-through rate, etc.
Grew sales of a Covid-hit retail business from $279,000 in Q1 2021 to $1.98 million in Q2 2025, while maintaining the ROAS and scaling spend from $13.5,000 to $181,000 during the same time frame.
Education
Master's Degree in Data Analytics
Freie Universität Berlin - Berlin, Germany
Master's Degree in Computer Science
International Institute of Information Technology - Bangalore, India
Certifications
Google Ads Search Certification
Google Skillshop
Google Analytics Certification
Google Skillshop
Skills
Core
Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Digital Marketing, Lead Generation, Digital Marketing Strategy, Paid Advertising, Performance Marketing, Funnel Optimization
Other
Data Analytics, eCommerce, Meta Ads, Healthcare, Computer Science, Shopify, Telehealth, Pharmaceuticals, Digital Health, Nutrition & Supplements, Startups, Growth Marketing, online pharmacy, weight loss, Paid Media
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