Amar Shekhar Pathak, Marketing Expert in Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Amar Shekhar Pathak

Marketing Expert

Vancouver, BC, Canada

Toptal member since August 20, 2024

Bio

Amar is a growth-focused eCommerce marketer and a computer science graduate with 10+ years of experience scaling D2C brands and managing stores with over $5 million in revenue. He specializes in scaling paid media using his proven scaling frameworks, like the surfing method, golden hour bidding, etc. His expertise is CRO, CVR optimization, reducing funnel friction, data analytics, deep attribution modelling, etc. Amar has managed over $10 million in ad spend and $50 million in revenue.

Project Highlights

835% Growth in Gross Revenue from $0.6 to $4.67 Million for a Beauty Brand
Averaged around 45% YoY growth over six years and transformed a modest online sales of $559,000 in 2018 to a substantial $4.67 million in 2024 through strategic digital marketing and operational enhancements.

Expertise

  • Data Analytics
  • Digital Marketing
  • Digital Marketing Strategy
  • Facebook Ads
  • Google Ads
  • Lead Generation
  • Meta Ads
  • eCommerce

Work Experience

Freelance

2020 - PRESENT
Digital Ashva
  • Transformed a Shopify store from modest online sales of $0.59 million in 2018 to a substantial $4.67 million in 2024, averaging around 45% YoY growth and a total 820% growth.
  • Grew sales of a Covid-hit retail business on Google Ads from $279,000 in Q1 2021 to $2.02 million in Q2 2025, while improving the ROAS and fixing the digital infrastructure of the client within two weeks.
  • Scaled a home decor and furniture brand to 8.81x ROAS in a highly competitive and seasonal market, with costs of $335,000 and a conversion value of $2.95 million on Meta ads.
  • Generated a ROAS of 8.17x during the BFCM season for a high AOV client by rapidly scaling the campaigns in a span of just three months on Meta ads.
  • Scaled the monthly lead volume of a healthcare startup with high-LTV and long-purchase cycle by 8.4x on Google ads from 651 in May 2024 to 5456 in June 2025. Their monthly CLV also went up by 326% from 0.19 in Q2 2024 to 0.81 in Q2 2025.
  • Improved the combined CPA on Google and Meta ads by 31.23% over a span of six months, from $88.12 in Jan 2025 to $60.60 in June 2025, while maintaining the spend on both platforms, combined over $150,000 monthly average.
  • Scaled Google Ads campaigns for a healthcare startup in medication delivery from scratch to over $400,000 in monthly spend while maintaining the lead volume and lead quality for almost a year.
  • Scaled Google Ads campaigns for a client in education from the ground up to almost $400,000 in quarterly spend while improving the lead volume and lead quality over the years.
  • 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.

Head of Digital Marketing

2021 - 2024
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.
  • Devised the core strategy, campaign structure, and audience setup across Google Ads and Meta Ads primarily.

Senior Strategist

2018 - 2020
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

2015 - 2018
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

835% Growth in Gross Revenue from $0.6 to $4.67 Million for a Beauty Brand

Averaged around 45% YoY growth over six years and transformed a modest online sales of $559,000 in 2018 to a substantial $4.67 million in 2024 through strategic digital marketing and operational enhancements.

WORK DONE
• Mapped channels to funnel stages: Pinterest and TikTok for top-of-funnel, Meta and Google for mid-funnel, and Shop, Email, and Omnisend for retention.
• Used attribution tools like TripleWhale to boost marketing efficiency by analyzing product, traffic, and customer data—optimizing bundles and AOV, new customer spend, conversion rates, and funnel performance.
• Adapted to changes like iOS 14.5 by implementing CAPI, server-side tracking, 1-day click attribution, CBO, and DCO, and enhanced conversions on Google Ads. Shifted paid social traffic to website and shop destinations, and enriched product feed data for catalogue campaigns.
• Used creative strategies like influencer collabs via TikTok Creative Challenge, UGC generation, the surfing method on Meta to scale, product set partitioning on PMax, and email/SMS automations to boost engagement.
• Led cross-media optimization by enriching product and user data—syncing Judge.me reviews to Google and Meta, enhancing product attributes, optimizing social shops, and using AI-driven creatives within brand guidelines.
• Tested various campaign types, landing pages, and creative and copy styles to identify top performers for both vertical and horizontal scaling.

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.

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.

Education

2014 - 2014

Master's Degree in Data Analytics

Freie Universität Berlin - Berlin, Germany

2012 - 2014

Master's Degree in Computer Science

International Institute of Information Technology - Bangalore, India

Certifications

JUNE 2022 - PRESENT

Google Ads Search Certification

Google Skillshop

JUNE 2021 - PRESENT

Google Analytics Certification

Google Skillshop

Skills

Core

Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Digital Marketing, Lead Generation, Digital Marketing Strategy, Paid Advertising

Other

Data Analytics, eCommerce, Meta Ads, Healthcare, Computer Science, Shopify

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