Susanna E Skelley
Verified Expert in Marketing
Marketing Expert
Oakland, CA, United States
Toptal member since February 11, 2026
Susanna is a growth marketing consultant with 18 years of experience helping companies scale performance-driven acquisition. She has built in-house teams at large organizations and supported early and growth-stage startups. Susanna focuses on paid search, YouTube, and OTT/CTV, with an approach rooted in understanding the people problem: what drives user need, and how to design a funnel that meets that motivation at every step.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- A/B Testing
- Advertising
- B2B
- Bing Ads
- Funnel Analysis
- Google AdSense
- Google Ads
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Work Experience
Growth Lead
Nourish
- Scaled the Google Ads SEM program by over 150% month-over-month (MoM) through restructuring, optimizing keywords, and conducting conversion-focused landing page (LP) testing.
- Launched YouTube and streaming TV/audio as net-new channels using project management tools to coordinate 0 to 1 tests into core acquisition levers, contributing to 35% of new patient volume.
- Conducted deep patient keyword research and qualitative interviews to uncover behavioral and motivational drivers, translating insights into data-backed creative strategy, messaging, and targeting that improved engagement and conversion rates.
- Collaborated with teams to ensure marketing strategies complied with health industry regulations, including HIPAA, leveraging healthcare experience.
- Developed and operationalized unified incrementality and attribution frameworks to isolate true channel impact, inform budget allocation, and improve CAC to LTV efficiency across SEM, YouTube, and paid social channels.
Director of Performance Marketing
Outcomes4me
- Managed multimillion-dollar acquisition budgets across SEM, YouTube, paid social, and Apple Search Ads, driving a 50% increase in new users and maintaining CAC within target efficiency.
- Launched and scaled CTV and OTT as new acquisition channels, expanding total reach by 15% and unlocking incremental conversions at competitive CPAs.
- Owned CRM integrations and lifecycle marketing to boost activation and retention, improving user LTV by 15% through targeted messaging and automated campaigns.
- Built and led a cross-functional growth pod of marketers, creatives, and analysts while managing key vendors and agencies to accelerate testing velocity and creative output.
- Partnered with PR and communications teams to align performance campaigns with brand storytelling, strengthening awareness and trust among patient audiences.
- Collaborated with product and data teams to refine funnel instrumentation, improve attribution accuracy, and inform data-backed spend allocation across the portfolio.
- Managed and executed marketing initiatives in line with healthcare compliance standards, e.g., HIPAA.
Senior Marketing Manager
Ethos
- Assisted in securing Series D and D-1 funding of $300 million, resulting in $2.7 billion valuation, by scaling net revenue through the paid search program to achieve the target set by VCs. It is currently in the pre-IPO state.
- Scaled SEM program 300% YoY to over $1 million monthly spend through keyword expansion, audience expansion, and full funnel optimization that directly supported B2B services distribution via partner channels.
- Managed $1+ million monthly paid social with ROAS of over 1.2, improving efficiency with value-based bidding.
- Launched YouTube as a new channel, scaling from $50,000 to $500,000 per month through creative testing and incrementality analysis.
- Produced and led modular DTC video creative that simplified complex insurance offerings into clear, high-converting narratives, driving stronger engagement across SEM, YouTube, and paid social.
- Transitioned performance marketing from agency to in-house, hiring SEM and analytics talent to scale execution and accelerate learning velocity.
- Partnered cross-functionally with product, engineering, and brand teams to drive landing page experimentation, marketing science investments, platform integrations, and creative production.
Director of Digital Marketing
Suiteness
- Scaled site traffic by 160% and memberships by 50% YoY by leading multi-channel acquisition across SEM, YouTube, paid social, affiliates, and metasearch, optimizing creative, bidding, and targeting for efficiency.
- Overhauled SEM portfolio and implemented a structured landing page experimentation roadmap that lifted paid search conversion rates and lowered CAC.
- Built end-to-end marketing dashboards and attribution models to centralize performance insights, accelerating decision-making and spend optimization.
- Launched an always-on creative and audience testing program to identify high-intent B2B lead segments and improve campaign scalability across platforms.
Senior Manager, Digital Marketing
Glassdoor
- Supported the paid acquisition team in SEM and affiliate job board partnership programs.
- Established quality control thresholds for the affiliate partner program.
- Increased the conversion rate from the partner program by 20% MOM.
- Managed relationships with 40+ affiliate partners. Oversaw traffic to ROAS and quality targets.
- Worked cross-functionally with stakeholders from the marketplace, BizDev, data science, and sales to meet quarterly traffic delivery goals.
Senior Paid Search Manager
Williams-Sonoma Inc
- Transitioned paid search management from third-party agencies to an in-house program.
- Assisted in building and managing the paid search team.
- Improved paid search efficiency by 30% YOY. Oversaw management of $30 million in paid search budgets.
- Spearheaded the growth of the paid search mobile channel. Partnered with Google to create a customized mobile attribution model.
- Coordinated team utilization of Kenshoo bid management tool to meet forecasts and ROI goals.
- Drove the adoption of the new paid search mobile attribution model by the e-marketing team and executives.
- Created training materials and educated internal stakeholders on paid search fundamentals.
Senior SEM Manager
Ask.com
- Launched Bing SEM portfolio and grew margin by 700% (over $800,000 per month).
- Built the SEM mobile channel from the ground up into a sustainable source of revenue of over $400,000 per month.
- Served as one of the founding members of the SEM team that expanded the in-house portfolio into a substantial source of profitability with over 130% growth in margin.
- Launched the SEM training program. Trained the UK SEM team to expedite integration into the US team.
- Built, launched, and optimized PPC marketing campaigns on multiple channels to meet ROI and run-rate goals.
- Analyzed data using R, SQL, and Excel to make well-informed strategy decisions.
- Expanded and managed a portfolio of 20+ million keywords on Google and Bing.
- Created and led all SEM mobile campaigns, bid strategies, and keyword expansions.
Project History
Establishing YouTube as a High-impact Growth Channel
- 35% — User Signups
- 1.3 — Incremental Lift
With growth flattening across core paid channels like Search, Meta, TikTok, and OTT/CTV, the team needed to test and validate new acquisition channels through structured experimentation to unlock scale.
RESEARCH
Modeled YouTube performance, evaluating CPMs, Shorts vs. SIS mix, and required spend for signal strength.
IMPLEMENTATION
Ran a 6-week pre-test to stabilize campaigns, then configured geo-targeting in Google Ads for clean lift testing.
EXPERIMENTATION
Launched a 4-week incrementality test with Haus, plus a 2-week post-test holdout, to validate impact and inform scaling.
Increased investment and drove a 35% lift in new user growth from YouTube alone, as the lift test showed YouTube was 1.35 times more incremental than our attribution model suggested, validating it as a scalable channel.
Transforming Paid Search with Value-based Bidding
- 300% — Increase in Revenue Growth
- 120% — Increase in ROI
The paid search program plateaued under an existing tCPA model. Without LTV-based user valuation, bids were capped at average CPA. This limited scale, stalled growth, and prevented the client from acquiring higher-value users.
SETUP
Partnered with business analytics to define LTV model inputs, e.g., age and health, and aligned on revenue logic.
INTEGRATION
Worked with the development team to build and QA an API pipeline passing LTV into Google Ads, with alerts for failures.
EXPERIMENTATION
Split SEM portfolio into test (tROAS) and control (tCPA) groups, running a 12–16 week experiment to measure bidding efficiency, performance lift, and scale potential under a value-based model.
Achieved a 300% YoY increase in SEM revenue after the test demonstrated the value of ROAS-based bidding. The program went from break-even to 20% ROI, unlocking profitable scale and helping drive progress toward the company’s Series D funding targets.
Zero-to-one YouTube Launch with Measurable Impact
- 500% — Increase in Channel Volume
- 200% — Increase in Realized ROI
The client lacked a way to measure YouTube’s actual value because of the channel’s high view-through and last-click attribution. Additionally, the client lacked a way to test incrementality. Their existing video creative assets were underperforming and not tailored to YouTube’s hook-in-the-first-six-seconds format.
CREATIVE STRATEGY
Researched practical YouTube ad formats and pitched a humor-based concept to break through the noise in a typically serious category.
PRODUCTION
Collaborated with creative and production teams to bring the concept to life.
Vetted talent selection and oversaw on-site production.
MEASUREMENT
Partnered with marketing analytics to design and run a geo-based holdout test to validate YouTube’s incrementality and to help guide future investment.
Conducted geo-based test showing a 2 times increase in test markets, confirming YouTube’s undervaluation in the last-click model. This allowed the team to scale monthly spend from $50,000 to $500,000.
Education
Master's Degree in Politics and International Relations
University of Kent, Canterbury - Canterbury, UK
Bachelor's Degree in Journalism
Texas State University - San Marcos, TX, USA
Certifications
Google Ads Certification
Skills
Core
Google Paid Ads, Google Ads, Campaign Management, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Paid Advertising, Pay-per-Click (PPC), Marketing Strategy, YouTube Ads, Funnel Analysis, Funnel Optimization, A/B Testing, Marketing Analytics, Google Tag Manager, SEO Tools, Apple Search Ads, Keyword Research, Lead Generation
Platforms & Tools
Bing Ads, Amplitude, Iterable, R
Business Models
B2B
Technical
SQL
Other
Paid Search, Bid Management, Advertising, Google AdSense, Customer Acquisition, Growth Marketing, Growth Strategy, Meta Ads, Creative Testing, Creative Writing, Incrementality Testing, Creative Briefs, Creative Thinking, Agency Relationship Management (ARM), Landing Page Optimization, Slack, Notion, Metabase, AppsFlyer, Heap, WordPress, Writing, Research, Critical Thinking, Broadcast Journalism, Psychology, Article Writing, Over-the-top Content (OTT), CTV Ads, Podcast Marketing, Linear, SEO Writing, App Store, Web, Google Ads API, Production, Product Bidding, Lifetime Value (LTV), Geofencing & Geotargeting, Affiliate Data Feeds, Team Management, Google Shopping Ads, Yahoo Ads, Team Building, Training, Keyword Mapping, Brand / Traditional Advertising
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