Marketing Strategy Consultant

Work Experience
Feb 2017 – Oct 2018:                        Head of Marketing                                                                           
Vaping360 GmbH - Braunschweig, Germany
My journey at Vaping360, the world’s largest media site on vaping with over 1 million monthly unique visitors, started with my application to the advertised vacancy of Senior Content Marketing Manager when the interview took an unexpected turn that led to my hiring as Head of Marketing to mark the budding of the marketing department.
Selected successes:

• Managed together with my team to maintain affiliate marketing channel’s earnings - and at times exceeding the previous period’s earnings - in spite of a decline of over 25% in traffic.
• Increased average monthly advertising sales from $1,330 in Q1 2017 to over $37,000 by Q4 2017 (> 2,780%).
• Established advertising sales as another major revenue stream, making up 30% of the company’s revenue - when it stood at 1-3% in 2016 up to early 2017.
• Helped the company guarantee an increase in its earnings from affiliate marketing of about 30-40%.
• In the early months of 2018, the company’s traffic saw unexpected SEO turbulences that resulted in a quick decline in traffic. The marketing team led an interdepartmental effort that involved various SEO and marketing tactics that helped stabilize the traffic, giving us time to flesh out a more comprehensive SEO strategy.
• Leveraged brand’s online social communities to cement the brand’s position as a trustful and credible source of information on vaping, increasing the number of returning visitors by 22%.
• Developed and maintained structure, workflows, reporting processes, and other fixed assets for all of the areas the department was involved in.
• Created a fully-fledged content management and reporting processes for the editorial team that increased productivity and output by 40%.

Strategies:

• Expanded advertising options to include exposure types from all digital assets of the company, namely: website, email, and social media.
• ‎Persuaded upper management to move away from 3rd party ad serving and into a full-fledged in-house advertising service.
• ‎Secured a fixed basic monthly revenue stream by signing off long-term advertising contracts with biggest partners and industry brands.
• Led successful negotiations with new and existing affiliate partners that aimed at nurturing new and stronger relationships on the one hand, and better affiliate marketing commission rates, schemes, and terms based on in-depth and comprehensive analysis of made-available data, on the other.
• Reworked and optimized existing email templates for both B2C and B2B communication and advertising purposes.

   Aug 2015 - Aug 2016:                      Social Media & Digital Communications Specialist           
Knowledge Group LLC. - Abu Dhabi, UAE
On-boarded as a social media and digital communications specialist, my role encompassed more of the tasks of a marketing executive with a primary focus on inbound marketing, social media, email marketing, PR, event management, and online advertising.
Selected successes:

• Persuaded management to replace costly digital agency, saving thousands of dollars in fees.
• Increased engagement levels on LinkedIn and Twitter by 45% and 30% respectively.

• Achieved a lift in web traffic by 513% in the first 6 months following my hiring from social media channels alone (LinkedIn = 686%; Twitter = 296%; Google+ = 100%).
• Increased number of leads and business inquiries generated on the website by 53% for the last employer with a bounce rate of 41% (down from > 60%).
• Developed and led a partnership project between Bayt.com and ADUKG to feature company’s online solutions on their site, which once fully deployed, will turn the marketing department from a mere support center to a revenue producer securing a monthly revenue stream of over 13.500$.

Strategies:

• Monitored the status of digital & social media campaigns & reporting continuous updates and performance based on well-defined KPIs on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis with recommendations for optimization.
• Put in place periodical competitive benchmarking process to weigh the company’s performance against that of successful competitors and to revisit content marketing and advertising strategies and devise “stand-out” tactics.
• Developed and led the company’s 1st online and social media advertising campaigns, and documented processes and guidelines for all future campaign development, monitoring, measurement, A/B testing, and optimization.
• Built together with the business copywriter a documented social media and online content marketing strategy around a defined SEO keyword plan ensuring its alignment with the overall lead generation and nurturing strategy of the organization.
• Conducted social media training workshops to both staff and senior management with the aim of leveraging employee engagement and inspiring thought leadership amongst senior stakeholders in an effort to boost brand’s equity and credibility.
• Drafted and implemented the online advertising plan as well as the social media & communication campaigns across all relevant channels - email, Google network, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

  Jan 2015 – Jul 2015:                             Social Media Manager                                                 
                                            
RAW agency, a digital agency delivering complete digital solutions, Dubai.
After having spent almost 2 years with Foodonclick.com building and leading their social presence, it occurred to me that if I wanted to get a full grasp of the world of social media, I needed to explore it from the other side, i.e. agency’s side.
Selected successes:

• Led sales pitches and secured agency’s biggest client to-date: Dubai Government’s official media agency, Dubai Media Inc.,
• Helped launch and establish the social media presence of a number of clients from different sectors.
• Expanded agency’s revenue from one of the major clients by persuading them about the need for a website revamp for greater ROI.

Strategies:

• Kept the agency up-to-date with the latest technologies and trends; including researching and evaluating a variety of online social media tools to identify new opportunities and creatively apply these to help boost our clients’ social presence and share of voice.
• Supported and managed the social media executives to draft quality content calendars and offer campaign guidance.
• Conceived and ran regular social promotions and campaigns for clients and tracked their success.
• Developed content plans to grow clients’ user base, sign-ups, and active usage times. 
• Made sure to meet with clients on a weekly/biweekly and monthly basis to discuss ideas and social media reports and provide input into the further development of their digital strategy

  Apr 2013 – Dec 2014:                          Digital Marketing Executive                                                  
                                            
Foodonclick.com, e-commerce site & app for online food ordering, Istanbul, Turkey / Dubai, UAE.
Initially hired to work as a call center agent, I was soon given the opportunity to handle the email marketing campaigns, the blog, and the social presence of foodonclick.com on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Selected successes:

• Established Facebook as a conversion driving force, making it the 3rd most converting channel preceded by Google Search Ads and Email.
• Succeeded in securing company’s Facebook page a spot in Socialbakers’ top 5 engaging companies 3 times in 2014.
• Grew Facebook community by 252% on the previous year.
• Boosted average number of blog visitors by 100%.
• Increased Twitter engagement by 31% with the brand.
• Increased engagement levels on the website by 11%, especially through redesigning chat box which also led to a lift in chat box usage by 27% within a 2-month period.
• Initiated and organized from A to Z company’s first brand activation event at the Party in the Park concert held in Dubai Media City to a great success where many activities were led before and during the event so as to engage (with) the audience.

Strategies:

• Established Twitter as an extension of the company’s customer support system.
• Revamped the company’s blog and breathed a new life back to it with fresh new content while remaining relevant to the business model and aligning the tone with that adopted in other channels.
• Managed to maintain and, at times, exceed our emails’ opening, click-through, and conversion rates in times of intensified email marketing activity thanks to systematic segmentation for ensured relevancy and personalization.
• Helped in developing the existing email marketing strategy and determining the best hours and days that are can lead to optimal results following extensive A/B testing.
• Helped create email marketing campaign scenarios and flows that are not solely focused on delivering promotional content but also educate both new and repeat users on our site and app’s features.

  Jan 2010 – Mar 2013:                           Freelance (Sworn) Translator   Jun 2009 – Dec 2009:                           Translator & Copywriter
LingwaPlus, translation & language-specialist house -Beirut         Sep 2006 - May 2009:                          Associate Editor & Researcher / Translator
Arab Construction World magazine, CPH World Media - Beirut, Lebanon   Education & Certifications
Google Analytics for Power Users
Google, United States
Advanced Google Analytics
Google, United States
Google AdWords
Google, United States
Inbound Marketing
HubSpot Academy, United Kingdom
English Literature, Bachelor (BSc/BA)
Lebanese University Faculty of Literature & Human Sciences | Beirut, Lebanon
Translation (English – French – Arabic)
Université du Saint-Esprit Kaslik | Jounieh, Lebanon
Marketing in a Digital World
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, United States