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Senior Paid Search Strategist (SEM)

Toronto

As Senior Paid Search Strategist, you will own the creation, execution, and optimization of paid search campaigns, acting as the strategic SEM lead and advisor for a major international brand. You’ll provide leadership and expertise in account structure and setup, ongoing budget and bid management, and continuous performance optimization. You’ll collaborate across multiple teams and disciplines, present data-driven insights, and deliver actionable performance reporting to clients. You’ll be responsible for defining and communicating SEM goals, maintaining client satisfaction, and educating both internal and external teams on the evolving SEM landscape and its opportunities.

You Will:

  • Lead the ongoing development, implementation, and optimization of SEM strategy for a international brand with $1M+ budgets
  • Work as part of a larger Media team, aligning your campaigns with your colleagues’ strategies to reduce costs & improve performance by sharing learnings
  • Translate business goals to SEM platform activation strategies/tactics
  • Own the hands-on execution and management of day-to-day performance for multiple campaigns, including budget pacing, campaign setup, account structure, targeting strategy, bid strategy, platforms, data usage, performance optimizations, testing strategy, troubleshooting, and downstream client funnel optimization
  • Clearly communicate paid search best practices and strategies, both internally and externally
  • Create and share search POVs and case studies across the agency
  • Develop consistent account processes and procedures
  • Craft compelling ad copy and guide CRO strategies to drive high-quality traffic and conversions
  • Deliver actionable insights to clients through insightful, visually compelling reports (including analysis and strategic recommendations)
  • Identify market and consumer trends, telling a story with search data
  • Run iterative testing strategies to drive incremental performance lifts
  • Map out search tactics and strategies on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis
  • Conduct regular SEM audits and competitive analyses to identify net-new opportunities and recommendations to clients
  • Provide data-driven insights and recommendations to refine our strategy and improve campaign performance
  • Stay on top of the latest trends in the SEM landscape, keeping clients educated and adapting our search strategies as needed in response

You Have:

  • 4+ years of hands-on experience managing and optimizing paid search campaigns with large spends
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to clearly and persuasively articulate paid search strategies
  • Strong presentation and storytelling skills, with an emphasis on data visualization
  • High attention to detail
  • Proven success in optimizing SEM campaigns and achieving substantial improvements in performance over time
  • High proficiency in industry-standard SEM tools (e.g. Google/Microsoft Ads, Google Analytics, and Google Ads Editor)
  • Ability to react quickly, assess, and implement solutions
  • Excellent data analysis and problem-solving skills
  • Experience with Google Demand Gen, GDN, Performance Max
  • A passion for testing and learning and a proactive approach
  • Ability to mine search data for campaign performance insights, uncovering opportunities to drive ROI
  • Passion for staying current in a rapidly evolving digital environment, leveraging new tools and techniques to gain a competitive edge

Nice-to-Haves:

  • Advanced Excel/spreadsheet experience a plus
  • Google Ads certification a plus
  • Auto experience is preferred
  • Experience with YouTube/Video, Display, Shopping/PLAs, and Social campaigns a plus
  • Experience with additional search tools such as Search Ads 360, SEMrush, Adobe Ad Cloud, Marin, Skai, or a plus
  • Agency experience a plus
  • Bilingual (French) speaking is a plus

 What We Offer 

  • Global maternity and parental leave 
  • Competitive benefits packages 
  • Vacation, compassionate leave, wellness days, and flex days 
  • Six free therapy sessions through Therify  
  • Access to online services for families and new parents  
  • Extensive winter holiday office closures
  • Summer Fridays (off at 3:00 PM local time every Friday)
  • Diversity and Inclusion Board with 12 affinity groups
  • Funding towards internal learning and development
  • Enterprise-wide employee discounts  

Our new hires & employees are the future of our organization, and we want to set you up for long-term success. In an effort to do so, we expect our team to work from an office a minimum of 4 days a week.

At Critical Mass, we value our employees and offer competitive compensation and benefits packages. If you’re looking for a challenging and rewarding opportunity, we encourage you to apply for this exciting position today!

Critical Mass is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We do not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. If you are an individual with disabilities who would like to request an accommodation, please reach out to accommodations@criticalmass.com.

We are committed to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion within our pool of candidates, with a target of achieving at least 50% representation from underrepresented communities.

The Critical Mass Talent Acquisition team will only communicate from email addresses that use the URLs criticalmass.com and us.greenhouse-mail.io. We will not use apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Google Hangouts for communicating with you. We will never ask you to send us money, technology, or anything else to work for our company. If you believe you are the victim of a scam, please review your local government consumer protections guidance and reach out to them directly.

If U.S. based: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams#avoid
If Canada based: https://www.canada.ca/en/services/finance/consumer-affairs.html
If U.K. based: https://www.gov.uk/consumer-protection-rights
If Costa Rica based: https://www.consumo.go.cr/educacion_consumidor/consejos_practicos.aspx 

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DE&I Questionnaire

Voluntary Self-Identification

At Critical Mass, we are dedicated and determined to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of the communities in which we live and work. It is crucial that every team member can thrive and reach their full potential.

With that said, we’d like to know a little more about you. We ask all applicants to fill out the below voluntary self-identification questions in order to evaluate and improve our recruitment and diversity efforts. Answering is completely voluntary and will not affect the outcome of your application.

The data collected may be reviewed by the Critical Mass Talent Acquisition Team, Human Resources, our Diversity, Equality and Inclusion team, and our executives, but they will neither be reviewed by nor disclosed to anyone else. All the information that you share with us pursuant to this survey will be stored on our secure network servers located within Canada and the United States.  We will only retain this information so long as it is necessary for the purpose that we have described here or as may be required by applicable laws. Thereafter, we will either anonymize the information or delete it entirely.  If you elect to complete this survey, and at any point in the future you wish to retract or amend your responses, or otherwise have any questions about your data, you may contact our Talent Acquisition team at accommodations@criticalmass.com.

As set forth in Critical Mass’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Aboriginal Peoples Definition:

Aboriginal Peoples means persons who are defined as: Indians (more commonly referred to as First Nations), Inuit, or Métis.

Members of Visible Minorities Definition:

Members of Visible Minorities means persons, other than Aboriginal people, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in color.
Examples:
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Arab (e.g. Middle Eastern, North African, etc.) 
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West Asian (e.g. Armenian, Iranian, Persian, Egyptian, Turkish, etc.)
Other (e.g. Latin American, Pacific Islander, etc.) 

Persons with Disabilities Definition:

Persons with Disabilities means persons who have a physical or mental impairment or medical condition that substantially limits a major life activity, or if you have a history or record of such an impairment or medical condition.

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