Earlier this month we announced a raft of new appointments and internal promotions to complete our senior digital leadership team. Today we catch up with one of our newest recruits, Mark Pain who has joined the agency as Head of Digital Performance.
What has really stood out for you about the agency since you joined?
I have to say what excites me most is the huge potential in our client base to lead in the digital space. There is a plethora of fantastic clients with the appetite to transform the way they plan, activate and measure success. This, coupled with the fantastic talent and broad array of specialist services on offer here at OMD UK fills me with excitement and optimism for our client’s future digital marketing.
This really resonates with me on a personal level. I’ve always enjoyed helping clients join the dots between marketing channels across the funnel and believe accountability is something to be proud of in digital rather than feared. Aligning digital strategy with a client’s actual business objectives and seeing delivery and efficiencies grow incrementally is hugely satisfying. I see a huge wealth of opportunity for our clients to partner with our teams here to lead the way in digital and continue maximising return on their digital performance marketing spend.
What does a head of digital performance do?
I’m ultimately responsible for brilliant basics across all of our digital performance channels, ensuring we continue to provide a best-in-class approach to digital performance marketing.
My overarching goal beyond that is to holistically look at how we plan, execute, optimise and measure digital performance budgets, inclusive of paid search, display, affiliates and paid social. I’m responsible for joining the dots between each specialist channels, using data to understand how they complement each other.
My role allows me to oversee performance strategy and ensure there is no channel bias, instead building the framework to allow nimble shifting of budget between channels for the best possible overall return on our clients’ digital marketing budget.
Some of the key initiatives I’m focused on are continuing to expand our understanding of how offline impacts digital channels performance; how we can continue to move away from last click measurement; how to truly understand the role each channels plays across the funnel; how we underpin all our activity with data to leverage more bespoke targeting and creative.
How did you end up getting into digital?
In all honesty I was one of those with a mixed background (law & history at university) who “fell into” digital but can’t say it hasn’t always really interested me. Oddly enough, I got onto a grad scheme in a media agency within the Omnicom group. As part of the grad selection process we took an extremely basic maths test. Purely based on my results I was put into the paid search team and never looked back!
What’s the best bit of advice you give to clients when discussing their digital strategy?
To really use digital marketing to help achieve your business goals, you must be prepared to change. The digital marketing canvas is never static. Marketing tech advances, privacy concerns and data security, mobile and universal connectivity; the rise of Facebook and the complex programmatic landscape are just some of the developments that are so radically altering the digital landscape even over the last year. The old test and learn adage is even more applicable today than ever before; and this process must be cyclical and continuous because change in the digital landscape can so quickly undermine past assumptions. If you want to gain a greater share of people’s lives you have to adapt as your target user’s behaviour does, so change is essential.
