Chelsea Gonzalez - JDM Impressions

Working remotely, like we do at JDM, doesn’t mean being disconnected from colleagues. As part of our culture-building initiative, and to introduce the digital marketing world to our awesome team members, we regularly peel back the curtain on the lives of JDMers. This week, we’ll get to know Performance Marketing Account Director Chelsea Gonzalez!

Name: Chelsea Gonzalez 
Position: Performance Marketing Account Director
Location: Lake Mary, FL

When did you begin working at JDM?
November 2021

How did you know JDM was the right fit for you?
I was immediately attracted to the growth opportunity, remote work, and benefits that JDM offered, and knew I made the right choice as soon as I met my team and experienced the culture firsthand. It was the cherry on top!

What’s your favorite part of the workday?
I love that I have variety throughout my work week and that every day is not the same. I especially enjoy collaborating and sharing knowledge with members of the team. I am constantly impressed by my peers' professionalism, efficiency, and breadth of platform experience, and I appreciate learning from and with them every day.  

What’s the most gratifying part of working with your clients?
I’m a problem solver who loves numbers, so any time one of my clients is on board with testing an off-the-cuff or advanced strategy, I’m all in! I have great relationships with my clients, and successfully helping them reach their goals is incredibly gratifying to me.

In a remote company, how do you stay connected with your team?
Staying connected with my team is really important to me. To stay connected in a remote work environment, I do my best to maximize my time with my team during meetings by preparing talking points and taking thorough notes. Depending on the topic, I leverage different communication outlets, including Slack messaging and huddles, Zoom, and Asana. To facilitate transparency and alignment of expectations, I cater the frequency and style of communication to each team member and encourage feedback for improvement opportunities. Working in a remote environment might mean less face time, but I’ve found that my conversations are more productive. Quality over quantity!

What three words would you use to describe the JDM culture?
Autonomy, transparency, and growth-oriented

What's something you love about JDM?
The type A side of me loves how organized and streamlined the operations are at JDM. I’ve said it myself and heard it from others — the onboarding process was like nothing I had experienced with a company before. Working with a company that prioritizes the development of procedures and related documentation has been a breath of fresh air. 

Can you recall a time when JDM challenged you, and how we supported you through that time?
Early in my tenure at JDM, I had the opportunity to take the lead of a large, complicated Google Ads account that had been driving unsatisfactory results. With the coaching and support of my manager, I dove in head first to take over ownership quickly and build positive rapport with the client. With their newly gained trust, we realigned on goals, set expectations, and successfully optimized efficiencies! As a newbie, working on this account allowed me to develop hard and soft skills and accelerate my career growth trajectory.

What’s the best thing you’ve done with your unlimited PTO?
Got married!!!

What's something you love about the marketing industry?
As a curious learner, I love the fast pace, ever-evolving, and competitiveness of the marketing industry. It’s my ideal balance of analytical and creative work! 

What do you think has been the most interesting change in the marketing industry or in your channel this year?
I spend most of my time with Google Ads, and it’s been interesting to see the change that have been made supporting the push toward automation. Especially once ETAs were officially sunsetted, subsequent automation-driven updates appear to be impacting performance more heavily due to advertisers' loss of visibility and control while analyzing and optimizing. On the same hand — I’ve been a bit surprised by the requirement limitations and challenges that have come with implementing enhanced conversions, especially since there hasn’t been communication about upcoming updates meant to help with successful setup. 

What digital marketing platform, technology, or skill do you see gaining the most traction in the next 1-2 years, and why?
TikTok is still on the rise and advertising dollars allocated toward the platform will continue to follow suit. As we’re also seeing AI begin to trend more heavily throughout marketing news headlines, we’ll see further integration with marketing channels and tools.

On the search side, first-party data tracking and management will continue to work its way up advertisers’ priority lists. Along similar lines, I foresee advertisers leaning more into leveraging conversion value and tROAS bidding strategies to support full-funnel and revenue related goals.

What are the names and ages of your kids (or furbabies)?
Digit - doggo - 15 yrs!
Cowboy - doggo - 8 yrs
Lali - kitty (finders keepers, lol) - 6 yrs
Teeny (finders keepers, lol) - kitty - 3 yrs

What's something you've implemented or tested, and what was the outcome?
Recently, I had the opportunity to optimize for pipeline efficiency through utilizing conversion values combined with MoFu conversion goal optimization. First, I worked with the client to define conversion rates and values for each stage of the funnel with the help of Google’s conversion calculator. Then we launched an experiment where the test campaign optimized toward meetings booked with the hope it would improve conversions at that stage. Not only did lead quality and conversion rate improve across the board, but opportunity value also improved! 

What’s a project that you’ve worked on that you’ve really enjoyed?
TrueCar! I’ve been working with the account for a year now, and not only are the clients great to work with, but I’ve really enjoyed getting to play around with automotive-tailored products like vehicle ads to scale performance. This account has also given me the opportunity to play around with various beta tests!