New York based Padraig O'Connor has become a proficient figure in the field of digital marketing and customer acquisition. Throughout his career he’s proven to be a versatile marketer that navigated business-to-business and business to consumer marketing across a multitude of industries. An early adopter of marketing technology propelled him to the digital marketing aficionado that he is today.
O’Connor’s journey in digital marketing mastery began far from the Big Apple in Kerry, Ireland. He got his first start in marketing working on the family garden allotment business. Noticing the shift from traditional to digital media from a young age, he crafted their initial website and established a lively social media presence for the business. His passion for marketing continued after taking a summer job in the marketing department of Dairymaster, a global leader in the manufacturing of dairy equipment. As an early adopter of up and coming marketing technology, one of his first moves was pitching the firm on the latest digital marketing strategies, like A/B testing.
Padraig was a pioneer of inbound marketing. A term coined to encompass unpaid digital marketing strategies. He began writing about it on his own marketing blog and for publications like Social Media Week. There he discussed tips, trends and best practices of online marketing. His marketing blog earned coveted national recognition when it was awarded "Best Marketing and Communications Blog" at the prestigious Irish Blog Awards in 2015. That same year he won an An Post Smart Marketing award. These accolades not only underscored Padraig's digital marketing mastery but also positioned him as a noteworthy aficionado in the space.
Paul Cooke, CEO of The Business Post, presenting Padraig O'Connor with the An Post Smart Marketing Award in 2015.
Given his thought leadership in the area of inbound marketing it was fitting that he join the very firm that invented it. Padraig took a role at HubSpot helping them grow their website traffic and customers through search engine optimization (SEO). O’Connor worked on a broad search marketing program that included both on-page and off page SEO. He regularly did keyword research to understand what type of marketing and sales information prospective customers were searching for online and then orchestrated the creation of such content along with various strategies to get it appear high up in Google search results. HubSpot had just traded on the public market and O’Connor helped take them from startup to scale up.
Padraig went on to join a budding Canadian based fintech startup called Wealthsimple. At this time they only had around a hundred employees and a single product consisting of automated investing. Padraig went on to help them launch their saving and spending products by developing customer acquisition strategies that took them from zero to one. He grew their content marketing program Personal Finance 101 from the ground up. This eventually resulted in Wealthsimple getting millions of visitors a year to the publication as well as thousands of customers. At the time search engine marketing was one of their most efficient marketing channels given his work. Under O'Connors leadership Wealthsimple won an award for their search marketing program at the 2020 Canadian Search awards. Padraig's work with Wealthsimple that cemented his place in the marketing pantheon. Transforming a promising fintech startup with a hundred employees to the multi-billion dollar company that it is today.
Padraig furthered his career at Brightwheel, an ed-tech startup that allows preschools to digitize their back-office. Their software offers digital check-in, online payments and more for preschools around the United States. O’Connor joined as one of their first growth marketing hires to help them define product-market-fit and grow customers gained from paid media. He is credited with getting the software into the hands of more educators across the country.
Throughout his marketing career Padraig O’Connor has had much success in the field of digital marketing. He attributes much of his success to his early adaptation of digital and inbound marketing as well as joining disruptive, mission driven companies capable of changing the world for the better.
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