When he's not hiding his hobbit toes, dreaming about packing up the family for a full immersion experience working abroad or trying his hand at coding, Paul is our Chief Marketing Officer here at SwipedOn. We caught up with Paul for a quick-fire round of questions to learn more about him and what a day in the life is like at SwipedOn HQ.
I help steer the revenue-generation machine in the right direction. Our business is 100% inbound so without getting the right leads in the door, the sales team would have nobody to sell to, and we would miss all our targets.
My day typically starts with a check of the overnight action, since most of our lead activity is from the northern hemisphere and comes in while we're asleep here in NZ. The inbound lead funnel is crucial to our business growth so I always make sure there's nothing at the top that's interrupting that flow. There's a fine balance to find between volume and quality of inbound leads, and the sales team lets us know if we're not getting it right! Always check in with my team to see how they're going and make sure there's nothing getting in the way of progress, and see if there's anything I can do to help. I also work closely with Nicole and get the hot takes from the sales team to complete that feedback loop from advertising dollars going in the top of the funnel through to customer revenue coming out the bottom.
The people, first and foremost - just a good bunch of peeps with a good mix of personalities. Everyone has got great individual talent and we all combine (kind of like Captain Planet) to do awesome stuff. Always a pleasure to be in the office. Also enjoy being part of a local success story and being one of the first full-time employees. From a marketing point of view, it was a completely blank canvas when I joined and that was pretty exciting. Being 100% digital marketing allows me to use data and analytics to prove ROI on marketing spend, which was near impossible in my previous roles in a much more traditional marketing world.
I love how we just make life at work easy ✨
1. Marketing.
2. Qualified.
3. Leads.
F@¢k it, why not?
After studying mechanical engineering at uni, I joined Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, which was a great company to work for, especially as a new grad - a real NZ success story. I did engineering for the first year or two and then put my hand up to be a Product Manager, where I learnt that I actually liked the people side of business more than sitting behind a computer designing widgets. I then spent the next 15 years in marketing and sales at F&P, both in NZ and in overseas offices. We made the family decision to move to the Bay of Plenty in 2015, where I took a year off full-time work, and became an avocado farmer while also looking after our young kids. I stumbled across SwipedOn when we moved to Tauranga and made a connection with Hadleigh and Ben. Been a fun journey so far!
I spend as much time as I can with my kids because before too long, they won't want to hang out with me. I get pretty involved with all their sports teams, swimming comps, triathlon races, etc. I also serve on our school Board of Trustees to try and give back to the local community a little. The avocado orchard takes up a decent amount of the weekends too, as does the "life-sentence block" (lifestyle blocks are a myth). Outside of that, I love sports - I play tennis, golf, squash, cricket and football, and would happily give any sport a go at least once.
1. We want to do a full international immersion at some stage in the future - pack up the family and go live on the other side of the world for a decent chunk of time.
2. I would also like to pick up flying again - I did enough hours to go solo and would like to carry that through to getting my PPL.
3. Lastly, turn at least one of my kids into a sporting superstar, to pay for my retirement.
I'm a bit of a 90's bogan...
I'd go with Micah - he's a great cook!
My family name is one of the oldest in New Zealand. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Captain Thomas Hansen, was the captain of the ship that brought the first Europeans to New Zealand, and the first European baby to be born in NZ was a Hansen.