The new Lifecycle Marketing lead must close "the new-client acquisition gap" with SMBs, starting with an outbound pilot measured from sends to first hires. Upwork is also adding $5-10 million of paid search, Meta and Reddit spend because Google search changes cut referrals. Most of that traffic lands on /hire, the canonical "Post a Job" page, and it is slow: real visitors wait 357 ms per tap (Google's limit is 200 ms), and on a phone the page needs 36 seconds and 4.9 MB, with 151 third-party requests, before it is fully usable. When each new client costs more to reach, a heavy entry page wastes the most expensive visits.
First action
Run PageSpeed on /hire weekly and list the third-party tags that load before the job form.
How to measure it
Visit-to-job-post rate from outbound and paid
- Now
- –
- Target
- +25%
- By
- 90 days
Steps
Baseline
Visit-to-post rate and INP for /hire by traffic source.
Growth Analyst 2 days
Tag audit
Every third-party tag on /hire with an owner and purpose.
Marketing Technology Manager 3 days
Defer and trim
Load non-essential tags after the form; remove unused scripts.
Web Performance Engineer 2 weeks
Segment pages
Five light pages for the pilot's top SMB segments.
Product Marketing Manager, SMB 1 week
Prefill the job
Uma drafts the job post from the email's use case.
Product Manager, Client Acquisition 2 weeks
Wire tracking
Send to visit to post to first hire, in Salesforce.
Marketing Technology Manager 1 week
A/B test
Segment pages against /hire.
Lead, Lifecycle Marketing - Growth & Acquisition 4 weeks
Decide
Scale the winners to paid search and Meta.
Lead, Lifecycle Marketing - Growth & Acquisition 1 week
Why it works
Set a weight and script budget for /hire and fix the slowest interactions: defer third-party tags that are not needed to post a job, split the 3.5 MB of scripts and drop the unused 1 MB. In parallel, give the outbound pilot its own light landing pages, one per SMB segment (for example "hire a bookkeeper" or "hire a Shopify developer"). Each page should load the job post form first, prefilled from the email's use case, so a prospect goes from click to a drafted job in under a minute. A/B test them against /hire and report the post rate and first hires for each.
Outbound and paid clicks are paid for in advance, so conversion on the first page decides the return. A fast page that starts with the job already drafted removes the two biggest drop-off points for a busy small business owner.
Ready to use
Checklist/hire speed and pilot pages
[ ] INP under 200 ms for real visitors [ ] Job form usable before third-party tags load [ ] Unused JavaScript removed [ ] Five segment pages on one template [ ] Job post prefilled from the email use case [ ] UTM to Salesforce: send > visit > post > first hire [ ] A/B test against /hire
Risks and how to handle them
Removing tags breaks attribution
Test each change in a tag-manager preview and keep server-side tracking.
Too many landing pages to maintain
Use one template with segment copy fields.
Evidence
- Google PageSpeedThe /hire/ page (the canonical "Post a Job" entry point), October 21, 2026: real visitors fail Core Web Vitals on responsiveness (INP 357 ms at the 75th percentile; the limit is 200 ms) while loading (LCP 2.4s) and layout (CLS 0) pass. In the lab on a phone: performance score 27, LCP 9.5s, total blocking time 2.9s, fully interactive after 36.2s, 10.5s of main-thread work, 4.9 MB over 375 requests, 127 scripts weighing 3.5 MB, 151 third-party requests (2.8 MB) and about 1 MB of unused JavaScript.Source
- HiringLead, Lifecycle Marketing - Growth & Acquisition (Toronto, posted September 4, 2026): owns programs "that help close the new-client acquisition gap through smarter demand capture and stronger engagement with SMB audiences"; leads "the outbound prospecting pilot end to end, including list building, sequencing, deliverability, messaging direction, vendor partnership, and a clear recommendation on whether and how to scale"; runs sends in UnifyGTM, enriches data in Clay and syncs Salesforce; sets up reporting "so results flow from sends to opportunities to first hires"; partners with "sales and our managed services team"; sets direction for "always-on content"; bonus for Braze, HighTouch and "in-product notifications".Source
- Earnings callQ2 2026 earnings call: GSV fell because of faster AI automation of low-complexity work, Google search changes that reduced referrals and new client acquisition (expected to keep worsening through Q3 and Q4), and a weak labor market. Upwork is adding $5-10 million of marketing in the second half, focused on paid search, international search ads, Meta and Reddit. AI-related work runs at about $330 million a year (+22%), AI strategy and consulting GSV +51%, average hourly contract length a record 100 hours, take rate 19.8%; Lifted is expected to grow GSV about 25% in 2026.Source
- Google PageSpeedChrome UX Report for upwork.com as a whole (real visitors, 75th percentile): loading fails (LCP 3.4s; the limit is 2.5s), 18% slower than a year ago; responsiveness (INP 157 ms) and layout (CLS 0.05) pass.Source
- Your websiteProducts listed in llms.txt: Talent Marketplace, Project Catalog (fixed-price packages, "no job post required"), Business Plus ("Expert-vetted top 1% talent, AI-assisted matching via Uma Recruiter, and centralized billing"), Contract-to-Hire, Any Hire (Upwork contracts and payments for talent sourced elsewhere), Direct Contracts, Agencies, and Uma, "Upwork's AI system powering hiring tools, candidate matching, instant interviews, and workflow automation". Client pricing: "Upwork charges a service fee on contracts; no fee to post a job."Source