Get ready to get human! Digital marketing has a whole “people” side of things, and we’re here to uncover it! Danny Gavin, your Digital Marketing Mentor, explores the meeting point of mentorship and marketing in this captivating podcast featuring interviews with marketing experts and industry leaders.
As they chat about their history with mentorship and guiding others, they’ll delve into how these connections have affected their careers, marketing strategies, and lives. Deep conversations on how we’re all human highlight how current marketing trends are influenced, and you’ll come away from each episode with real, actionable marketing strategies and skills to implement.
Choose an Episode Below! Also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube (VIDEO), Google Podcasts, and many more.
Discover Andrea Cruz's journey from Venezuela to Boston, mastering business administration and international marketing. Learn about the power of mentorship and the intricacies of B2B marketing in this insightful episode.
Join Susan Wenograd as she shares her journey in digital marketing, blending creativity with practicality. Explore mentorship insights and the evolving landscape of Google Ads and new strategies to optimize in a post-cookie world!
Join us for a captivating conversation with Britney Muller, where she delves into the realms of mentorship, AI innovations, and her enchanting ASL escapades. Explore the intersection of expertise and experience in this digital marketing adventure!
Join us on this episode as Andrew Foxwell shares his journey from St. Olaf University thru Capitol Hill to California, revealing how mentorship played a pivotal role in his career. Discover the inception of Foxwell Founders, a thriving community connecting marketers and mentors. Andrew reflects on the power of mentorship, the challenges of parenting during a pandemic, and the evolution of digital advertising and paid social on platforms like TikTok.
In this episode, Raphael Gavin, the media-production master, spills the beans on navigating the advertising industry, humorous entry to his career, and the transformative power of mentorship. From his accidental title upgrade to the importance of tailored guidance, dive into the world of advertising with wit and wisdom.
Join us in this episode as we hear about Sarah Stemen’s journey from programming through in-house marketing to starting her own business. From unexpected mentorship lessons to the art of being an accessible mentor, Sarah spills the beans on agency struggles, the power of conversation in consulting, and her unique approach to Google Ads.
On this special Office Hours episode, we are talking with Tracy about making a grand career change. After nearly a decade of working, after achieving a doctorate in physical therapy, Tracy transitioned to freelance work in marketing. Listen in to hear how she faced the questions, both from others and herself, the imposter syndrome, and the challenges of starting a new career.
Venture on Vicky Charleston's transformative journey from art student to corporate leader. Uncover the profound impact of mentors, familial wisdom, and the challenges of breaking biases in the corporate realm. Explore the multi-chromatic blend of creativity and analytics in her digital marketing odyssey, proving that artistry and strategy can coalesce seamlessly.
Explore the dynamic world of social media advertising with Joseph Wolf, Optidge’s Head of Paid Social. From diverse campaign strategies to understanding audience behaviors, uncover the importance of quality over quantity and the nuances of tracking for optimal results. Join us as we debunk common myths and gain insights into crafting effective social media campaigns.
Join us as Stacey Piefer shares her transformative career, from journalism to purposeful, personal branding. Discover the power of mentoring, authenticity, and Stacey's mission to banish imposter syndrome on the University of Houston campus. Unveil the truth in advertising and explore the evolving landscape of marketing through the lens of a perpetual student of life.
In today’s episode, hear Pinny's extraordinary journey from Montreal to Harvard, shaped by mentorship, global ventures, and entrepreneurship. Discover the transformative power of an unconventional Rabbi, lessons from a father who survived the Holocaust, and the innovative era of early digital marketing with Ice.com. Join us for a conversation on life's variety of experiences, business adventures, and the joy of being a "Zadie."
In this episode, we explore Sicily Dickenson's unique journey from film to marketing, driven by fearless challenges and mentorships. Learn how she shapes careers, empowers customers, and tackles the intricacies of national brand marketing. Discover the importance of likability and responding to challenges in the make-or-break moments of branding.
In today’s episode, we discover the transformative journey of Natara Branch, from her early experiences at the University of Houston through her unprecedented career at the NFL to her pivotal role in cultivating a thriving startup ecosystem, as she leads Houston Exponential in redefining the city's identity beyond its traditional industries.
Join us in this episode as Duane Brown, Founder & Head of Strategy at Take Some Risk Inc., shares his unique journey from college in Canada to the realm of digital marketing, unveiling the power of mentorship, strategic PPC tactics, and the often-overlooked nuances of data analysis in advertising.
In today’s office hours episode, we discuss all things data-driven marketing with Optidge’s Caroline Pham. She shares insights on creating and optimizing paid search campaigns, goal-type selection, and navigating budget increases. You’ll also learn how her drawing of a Dalmatian won her Best of Show at the Houston Rodeo and set her on her path to a great career in digital marketing.
Today, we delve into Eric Vardon's journey from pioneering the digital marketing landscape in the 90s to co-founding and gracefully selling his first agency, Arcane. We discuss the valuable lessons in mentorship, business growth, and smooth acquisitions he’s learned along the way.
Today’s episode brings us the story of Alison Reeves, a business and mindset coach. We learn how she grew through mentors and mastermind courses to offer her coaching services today. She also gives plenty of tips and marketing tools you can use today to help improve your reach and marketing strategy!
From an early dream of becoming an English teacher to her pivotal shift into the marketing world, Navah's story is a testament to following one's true calling. Discover how her mentors shaped her into a professional and compassionate leader, and explore mentorship strategies that have left a lasting impact. Navah shares invaluable insights on digital marketing trends, data privacy, and the surprising findings from Optmyzer's recent study. Whether you're an experienced marketer or a newcomer, Navah's wisdom will leave you inspired and better equipped for success in the dynamic realm of digital marketing.
Two of the key responsibilities of account management are expectation management and client onboarding. In this episode, we learn from Jenna Meldrum, account manager extraordinaire at Optidge, how a successful onboarding process sets the tone for the rest of your client relationship. We also learn how to manage delicate conversations about scope and upsells and how to manage the people on both sides of the table: your team and the client.
Mike Metzler has long had a home on social media: beginning on Facebook in 2005 as a college student to interviewing celebrities octagon-side for UFC Instagram to becoming a social media consultant and strategist. In this episode, you’ll learn the many steps it took to get to this point and how his first boss/mentor and doodling his corgi as an astronaut helped him along his path. Get ready for a great cliff’s notes version of Social Media Marketing 101 with Mike Metzler.
Shelly Fagin has been in the digital world since she was a young girl playing on her green screen Apple IIGS. After figuring out how to connect to the internet, it was all gas, no breaks to agency work, over 12 years of consulting, SEMRush speaking, and managing a team at CreditKarma, to now being the Director of SEO at DigitalOcean. Listen to this episode to learn how her mentors helped teach her confidence, and her curiosity helped her teach herself the skills.
Chayale Kaufman started her career in sales, as many entrepreneurs do. Her intuition, hard work, and dedication led her to found two businesses and integrate the world of print and digital advertising amidst the Jewish business community. In this episode, we hear all about the devotion and challenges that brought her to her current position as founder of The Jewish Content Network.
In this special Office Hours episode, Optidge’s own COO and resident expert in all things operations shares her three secrets to building high-performing teams in remote digital marketing agencies. From removing the stigma that surrounds independent contractors to extinguishing the fear of standardization (SOPs are a good thing!), Leah shares how to not only have cohesive remote teams rowing in the same direction, but create a culture of drive, efficiency, and top-notch client service. Whether you’re an agency owner or a team member looking to enhance your agency’s performance, this episode is packed with practical strategies and guidance to help your teams feel supported and successful.
Ashley Werhun is the co-founder of Mentorly. Her first career was as a professional dancer. Today, we discuss how she learned how important mentorship was through her performing career and how she used those lessons to build Mentorly. We also discuss some of the most important traits a mentor should have and more!
Adele Beiny is the founder and CEO of Life’s Looking Good, a lifestyle blog and social media presence, as well as a marketing consultancy. She wants to help people design and curate a life they love and brands they love to be. She’s traveled across the country through many tough industries and different occupations to find herself here today. We talk about being your authentic self on social media and how mentorship can look different to different people.
Shaina Keren discovered her path in life, and it has led her to become a career coach. She’s a master at drawing out the best in people and discovering how to shape those skills into their career of choice. Her first decade of working life was spent in education, so she’s experienced changing directions at unexpected times. Listen in to learn more about her tips for personal discovery and resume fixes.
In this special episode of The Digital Marketing Mentor, we look back at the many conversations we’ve had with our guests around the topic of ChatGPT and AI. We discuss the teaching of it to students (and our own kids). We talk about the ethical and moral uses and limitations of such a tool. We also talk about why many of us believe this will not be taking any of our jobs any time soon.
Broadway? More like broadband! Emily Ryan is THE Mailchimp influencer. After moving past the dream of being big on Broadway, she became an executive assistant. When having a baby led to a dread of returning to office work, she struck out on her own and made herself the champion of Mailchimp Email Marketing. Learn more about her journey and how she mentors new mothers wanting to work from home in today’s episode!
Today’s Office Hours episode focuses on the many ways stereotypes and unconscious biases can make their way into the workplace. Maddie Deane is a young woman in the digital marketing space, and she discusses her experiences with certain behaviors that seem to question her expertise based on her gender or perceived age. She also gives some great tips on how to counter some of those questions and how to show up better for your coworkers, employees, mentees, and more!
John Doherty is the founder of Credo, an agency broker, and EditorNinja, a subscription-based professional editing services firm. He has traveled extensively and has currently found home in Colorado with his wife and daughter. In today’s episode, he discusses tiered business relationships, mentorship, entrepreneurship, editing, and sales tactics.
Henry Adaso is The Marketing Quarterback. In this episode, we discuss what a mentor is and why Henry didn’t have the broadest access to mentors when he was younger. We also discuss how storytelling and teamwork are the key pillars of marketing success in the digital marketing world.
William (Bill) Zahn is a clinical professor at the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business. He started teaching there five years after finishing his Ph.D. at the same institute. His former professors and department heads have mentored him, and he now mentors his students in the ways of storytelling in marketing and how writing will always need the human element.
Get ready to dive deep into a case study with a real Optidge client. Their website had more than 12,000 pages, but they were getting little organic traffic. That, coupled with a “Couldn’t Fetch” error for the sitemaps in Google Search Console, is what led Optidge down the rabbit hole that is “low-quality content” in SEO.
Amalia learned through her education that there is no one path to success. For her, it started with a degree in psychology. It went on to include managing Google Ads, being a marketing director, and now, being a professor at her alma mater and running her own consulting agency. In this episode, we talk about public speaking, management strategies, professorship, AI, and Taylor Swift. We’re SURE you’ll find some sparkle in this episode!
It all started with a box for a Houston Rockets sweepstakes for kids at an Olive Garden. Be sure to listen to this episode to hear about Adam Clanton’s love for all things Houston Sports and how he got into sports talk radio. You’ll also learn plenty about how the internet and social media have changed sports media in big ways over the years.
Nayeli Cano is a client account manager at Optidge. Listen to today’s episode to learn all about her path to becoming an account manager and the power of organization, time management, and communication skills in this role.
Starting her career as an SEO copywriter in the wild west days of internet marketing, Fay Friedman has worked diligently and now finds herself as the CMO at a commercial real estate firm bringing the rental world into the modern marketing era. In this episode, you’ll learn how a university degree isn’t the only path into marketing, how self-motivation, learning, and teamwork are keys to success, and how SEO in e-commerce influences the world of apartment rentals.
From playing games and performing commercials about items in the pantry, to his family, to being Senior Marketing Director at Ostendio, Yehuda has always loved advertising and marketing. Learn how he’s learned to always look for the light, find the lighthouse brand offering, and listen to customers' genuine concerns in this episode of The Digital Marketing Mentor.
If you’ve ever wanted to know what it takes to be a brilliant account manager, this is the episode for you. Taylor McMaster owns and runs DOT & Company, a digital marketing agency turned client account management agency. With her, we discuss the power of experiential learning, mentorship from many individuals, and how to truly delight your clients.
After more than 30 years in career services and recruiting, Jamie Belinne finds herself with a wealth of knowledge on how the different generations work, a book helping managers navigate those differences, and many awards and accolades acknowledging her expertise. We discuss how to mentor students and young professionals, why Gen Z is not a generation of narcissists, and why diversity isn’t the norm but will be someday, thanks to the younger generations.
Creative Director, SEO lover, photography enthusiast, and creative wanderer, Batli, is here to discuss how her journey through a journalism degree in college and living on both coasts of the United States led her to the technical SEO realm. Through joining university organizations, mentoring younger students, and learning about internet marketing, Batli’s creativity has always been a driving force. Her focus on the leadership traits of her chosen mentors has helped her learn about how she thrives at being a student of life. We promise you’ll learn plenty from her story on The Digital Marketing Mentor.
Aurora Losada came to Houston, by way of Columbia University in New York, from Madrid, Spain. She worked many years in journalism and is now Microsoft’s Global Communications Manager for Latin America. With the guidance and support from some fantastic mentors along the way, Aurora has learned much about how to lead and utilize tools like generative AI and ChatGPT. In this episode, you’ll learn so much about how mentorship can drive a brilliant, hard worker like Aurora.
Daniel Cotlar learned early on that he enjoyed the creative, risky, high-energy startup world, and after learning much over his years working at them, now invests and mentors startups. He is passionate about helping others and learning from them. In this episode, he discusses his steps to a successful startup business and mentoring relationships, and some of the stumbling blocks he’s found along the way.
Chris Long is the VP of Marketing at Go Fish Digital and has found himself there through a curvy road that began in finance in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He’s learned a lot about key traits in a mentor, content strategy, and technical SEO along the way. Be sure to listen to this episode to hear how he customizes his strategy in all things, mentorship, technical SEO, and more!
Mosheh has done marketing for many startup businesses over the years and has learned a lot from those experiences. He now runs a fractional CMO firm (don’t worry, we define what that means) and is pushing the use of ChatGPT and AI as powerful tools in the marketing world. In this episode, he also tells us his key tactic for a successful mentor relationship.
Brianna Deboever discusses how marketing can be a great blending of worlds when it comes to being creatively and analytically minded. She and Danny chat about how important it is to track, understand, organize, and share lead quality rather than just quantity when optimizing paid campaigns. Finally, they review how CRMs and UTMs come in very handy to do just those things to bring about a successful, high-quality lead-generating campaign.
Brian Gavin is a mentor, renowned jeweler, innovative businessman, and father to The Digital Marketing Mentor. In this episode, you’ll hear about how he grew up in South Africa, took the leap to America with his family and started selling diamonds online, in a time when that was practically unheard of. Be sure to listen in to learn his tips for mentorship and marketing for truly drawing out the sparkle within.
Allie Danziger joins Danny on the Digital Marketing Mentor to discuss her many mentors, such as her parents, her first boss, and some of her many employees. She also discusses how she transitioned from running one of the state’s most successful digital agencies to training and teaching young professionals the tricks to being effective in the workplace. Be sure to listen in to hear her fantastic book recommendations as well!
Dive into the world of music and professional coaching with Glenn Taylor. Learn how he went from being CMO of the Houston Symphony to coaching individuals and teams on how to be great leaders and foster a culture of feedback. You’ll also hear how impactful and fun organic content creation has been for Glenn and Skybound Coaching, not to mention the many mentors that guided Glenn on his journey.
Louis Gavin has cultivated a respect for creativity and unique approaches to advertising over his illustrious career. Hear how he was an essential element of Nelson Mandela’s presidential campaign in 1994, worked through the transition to digital advertising in the auto industry, and his thoughts on the best way to be a creative director, leader, and mentor on this episode of The Digital Marketing Mentor.
Jay Steinfeld launched Blinds.com, an e-commerce store, in 1996, eventually selling it to Home Depot in 2014. This bold but measured decision would characterize many of his subsequent career decisions. Listen in to hear Jay discuss how he is always learning, being mentored, and mentoring others, every day of his life - and how you should too!
Terri Hoffman is the CEO of Marketing Refresh, a digital agency that specializes in the construction and industrial industries. Follow along and learn about the many ways basketball, leadership, construction, and data audits have all come together to bring Terri through her career in digital marketing today!
Cory Henke’s path to his current stop, leading his media buying and analytics agency, is anything but a straight line. From convincing his college basketball coach to let him walk on as a novice to being taken into investor meetings by his last boss and CEO, Cory’s learned a lot of things by being unafraid to ask questions, take risks, and be the best at whatever role is needed, especially if that role is ‘Dad.’
We discuss the purpose, benefits, and process of a solid SEO content writing strategy with Mandy Politi, a Senior SEO Strategist at Optidge. Her career journey began as a child in the Greek education system with a strong focus on written content, continued with a degree in linguistics, and has led to a passionate approach to creating ever-evolving content briefs for writers and valuable content for consumers. Get ready for SEO Content Writing 101 in this episode of the Digital Marketing Mentor.
Having immigrated to Toronto from Lithuania as a young child and moved multiple times, Akvile is no stranger to adjusting to new situations. She’s taken those life experiences and the skills she learned from her many mentors over her career and turned them into numerous awards and a thriving social media marketing agency. Learn about the path that got her there and how she was gifted a client list to start her agency journey.
Martha Van Berkel has never backed down from a challenge and wouldn’t know how to hit the brakes on a hairpin turn on a go-kart track. She is always wanting to move faster, solve clients’ problems better, add more value, and think bigger. This is why she created Schema App. Learn more about structured data and how her mentors helped guide her there as we dive deep into being open to feedback and opportunities with Martha.
Learn the differences between manual and automated bidding in paid search campaigns as we discuss the different strategies to use to optimize your ad spend. Rachael Howle is the Head of Paid Search at Optidge and shares her knowledge and experience with Google Ads.
Kirk Williams, Founder and CEO of ZATO Marketing, discusses the benefits of dedicating yourself to learning, sharing your knowledge wisdom, Performance Max, and the Future of Google Shopping.
Featured Episodes
Kirk Williams, Founder and CEO of ZATO Marketing, discusses the benefits of dedicating yourself to learning, sharing your knowledge wisdom, Performance Max, and the Future of Google Shopping.