The People of Digital Marketing is a podcast made for aspiring marketing leaders. In each episode, I interview marketing experts from around the world. Marketing leaders from Fortune 500 companies, agencies, and startups share their career advice, challenges they’re facing, and roadmaps for how to keep growing every day in the world of digital marketing.
If you want to lead a marketing team one day, start your own business, or if you just need some expert perspectives on doing marketing the right way—this podcast is for you!
Nikki Lindgren, founder and managing partner of Pennock, is a leader in scaling DTC businesses through paid ads with a focus on helping female-led beauty brands. With expertise in digital media management exceeding $100 million, Nikki and her team leverage strategic advantages for impressive MER and ROAS. Questions and topics we covered in this episode include: Nikki shares her story of how she founded Pennock When and how marketers should deploy ads to grow eCommerce...
“Take a look at your agency and if their tests keep losing and you’re like ‘oh our current ad keeps performing better’…you should have a real hard conversation…[You’re losing] every time they tested…” Samir Balwani is a marketing thought leader, out-of-the-box thinker, and an intrinsic connector. As CEO and founder of QRY (pronounced “query”), Samir has built a world-class media agency of innovative thinkers and spirited doers who help brands think strategically about...
“Failure is the best way to learn…You have to try new methods and new things to surprise your audience and surpass your competitors.” Keren Pakes is the Chief Brand & Communications Officer at Bright Data and the General Manager of The Bright Initiative. After 14 impressive years as an award-winning BBC News journalist (she won an Emmy?!), Keren left the field of journalism to pursue marketing senior leadership roles in the B2B tech space. Today, Keren focuses...
“Video is great, and audio is better.” Nora Sudduth, Co-founder of Hello Audio is a leading marketing & conversion strategist who has helped businesses sell over $500M of products & services online. She’s also designed several courses, coaching, and certification programs that have generated millions more. Nora has over 20 years of experience working with startups to Fortune 500 companies and everything in between. From market positioning and messaging, to...
“When someone interacts with your brand for the first time, it’s literally a first impression.” Sydney Michuda is the owner and creative lead behind Super Creative, a design and branding studio based in Milwaukee. With a nearly decade of design experience under her belt, most of which has been focused on branding small businesses, she's most at home when working with passionate, like-minded creative entrepreneurs. Whether it's designing for brands large and small or...
“Take your top priorities and cut them in half, and then focus on doing fewer things exceedingly well.” Chad is the VP of Marketing & Communications at Jotform, a leading online form and productivity software company. He holds a master’s degree in communication and resides with his wife and cats in Oakland, California. Hiring for skills that matter and why writing is one to master! How to build a marketing team from the ground up. When to hire an employee vs...
“A podcast is like a Swiss army knife, it can accomplish so many objectives…” Dan Sanchez is the Director of Audience Growth for Sweet Fish, a podcast agency for B2B brands. Equipped with his MBA and a career that has crossed design, technology, marketing and education, Dan is ready to teach others how to grow their audience in a digital age. He contributes regularly to the B2B Growth podcast, Linkedin, and his own blog at danchez.com. Dan's also an avid runner,...
“[For] some clients who have not necessarily reinvented themselves yet–the experiences that we’ve experienced in the past need a facelift…” Ashley Cline is a Digital Marketing Consultant and Freelancing Expert. As the VP & Co-Founder at Ice Cream Social, Ashley has over 17 years of experience specializing in marketing strategy, execution, and collaborative efforts. She is a proponent of the importance of word-of-mouth marketing in today's digital age. Across her tenure...
“…This just provides more flexibility for really top-notch marketers to live the life that they want.” Arlyn Davich is an entrepreneurial executive with a proven track record of building and scaling consumer-tech businesses as a startup Founder/CEO (PayPerks...Allswell...ShopShops) and Fortune 50 Intrapreneur at companies like Walmart. She specializes in direct-to-consumer strategy, brand building, demand generation and digital acceleration. She's currently building her...
“Assuming timing exists, you [have to have] people, process, and technology…” Zac Litwack is a partner at Savage Ventures, a venture operator with HQ in Nashville, TN which has created $450M in enterprise value so far. He recently led marketing for Savage portfolio company OutKick, which scaled to 7 figures per month in revenue and sold to FOX less than 1 year after its launch. He is currently Chief Marketing Officer / Partner of American Songwriter, Savage Sports, Rare,...
“Relationships are what turn into opportunities.” Rachel B. Lee is a fearless marketing #ladyboss and the wife of Joshua B. Lee. Together they have formed a powerful business relationship that connects with audiences across the world. Rachel leads the marketing and branding strategy for Standout Authority and its clients and can help you find your voice and create influence like you’ve never imagined. She’s passionate about helping students navigate their careers, so In...
“I really only have about two tips: one is read more than your peers. The other one is do side projects.” Justin Watkins is the Founder and CEO of Native Digital, a brand and marketing firm acquiring customers where they live: online. In 2020, AdWeek ranked Native Digital as the 4th fastest growing agency in the Midwest. Questions and topics we covered include: How Justin bridges the skills gap between performance and brand marketing for himself and with his team. The old...
“Nobody is going to manage your career for you.” Jan Deahl is a marketing leader with over 20 years of investment industry experience who has ran international and global institutional marketing efforts at some of the world’s top asset management firms including AllianceBernstein, Janus Capital Group, American Century Investments, and the CFA Institute. He has worked globally, including being based in New York and Hong Kong. Jan graduated from Binghamton University with a...
“The first question is, ‘How hard is it to extract value from our product?’” Justin Parnell is the VP of Marketing at BrightIdea. Justin is a data-driven marketing leader who oversees a full range of initiatives including influencing business strategy, developing lifecycle marketing plans, and the project management of BrightIdea’s marketing initiatives. Justin is also experienced in launching and scaling new offerings and providing the vision of BrightIdea’s new product...
“It can help to work for a mission-driven organization but, you’re going to maximize that opportunity if you have some perspective on what your personal values are...” Always one to believe in bringing her whole self to work, Julia knows that the marketer who is deliberate in the purpose of their work will have the greatest impact. Early in her career, personal circumstances helped Julia define her own purpose. She has learned how to drive more impactful outcomes by being...
“Click rates don’t always correlate to revenue.” Joe works as the Director of Retention at The Beard Club. In his spare time, he's been growing his audience of 30K+ followers on Twitter and LinkedIn by sharing daily marketing tips and content geared toward DTC marketers. He has generated over $50mm in revenue with email marketing throughout his career and recently finished teaching his first Email Marketing 101 course on Maven. Other brands he’s helped in the world of...
“Your job as a manager is to only care about three things: the financial goals of your direct reports, their professional goals, and finally their personal goals.” Patrick Ward is the VP of Marketing for Rootstrap, a custom software development consultancy that digitally transforms companies like MasterClass & Google, along with A-List Celebrities like Tony Robbins & Snoop Dogg. He’s also the Founder of NanoGlobals, an expert-led platform that helps mid-size tech...
It's finally here...episode 100. For this episode, there are no guests. Just me, sharing lessons learned from more than 7 years of being a marketer. “Fun translates into good performance.” The four things every marketer should know before starting their career: Find a skill (channel) that is the most fun to do. Then specialize. Specialization brings money. Specialization solves hard problems that matter. You take this even further by also specializing in a specific industry...
“SEO takes time…” Steve Toth is a growth-focused SEO Consultant to companies around the world. He’s a trusted resource to over 10,000 subscribers of SEONoteBook.com, a newsletter full of weekly emails about how he’s approaching SEO strategy. Steve was previously the full-time SEO Manager at FreshBooks, but in February 2020 he took the company as a client after getting them to rank #1 for a search keyword that brought in 300K users a month on average. That keyword increased...