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.Episode Highlights Vicky Charleston's journey from abstract art studies at the University of Houston to graphic design success is marked by academic achievements, including a selective entry into the junior block of the graphic design program. She remembers this accomplishment to this day if she ever doubts herself. Vicky's father, a strict military man with artistic insight, instilled valuable life lessons in his children throughout their whole lives. His encouragement, overcoming humble beginnings, motivated her through doubts. The mantra "never be afraid to ask" remains a guiding principle in her life. Vicky emphasizes the impact of mentors throughout her career, acknowledging those who invested in her growth. She reciprocates by mentoring others, emphasizing honesty, listening, and empathy as essential mentorship qualities.As a woman of color in leadership, Vicky gracefully navigates biases and challenges in organizations. She highlights the importance of representation for younger people of color, and her education through Optidge’s ODEO digital marketing program broadened her digital marketing knowledge, proving the value of diverse skill sets.Episode Links: Vicky’s LinkedInFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.An Optidge "Office Hours" EpisodeOur Office Hours episodes are your go-to for details, how-to’s, and advice on specific marketing topics. Join our fellow Optidge team members, and sometimes even 1:1 teachings from Danny himself, in these shorter, marketing-focused episodes every few weeks. Get ready to get marketing!Episode HighlightsJoseph Wolf's passion for marketing ignited in high school, leading him from a marketing degree at St. Edward’s University to honing analytical skills in business intelligence. His career journey and expertise truly bloomed at Optidge.Contrary to common advice from big media buyers and Meta reps, diversification is crucial for effective advertising, especially in low-budget scenarios. Joe advocates varied campaigns, content, and audience targeting to achieve success without massive spending.Dispelling the myth of broad targeting success, Joe emphasizes diversification in demographics, regions, interests, and creative. Backup audiences play a vital role, ensuring sustained success as specific audiences may lose efficacy over time.Optidge's approach prioritizes lead quality over quantity. Joe recommends focusing on the relationship between CPL and lead quality, leveraging diverse campaigns, and testing creatively to achieve success in the evolving landscape of paid social advertising.Episode LinksJoseph’s LinkedInOptidge Website For the full list of episode links, visit our main page. Follow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.Episode Highlights Stacey Piefer's journey began in broadcast journalism at Alvin Community College and led to a degree in Communications and Public Relations at the University of Houston. This shaped her impactful career in communications, personal branding, and career coaching.Stacey emphasizes kindness, influencing, and listening as key mentorship skills. At the University of Houston's Bauer College of Business, she and her colleagues adopt diverse mentoring approaches, prioritizing what's best for each student.Stacey's transition from PR to branding at Savage Brands led her to discover her purpose, evolving from "express" to proudly identifying as a "guide." Authenticity is the cornerstone of personal branding, embracing uniqueness and multi-dimensionality.Stacey challenges the term "imposter syndrome," aiming to debunk the notion that students should feel fraudulent for being in a continuous learning phase. She advocates building confidence and dispelling unrealistic expectations, fostering a culture of growth and authenticity at the University of Houston.Episode Links: LinkedInStacey PieferBauer College of Business - Rockwell Career CenterFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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."Episode HighlightsWith an education that spans Montreal, Los Angeles, London, and New York, two master's degrees, and a current Harvard degree program, Pinny has a unique upbringing and education. Guided by a Rabbi who taught him to go against the grain, he started his career in digital marketing with confidence and creativity that took him very far. Pinny views mentors as guides, not answer-providers. His Harvard-assigned coach trades coaching for Chassidus study with Pinny. Pinny, as his mentors have for him, now emphasizes clarity without ego and letting others do the important work of arriving at their own solutions.Pinny's venture, Ice.com, was a trailblazer in the early anarchic days of digital marketing. Starting in 1999, he navigated challenges, including high website setup costs, utilizing PPC ads, and employing customer-focused rebranding strategies.Diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, Pinny embraced it as a revelation. Armed with newfound understanding, he strategically surrounds himself with finishers, leveraging his creativity while learning to navigate and thrive with ADHD in both personal and professional endeavors.Episode Links: Pinny's LinkedInDelmar JewelersFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights Sicily started her career in the film industry to satisfy her love of creativity, working with others, and storytelling. She learned she was destined for a different industry and used her familiarity with computers (thanks to learning digital editing software in college) to enter the world of digital marketing. A mentor, for Sicily, is someone with close proximity and immediate feedback. Her fearless approach led her to new roles, like VP of Marketing at NRG, mentored by Brad Fogle. Later, Karen Jones became a significant mentor, guiding Sicily's growth and even recommending her as CMO.Sicily must believe in her mentees. She relates mentoring to the Montessori principle of teaching to master a concept. At Sun & Ski, she emphasizes customer empowerment and likability in marketing, tackling challenges from revitalizing sales to managing diverse regional preferences.Episode Links: Lightning Round - BooksTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and TomorrowHello BeautifulYellow FaceSun & SkiSicily’s LinkedInFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.Episode HighlightsNatara Branch calls Houston home, even if she’s not a native Houstonian. And Houston happily welcomes Natara into its family. She attended the University of Houston after falling in love with its scrappy, underdog personality on a campus tour. After growing up in a military household, the blue sky, no guardrail type of dreaming and thinking that happened there was pivotal to her future career. She has taken the concept of mentors and meshed it with a concept from a book she read many years ago and now has a life board of advisors. These people are family, friends, professional acquaintances, and former mentees of hers who mentor her in all aspects of her life. Mentors help hone and add polish to your life. At Houston Exponential, Natara is passionate about its goal to bring startups and entrepreneurs to the Houston Region and help nurture partnerships and collaborations between new businesses and the legacy industries (petroleum and healthcare). She sees all the amazing things happening in the Houston Metro and is determined to help the city market itself and the amazing opportunities it offers. Episode LinksHouston Exponential WebsiteLinkedInInstagramX - TwitterYouTubeNatara's LinkedInFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.Episode Highlights Duane Brown first started his career in Public Relations after attending college and then university and getting two marketing certificates. His first (hard-won) digital marketing position taught him many business skills and PPC. He’s worked in the data-rich realm of paid search and paid social advertising ever since. Mentorship should be tailored to the person. A mentor is someone who will root for you to succeed but not just give you the answers. They should guide you in your journey. He finds it necessary to discover what motivates his mentees and what they want to work on. He will then try and find the points where the business can help them achieve their goals. Ultimately, PPC is about taking action. Duane and his team have a general rule that if a campaign is performing poorly for three or more days, that’s no longer an anomaly and has become a trend, and you need to make a change. People often underestimate the power of good ad copy and of delving deep into the data of a campaign. He knows how beneficial it can be to look deeper than just campaign-level metrics into the SKU, ad level, keyword, and ad group data. Episode Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/duanebrown/?originalSubdomain=caWebsite: https://www.takesomerisk.com/about/Blogs: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/author/duane-brownArticles: https://www.appbind.com/agency-connect-featuring-duane-brown/Twitter: @DuaneBrownFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.An Optidge Office Hours EpisodeOur Office Hours episodes are your go-to for details, how-to’s, and advice on specific marketing topics. Join our fellow Optidge team members, and sometimes even 1:1 teachings from Danny himself, in these shorter, marketing-focused episodes every few weeks. Get ready to get marketing!Episode Highlights: Caroline Pham is a paid search strategist. Her journey into digital marketing started with a Rodeo award-winning drawing of a Dalmatian puppy. She then explored her creative side and realized that advertising was the path she wanted to take. While attending the University of Texas’s advertising program, she discovered her aptitude and inclination for data and statistics. When it comes to setting the best foundation for a successful paid search campaign, Caroline knows that clear, solid goals are the place to start. Once the goal is determined, all other questions can be answered. For paid search, the goal is usually sales. When choosing between Cost Per Lead and Cost Per Acquisition, she operates by the rule of thumb of 30 days. If the conversion window is longer than 30 days, CPL will be the best metric on which to optimize. Finally, if you have a campaign that is being limited by budget but is still performing well, the “budget increase” conversation can be an easy one to have. It’s essential to look at several metrics like share of voice, visibility, industry conversion rate, and more to determine what the ideal budget could be. Then you start the conversation armed with the data showing how the campaign can bring the client even more sales, and isn’t that why we’re doing all of this anyway?Episode Links: Previous Podcast Episodes ft. Blinds.comJay SteinfeldMosheh PoltorakDaniel CotlarOptidge.com - Paid SearchFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.  Episode Highlights Eric Vardon started his career by finding one of the only colleges near him offering a website coding and development course. He then went on to co-found All Maple Apparel. While that may sound like a clothing store, which it did evolve into, it originated as more of an e-zine (like an internet magazine, a format popular before blogs took over). It started out discussing all things happening locally to them in Canada, and eventually, merchandising became a piece of their offerings, and that blossomed into a couple of brick-and-mortar All Maple Apparel stores. Eventually, they couldn’t keep up with the need for capital investment and had to close down. A mentor is someone who sees something in you that you can’t see in yourself. It’s usually a reflection of something they see in themselves. For Eric, there’s also a sort of connection or spark that happens right away when a mentorship begins. Eric has had a few impactful mentors, including his business partner, other co-founders, and an investor. They’ve all taught him many business and life skills and have done a brilliant job of keeping ego out of the way to maximize personal and business growth. Eric has gone through the mergers & acquisitions (M&A) process with his first agency, Arcane Agency. He and his co-founder came to that business with the knowledge and internal resolution to replace themselves and get out of the way of the business as soon as possible. They’ve always known what they were good at and what they weren’t. They utilized an M&A firm to manage their transition, and while expensive, it was worth it as they managed to help a process often fraught with issues go incredibly smoothly. Episode Links: Eric VardonEventConnectSocials:LinkedInFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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! Episode HighlightsAlison Reeves is a business and mindset coach. She came to this niche via a bachelor’s degree in leadership from a small Bible College in Houston. Through her time as a mentee and a mentor, Alison has come to define a mentor as someone who can both show you the way and help you find your own way. She’s also learned that some mentorships can become toxic if they focus on high-pressure sales tactics instead of aligning with the mentee's true goals and personality. After fighting her way out of mastermind course addiction, Alison has learned so much about mindset and nervous system work and how it plays into one’s own business. She’s become a certified Somatic Coach, and even the clients who come to her for business coaching often find themselves drifting into mindset work over their time with Alison. Audience Borrowing is the most missed/under-utilized marketing tactic, according to Alison. It’s a great marketing tool and can manifest in a few different forms:Podcasts - Having guests and being a guestGuest bloggingBundles and summitsShout-outs on social mediaEmail swappingEpisode Links: WebsiteEverything - All her linksSocial MediaFacebookYoutubeInstagramThe Mind Your Marketing PodcastFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital 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. Episode Highlights: Navah Hopkins originally wanted to be an English teacher, so determined her 3rd-grade self. Through education and honest family guidance, that became marketing. After starting in SEO and there being an ethical mismatch with the strategy she was working within, she found herself in the world of non-profits and eventually Paid Search. She’s had mentors who helped grow her into an empowerer of colleagues, a better public speaker and marketer, and more confident in growing herself. One of her mentees (with whom she connected playing video games) went from a $500/month stipend to her paying them $10k/mo in billable hours within a year. She finds incredible joy in helping others learn how to help themselves. Optmyzer released a study reviewing the efficacy of broad match v. exact match keyword strategies. Navah discusses how she had to adopt a new approach to paid search strategy upon reviewing the results as they contradicted her previous position. She loves getting to learn new and challenging evidence. Episode Links: NavahLinkedInOptmyzerSearch Engine Journal - Ask a PPCPaid Search AssociationZina KayyaliPurna VirjiHigh Impact Content Marketing Shelly Fagin EpisodeOptmyzer StudyFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. An Optidge "Office Hours" EpisodeOur Office Hours episodes are your go-to for details, how-to’s, and advice on specific marketing topics. Join our fellow Optidge team members, and sometimes even 1:1 teachings from Danny himself, in these shorter, marketing-focused episodes every few weeks. Get ready to get marketing!Episode HighlightsClient onboarding is your first impression of a client and their first impression of the agency. It will set the tone for the rest of the relationship. It should be done for clients of any size or duration. We always need to ensure everyone has what they need for success and that expectations are appropriately set. Upselling can be a delicate balance to manage in client conversation, especially as it relates to setting (and resetting) expectations and defining scope. Oftentimes, when a client asks if something is in scope, it’s innocent. If they want something out of scope, this is a great time to discuss an upsell. When bringing an upsell idea to a client, they can get upset because they might not want to spend more money. It’s important to steer the conversation back to the notion that we simply want to support the client and saw this opportunity for growth and shared it. There’s no pressure. Quick tips on client communication for Account ManagersRead the room. If you have a client you can’t joke around with, then don’t. If they’re a more serious person and don’t turn on the cameras in meetings, mirror that. Whatever they do, you do. That said, don’t dull your sparkle. There will be clients you can be bubbly and bright with. When it comes to communication - there’s no such thing as too much. Stay on top of it. Get ahead of it. If you know something is going to or even MIGHT happen, go ahead and communicate. Overcommunication is never discouraged or unappreciated. Guest + Episode LinksJenna MeldrumLinkedInFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode HighlightsMike Metzler got his undergraduate and graduate degrees back-to-back from St. Edwards University. He then went on to have a great mentor in his first boss, who taught him many career skills. These days, Mike believes those he mentors would simply call him ‘friend.’ As he works in the social media industry, he tries to help guide the younger generation, who often find themselves thrust into the limelight as influencers. They often know how to perform on social media, but they don’t necessarily know “business,” so he helps them avoid being taken advantage of in their career.When it comes to the keys to great mentorship, Mike has fairly solid pillars:First, and most importantly, be available, more available than just what’s convenient for you. It is a big commitment that you can’t make for everyone. Next, a mentor should encourage responsible risk-taking. It’s your job to push your mentee to help them grow but know the risk so they don’t gamble with their career.Finally, a mentor must hold their mentee accountable. If they say they’re going to tackle a particular challenge, you should follow up with them and make sure they actually took action. Mike has done plenty of work in the social media space over nearly two decades (hey, Facebook circa 2007, we’re talking about you). Throughout his time in the digital world, he’s seen many social platforms come and go and grow. He’s a big proponent of being on every social platform as early as you can. He’s found that the early adopters and those who take “responsible risks” are those who often find success on social media. Episode LinksLinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter/XSnapchatFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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, 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. Episode HighlightsLike many of our guests on The Digital Marketing Mentor, Shelly Fagin’s path to digital marketing was not a straightforward one. She’s a lifelong computer geek who taught herself how to code from books when she began working online while pregnant with her first child. This thirst for knowledge of all things digital led her to an agency job that led her to open her own consulting business, Highly Searched, where she helped her clients for over twelve years. She then found herself at SEMRush as a brand ambassador, and most recently made her mark in the world of leadership with her former role as Director of SEO at Credit Karma and current role as Director of SEO at DigitalOcean.Shelly’s mentors, Rae and Melissa, helped instill a sense of confidence in her that inspired her to start speaking at professional events, a piece of her career that has blossomed ever since. As she recently started managing a team, she’s fallen in love with mentoring others. She tends to take a hands-off approach and encourages learning by doing. WordPress Evangelist - That’s Shelly Fagin in a nutshell. She will long tout the strength and flexibility of the platform, especially as it pertains to enterprise-level websites. She has a tendency to go light with plugins and strongly encourages those looking to select a dependable hosting provider, like Kinsta or WPHosting. Episode LinksLinkedInTwitter/XShellyFagin.comThreadsInstagramTikTokFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights: After attending seminary for a degree, Chayale went into sales for a major publication. She began selling ad space, and that was when she became hooked on the advertising industry and grew to love it so much more than she anticipated. Living through the shift to digital at a nationwide publisher, Chayale saw the ever-present nature of print for the Jewish community in particular. She also saw the power instant advertising and the world of digital held. So, she created The Jewish Content Network.For Chayale, she tries to find a mentor in every person she meets. She is very adept at reading people and uses that skill to draw upon the traits she admires in others. She believes a mentor should have a certain level of calmness about them. They should also feel somewhat “aspirational” to the mentee. She recalls one of her past bosses who was very good at keeping the worries of the higher offices away from those whom he managed. Chayale has built a phenomenal team for herself, full of go-getters and hard workers. She has a skill of seeing that drive and energy in a person. It takes a particular personality to work in the advertising industry, and she is very good at identifying those people. She lost herself in her work for a while, but with the help of her husband and plenty of internal work, she now does her work for the joy of it, not because it defines her. Episode Links: LinkedIn | Chayale KaufmanThe Jewish Content NetworkFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

In this Office Hours episode, Optidge’s COO and resident expert in operations shares three secrets to building high-performing remote teams in digital marketing agencies. From removing the stigma that surrounds independent contractors and the fear of process standardization, Leah shares how to create a cohesive culture of drive, efficiency, and top-notch client service. This episode is packed with practical strategies & guidance to help your teams feel supported and successful.An Optidge "Office Hours" EpisodeOffice Hours episodes are your go-to for details, how-to’s, and specific marketing advice. Join Optidge team members, or experience 1:1 teachings from Danny, in these shorter, focused episodes. Get ready to get marketing!Episode Highlights: Leah Leaves, Optidge’s COO shares her career journey, from journalism to SEO for agencies, and ultimately to operational organization for remote teams in digital marketing agencies.Leah’s 3 secrets to high-performing teams in remote digital marketing agencies:1 - Streamlined Onboarding -  a comprehensive & detailed onboarding process is paramount in setting new team members up for success.2 - Transparent Communication - whether through documentation, collaboration tools, or project management platforms, communication is key to fostering a collaborative environment, especially in remote work. 3 - Organization & Standardization - Meticulous organization of tools & platforms enhances overall productivity.  Links:ClubhouseColorado State UniversityLeah LeavesAlderaan EnterpriseLinkedInBooksTraction, Gino WickmanProfit First, Mike MichalowiczMultipliers, Liz WisemanThe Science of Success podcastFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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!Episode Highlights: Ashley Werhun is the co-founder of Mentorly, an enterprise software solution to help promote, manage, and optimize inter-company mentorship systems. She felt drawn to create mentorly after a long, successful career as a professional dancer. Through touring the world with performance companies, she met many people from many backgrounds and cultures and learned life lessons from all of them. She’s now turned those lessons into Mentorly in the hopes that everyone can have the same support she had. Startup companies are hard, and they seem impossible. They take nothing and turn it into something they use to help their customers. Mentorly had its struggles but found its way with the help of angel investors who have helped not only with business funding but also by mentoring, guiding, and helping Ashley and the Mentorly team along the way.Episode Links: MentorlyBlack Business and Professionals Association (BPPA)Ashley’s LinkedInFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.Episode Highlights: Adele Beiny grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family and community on the East Coast. At her mother’s advice, she did not attend college and instead played to her strengths of networking and real-life work. She’s worked in sales in luxury real estate and the beauty industry, and even a bit as a floral designer, but eventually found her way to lifestyle design and branding consultation at Life’s Looking Good. Maybe they’re born with it. Maybe it’s Mentoring! Adele believes most mentors come by it naturally. A mentor is someone with a natural or self-developed passion for guiding and teaching others. She’s found many mentors in the social media space and is definitely drawn to those who share organically, fully, and authentically. She cautions, despite the experts and algorithms pushing for it, don’t niche yourself down out of your humanity. We’re malleable beings and don’t exist just within one hyper-niche space. Adele hasn’t been heavily impacted by AI in the marketing world yet. She’s played around with it some but knows, right now, it’s all based on the unique inputs we give it. AI can’t be imaginative and creative yet. But she knows we’re just scratching the surface of this tool and is curious to see what becomes of it. Episode Links:LifesLookinGood.comInstagramRecommendation: TezzaFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights:Shaina Keren is a career coach, but her path to this point was not a straight one. She spent the first decade and then some as a teacher in the education field. After some intense self-reflection and research, she found herself connected with Nicholas Lore, the author of The Pathfinder, and on her way to becoming the brilliant career coach she is today.When it comes to mentors, Shaina has grouped them into three categories. There is the kind you’ll never meet, the kind you pay to meet, and the kind that are “right at the top” of the hills you find yourself wanting to climb. Her two most notable mentors have been Nicholas Lore and Jacob Engle. Each has guided her along her journey as a career coach. Shaina offers many pieces of advice for those looking for the right career for themselves. First, imagine your ideal self outside of the constraints of your current reality, then figure out what you take from that image and make it work in the real world. Next, just take a personality test. There are plenty of free quizzes available, and they can work well as a tool to self-discovery. Finally, your resume should not be your whole life history. Tailor your resume to the positions to which you’re applying. Episode Links:ShainaKeren.comCareer QuizLinkedInBooksThe Choice by Dr. Edith EgerThe Pathfinder by Nicholas LoreI Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit SethiFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights:The many experts we’ve interviewed about ChatGPT and AI seem to share a few understandings.If you don’t use these tools, everyone else in your industry will, and you will be left behind. ChatGPT and AI are intended to be tools to assist humans, not the other way around. These new tools can help us write content that better (and in fewer words) gets to the crux of a point of communication.Educators believe they are responsible for teaching their students how to use this tool as well as the limitations and implications of its use. There is one major thing ChatGPT and AI are NOT - human. They lack our humanity, creativity, and perspectives, and therefore, humans will always be needed to polish, expand, and supervise their content. Episode Links:Mosheh PoltrakAurora LosadaDaniel CotlarJohn DohertyFay FriedmanBill ZahnJamie BelinneAmalia FowlerFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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! Episode Highlights:Emily Ryan got her start in theater. She attended a prestigious musical theater school, got her degree, and then moved to New York City to pursue a Broadway career. It was incredibly challenging and turned what was previously a passion into a business. So Emily transitioned to executive assistant work. After doing that work for many years, she had a baby, moved to Utah with her husband, and shuddered at the idea of returning to office work and leaving her new baby (with whom she was obsessed). A friend recommended she look into becoming a virtual assistant (VA), and she did. That VA work very quickly became Mailchimp email marketing work. And it’s just snowballed from there. To Emily, a mentor is someone who you can rely on to be there for you when you need advice and is there to provide guidance and support. She has been mentored by many other agency owners from around the globe through the Mailchimp partners program. She is extremely passionate about helping other mothers learn how to start their own businesses to work from home. She mentors those women and is there for them in so many ways. She shares her contract templates and will sit in on kick-off calls for newcomers to the business. Seeing a new mother crushing it and making a significant income while working from home is the best!Email marketing is not old news, and Emily knows it. Have you been in your inbox today? The likely answer is ‘yes.’ She knows this means email is incredibly powerful. SMS is the next budding tool, and while she’s unsure of its conversion power, she knows it will certainly be powerful for many businesses' marketing strategies. She does love social media, especially Instagram. She knows both email and social media are necessary, and each has its own pros and cons. Go export a copy of your mailing lists right now. Always have a backup copy. Do it!Episode Links:Instagram @emilyryanlikesTwitter @emilyryantweetsWeekly email newsletterWestfield CreativeLinkedIn | Emily Ryan Follow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

Today’s Office Hours episode focuses on the many ways stereotypes and unconscious biases can make their way into the workplace. Maddie Deane, the SEO Team Lead at Optidge, 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.An Optidge "Office Hours" EpisodeOur Office Hours episodes are your go-to for details, how-to’s, and advice on specific marketing topics. Join our fellow Optidge team members, and sometimes even 1:1 teachings from Danny himself, in these shorter, marketing-focused episodes every few weeks. Get ready to get marketing!Episode Highlights:Maddie, being mostly Gen-Z with some Millennial still there, knows all too well the stereotypes associated with those generations. She has had to fight for respect in the workforce because many have the preconceived notion these generations don’t care about careers or putting in hard work. She views many of the “negatives'' as “positives.” When it comes to countering stereotypes and biases, Maddie’s number one tip - Self Confidence. Avoid using softer language like “I think…” or “it might be…” and use strong, assertive language and posture. She tries to teach this to her mentees and trainees by leading by example. Managers, bosses, and owners can help by setting expectations with new clients of who they will be working with and passing their credibility onto the day-to-day workers by communicating their expertise and confidence in their team to the client. Episode Links:LinkedIn - Maddie DeaneAleyda SolisAnn HandleyAmy VernonWomen in Tech SEOBooksDaring Greatly by Brene BrownNot Nice by Dr. Aziz GazipureWe Were Liars by E. LockhartFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.Episode Highlights: John Doherty got a degree in technical and scientific communications from James Madison University. He originally believed he wanted to diverge from his father’s 30-year employer and older brother’s alma mater and go to university out of state, but James Madison provided a great degree program. After graduating, he traveled, lived in Europe for a bit, and then returned to work his way up the East Coast. Forty-seven states, 20+ countries, three continents. John travels. He knows travel can open one’s worldview and perspective. He and his wife and family now live in Denver, where they seem to have put down fairly deep roots. This doesn’t stop them from going on trips and vacations often. To John, business relationships settle into tiers. Tier 1 is peers, many of whom follow different paths as we move through our careers; some grow with us. Tier 2 is for coaches. A coach is someone you pay for their business advice and guidance. They’re often a couple of steps beyond you in business. Finally, Tier 3 is reserved for mentors. A mentor is someone many steps ahead of you in their career who advises on a more macro, meta-level. This is the type of person who, in a 10-minute conversation, can completely shift your paradigm around a question, challenge, or opportunity. EditorNinja is John’s current business venture focus. They offer professional editing services on a subscription-based model, a strategy inspired by John’s friend, the founder of Design Pickle. Many freelance editors they work with are in their first job out of an editing or master's program. John mentors them on professional career skills. He is not an editor. He’s a writer, marketer, and salesperson who will not try to convince someone they need his services but will instead ask the right questions until the person convinces themselves if they’re the right match for EditorNinja. Episode Links:LinkedInTwitterEditorNinjaWordPressSlackMoz.comCredoFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights:Henry Adaso was born and raised in Nigeria, where he founded and led his high school’s press club. This was when he first fell in love with words. He uses those powerful storytelling skills today in his marketing career. A mentor is a guide. They are someone who can help guide you along your career path because they’ve walked a similar path. A successful mentor must listen. They must understand their mentee's goal and not default to their own understanding or personal goals to advise them. Adaso is the epitome of The Marketing Quarterback because he wants to be in the trenches, doing the work with his team. His team he crafted carefully, ensuring he had a collection of unique individuals with skills and superpowers that complemented each other, all working toward a shared vision. Storytelling is a key element of Henry’s life and marketing strategy. This is obvious in the three bestselling books he’s written and published. They all discuss different elements of marketing strategy, including overall content strategy,  internal motivation, and audience definition and focus. Each book begins with a story and goes on to motivate and teach the reader the marketing quarterback’s playbook. Episode Links:Global Mentoring InitiativeLinkedInWebsiteFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights: BackgroundWilliam (Bill) Zahn started his marketing career with a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of Texas at Austin. After a stint in the workforce, he got his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Houston. Five years after completing the graduate program, he returned as a professor, where he remains today. MentoringWhen defining a mentor, Bill knows one thing for certain - he doesn’t like to leave it open-ended. If someone requests Bill to mentor them, he wants expectations set up front. How often will we meet? What do you hope to get out of this? He believes a mentor is someone who has been where you want to go and can offer you advice to help you overcome challenges on your path to success.ProfessorshipA social media marketing class project had a bit of a plot twist when one of Bill’s students managed to convince Gary Vee to call and be a guest speaker for their class. Bill knows that storytelling is a critical element of good teaching and good marketing. He always tries to find ways to relate a topic to his students' lives so they’ll better remember it. He also knows that AI is here to stay, especially in the world of marketing content creation, but it will always need the human touch because it doesn’t have life experiences to draw upon. Episode Links:LinkedInTwitterBooksThe Go-Giver by Bob Burg The Trusted Advisor by Charles Green  Lost and Founder by Rand Fishkin Follow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. An Optidge "Office Hours" EpisodeOur Office Hours episodes are your go-to for details, how-to’s, and advice on specific marketing topics. Join our fellow Optidge team members, and sometimes even 1:1 teachings from Danny himself, in these shorter, marketing-focused episodes every few weeks. Get ready to get marketing!Episode Highlights:This case study concerns a client that came to Optidge with a 12,000 page website that was underperforming in organic search. They also received a “couldn’t fetch” error when submitting their sitemap via Google Search Console. The website's purpose was to serve as a search engine for social media influencers. Our analysis uncovered a low-quality content issue.Because so much of the website is content copied from various social media sites and profiles, it’s fairly low on content, AND Google will view it as low quality because it’s not unique. There are two ways to rectify a low content quality issue. You can remove or block the pages from being indexed by Google. Alternatively, you can increase the value and improve the quality of the content on those pages. The latter should be driven by keyword research. We recommended the client create static pages targeting specific, high-traffic keywords and then link those pages via a categorical structure in the navigation. Finally, if the content quality were not an issue and the likely cause of low organic performance, the search console error would still be annoying. Our research uncovered that a sitemap submission in Google Search Console is mostly a suggestion rather than a command to Google when crawling and indexing your site. If it doesn’t accept the sitemap, your main remedy is waiting. There are certain rules of thumb and alternative file types and submission methods you can try to help increase the likelihood of Google accepting your sitemap. Episode Links:Mandy’s SEO EpisodeGoogle Search ConsoleHow to Submit SitemapYoast SEO WordPress PluginFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.  Episode Highlights:Amalia learned through her education that there is no one path to success. For her, it started with a degree in psychology and went on to include managing Google Ads, being a director of marketing, and now, being a professor at her alma mater and running her own consulting agency. She knows age doesn’t always mean more life experience and formal education isn’t the absolute best or worst route for people interested in digital marketing. It depends. Defining a mentor is a challenge, but to Amalia, the definition should be broad and open to different paths. A mentor is someone who has had a positive impact on your life that you’ll recall for many years. Her three keys to mentoring success are:Self Awareness. It’s incredibly important in general, but especially in mentoring. If you don’t know what you don’t know, you’re incapable of providing advice. Approach with curiosity. She’s learned always to ask questions. She never approaches with anger and tries not to be upset. Everyone has backgrounds and core beliefs we were taught as we grew up. Now we must ask ourselves if we still believe or want to subscribe to those life rules.Follow your sparkle. If you don’t like the word ‘sparkle,’ you can use ‘joy,’ but why would you when ‘sparkle’ is right there? At the end of each semester, Amalia always tells her students, “If you HAVE to disappoint someone, don’t let it be you.” When it comes to updating her course curriculum to keep up with the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, Amalia has a fairly straightforward approach. If her students can Google a tool or program once they’re out of her classroom and in the workforce, then she has a responsibility to teach them how to smartly and safely use that tool. Regarding ChatGPT and AI, she makes sure they understand the inherent biases, challenges, and flaws in the foundation of those tools. An essential question you must always ask when using AI is, “What’s WRONG with it?”Episode Links:LinkedInTwitter her dad is on Twitter and he always responds to every one of her tweetsDove Self-Esteem ProjectCost of Beauty: A Dove Film | Dove Self-Esteem ProjectFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights:After first getting his start in the world of sports at a young age, winning the chance to be a ball boy for the Houston Rockets, Adam Clanton persevered through his challenging college education at Sam Houston State University and has been working in sports talk radio since 2004. His father is a very influential mentor to him and also works in (not-sports) talk radio. He’s encouraged him many times over the years and has encouraged some encounters that became long-lasting business relationships and friendships. To Adam, a mentor is not someone necessarily working the job you want in the industry in which you’re working. A mentor is someone who makes sure you’re going down the right path based on your skills and strengths. They help minimize or overcome your weaknesses in the most selfless way imaginable. Mark Vandemeer is one of those mentors for Adam. He met Mark after Mark had met his father and worked at the same radio station. Mark eventually developed a friendship with Adam and helped coach him on many things in business and life. Early in his career, Mark offered Adam a co-host spot on his radio show. And the rest, as they say, is history. The internet has been increasingly present in sports media the whole time Adam has worked in the industry. His favorite platform of choice is Twitter, though he notes it can be a perilous place. His love for the “Mute” button cannot be overstated, and it has helped him focus on listening to the people whose opinions truly matter, his family and friends. Social media has also given him a platform to partake in one of his favorite parts of his job - giving away free tickets. He loves giving away free Rockets tickets to people on social media who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to see and enjoy a game. Episode Links:Adam ClantonTwitterInstagramFacebookLinkedInSam Houston State University - Broadcast JournalismSportsHouston Rockets BasketballHouston Texans FootballHouston Astros BaseballFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

Ever wondered what it takes to excel as a client account manager in the fast-paced world of digital marketing? Join me for an engaging conversation with Nayeli Cano, a seasoned marketing expert and client account manager at Optidge. In this podcast, Nayeli shares her inspiring journey from starting as a content manager, to volunteering with a non-profit, and eventually diving headfirst into the digital marketing industry.An Optidge "Office Hours" EpisodeOur Office Hours episodes are your go-to for details, how-to’s, and advice on specific marketing topics. Join our fellow Optidge team members, and sometimes even 1:1 teachings from Danny himself, in these shorter, marketing-focused episodes every few weeks. Get ready to get marketing!Episode Highlights:Nayeli Cano is a client account manager at Optidge. Her foray into the digital marketing industry began thru a volunteer position at a nonprofit organization. She then went on to work in sales at a marketing agency. This is where she discovered account management - in her effort to truly understand the offerings and services she was selling. She was hooked and eventually moved from sales at that agency to account management at a different company.Organization, time management, and communication are all key skills for account managers. Nayeli is a natural “control freak,” so she takes to organization like a duck to water. Time management for her all comes down to the good ol’ To Do List and setting priorities. Finally, communication and being able to read people, both your client and your team members, is key for setting expectations and protecting your team. Managing expectations can be very challenging, and sometimes last-minute, urgent requests are unavailable. But Nayeli’s team knows she’s there to negotiate for them and protect their time and effort. It can be very easy to keep your account management “hat” on 24/7. She avoids this by having a specific “closing” routine to wrap up her work day, where she notes all remaining priorities and plans her tasks for the next day. Then, she turns off all notifications and takes her dog on a walk outside. Sometimes, when walking, she’ll get inspired and find insight or a solution to a work problem. When this happens, she writes it down on her phone and then gets back to being in the moment with her dog. Guest + Episode LinksOptidgeLinkedInFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.Episode Highlights: Fay Friedman began her career as an SEO copywriter. Through this work, she learned much about the good, the bad, and the ugly of digital marketing and what does and doesn’t help a client’s website. After many years in traditional SEO, she made the transition to commercial real estate, where she is now the CMO of AJH Co. While she may have been thrown into the deep end of real estate marketing, she’s mastered the art of it now, slowly but surely bringing real estate in the modern marketing era (with modern tracking and reporting).Fay believes a mentor is someone you can look up to and that will provide you with clear-headed guidance. They don’t need to be someone you’re close to that you see daily. She references Barry Schwartz of SEO Round Table as one of her early SEO mentors, as she learned so much from reading his blog. Her current COO has also mentored her, teaching her the different ways to be an effective leader. When it comes to real estate marketing, it’s all regional. Fay knows the key to standing out and bringing in high-quality leads is in-depth property and target market research. She then uses that research to craft a unique message highlighting how a given property will help overcome any pain points of that customer group. She’s working to shift the marketing focus from being simply ILS management with basic reporting to a wide breadth of marketing platforms and advertising styles, all with the most reporting and targeting available.  Episode Links: AJHCo.comFay EmailLinkedInResourcesSEO Round TableSearch Engine LandKristina AzarenkoFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights: Yehuda Cagen has always had an interest in advertising. Even as a kid, his family would play a game that entailed picking a random item out of the pantry and doing a commercial on the chosen thing. He began his career at an advertising agency after getting his Master’s in Communication. He knows his degree helped open doors for him, but he knows he had to prove himself once he got to work. A mentor is anyone you can learn from, according to Yehuda. He says that our entire journey on this earth is to keep learning. There are formal and informal mentors and intentional and passive mentors. Brian Grodner, Larry Sachnowitz, Peter Edlund, and Grant Elliot have taught him much over the years, much of it focused on being open and inviting to others and having a positive focus in life.  When it comes to advertising complex and niche products, like many of the businesses Yehuda has worked for in his career, he says you must find your beacon. This is the one thing that truly differentiates you from your competitors. You discover this by talking with the customer service and sales teams and listening to honest conversations with current and prospective customers. Episode Links:Ostendio.comLinkedIn - Yehuda CagenFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights: Taylor McMaster owns and runs DOT & Company, a client account management agency. Originally, DOT & Company was a digital marketing agency themselves, but while on a Mastermind trip in Fiji, Taylor realized what she most enjoyed was client communication, management, and organization. So, she transitioned her business to one that managed other agencies’ clients. For Taylor, being a mentor is more of a vibe than a title or rigid definition. However, in her experience with many mentors from different walks of life over the years, she found they share one thing in common. A mentor is someone you can confidently ask for help, and they can provide a new perspective for you. She’s also learned that it is key for her to find mentors who share common values with her. She doesn’t want to be someone working 80-hour work weeks and living in a hustle culture. Obviously, Taylor is very passionate about what makes a good account manager. She knows that proactive communication is paramount to a long-lasting client relationship. Also, having good processes, documentation, and systems are key to efficiency and help soften the edges of the “human element” of agency work. Finally, continuous optimization is imperative to long and profitable client relationships. DOT & Company’s account managers are constantly working with the agency strategists and experts to provide a better service to their clients, whether that’s upselling them on a new service or shutting down one that doesn’t seem to be bringing in the return they need. If you do all these things, you’re sure to delight your clients. Episode Links:Dot & CompanyThe Happy Clients PodcastSocialsFacebookInstagramCompany - LinkedInTaylor McMaster - LinkedInFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights: According to Jamie, a student's experiences outside of the classroom are hugely important. Her time spent as a student worker and intern and her first few jobs were incredible learning opportunities for her. She encourages the students she mentors to strive to leave university with more than just a piece of paper asserting they’ve met the academic requirements of their degree. According to Jamie, a mentor is someone who has understanding and background knowledge beyond your own (in some area) to help provide insight and perspective on your goals and questions. She shares three keys to successful mentorship.In 2017, Jamie published "The Care and Feeding of Your Younger Employee: A Manager's Guide to Millennials and Gen Z." Her research revealed that perceived generational differences often stem from youthful mentality. She also discovered that young professionals anticipate diversity and an ideal work environment, but are often let down. Despite being labeled as narcissistic, younger generations raised in an online world exhibit high awareness of others and their influence.Episode Links:JamieWebsiteBookBooksCrucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Stephen R. Covey, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al SwitzlerDifficult Conversations by Douglas Stone,  Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, and Roger FisherUniversitiesThe University of HoustonLouisiana State UniversityLoyola UniversityTexas TechBird Watching LocationsQuintana BeachHigh Island South Padre IslandFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.Episode Highlights:Batli’s path to the world of SEO wasn’t a straight and easy one. She got her education in photography and journalism from the University of Texas. She eventually found her way to Optidge where she learned, through trying, that SEO and SEO content were the niche in which she wanted to be. The Google Helpful Content Update was being rolled out at the time of our chat with Batli. Google was trying to direct SEO-ers to focus on making content with a people-first mindset, as opposed to an algorithm-first approach. We don’t yet know what the impact will be, but it will likely be good for users and harder for good marketers to be seen as everyone starts making better content. Mentorship and being mentored, for Batli, are really more about the personality of the mentor, rather than the technical skills within a given industry or platform. A mentor must lead with empathy and for the mentee to feel like they’re heard. Batli has taken these traits and now uses them as she mentors others.Episode Links:University of Texas Journalism DegreeThe Daily TexanUT Fashion GroupGoogle Helpful Content Update: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/08/helpful-content-update https://searchengineland.com/google-helpful-content-update-is-now-done-rolling-out-387832https://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-helpful-content-update-rolls-out-7-things-to-know/462610/ Follow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights:Aurora Losada was born and raised in Spain. Her father was the CEO of one of the largest publishing companies in Europe and helped instill an amazing work ethic in her. He encouraged her to follow her vision of going into journalism. After attending college in the United States, she loved it so much that she made it permanent and became a US Citizen. Aurora has had many amazing mentors over the years, including our very own Danny Gavin, The Digital Marketing Mentor. All of her mentors have guided, advised, and supported her with no expectation of personal gain. They were always there to answer questions and open doors for her, as a good mentor should. When it comes to AI and content generation, Aurora has many thoughts. She believes generative AI specifically is being created to be an amazing tool that supports humans rather than the inverse. She’s used it herself with help on projects in the past, but it doesn’t do her job for her. It’s an administrative assistant that is useless without human prompts and input. As far as content generation and AI are concerned, Aurora believes it is a very useful tool for summaries, drafts, and brainstorming, but you must always double-check the output and review the sources and add the human mind back into the content. Episode Links:Aurora LosadaLinkedInTwitter Columbia School of JournalismColumbia School of International and Public AffairsNews Literacy Project of HoustonPodcasts The Hard Fork by the New York TimesOn with Kara SwisherAppleSpotifyDare to Lead with Brene BrownFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.Episode Highlights:Daniel Cotlar learned early in his life that he preferred working in smaller, more risk-taking, creative environments. This ultimately led him to work with Jay Steinfeld at Blinds.com. Jay has been a pivotal influence and mentor for Daniel and taught him about his core values, structure, and more. Daniel believes a mentor must want what’s best for their mentee. There should be some flexible structure, and they should focus more on asking questions than simply dumping solutions. Through his work as an investor and board member, Daniel does a lot of mentoring these days. He believes it’s essential for new businesses to just go for it: get the product out of the idea stage and into the customer’s hands as quickly as possible, with as little cost as possible. Then you can observe, learn, and improve. It is also imperative for a new business to have product-market fit. If you can prove this, you will find investors. The experience of attending a yeshiva, a traditional Jewish college, and learning to study the Talmud taught Daniel how to distill complicated logic, find patterns, debate, and reason. These elements have served him very well over his marketing career.Daniel believes Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a valuable statistic, but it's true power lies not in itself as a solitary number. Instead, it lies in finding trends and differentiating between customer sets, campaigns, and time periods. For new businesses, you will have to start with a gap-filled estimate. But over time, you will fill those gaps and refine that number. Remember, though, that achieving and expanding CLV will get more difficult over the life of a company. Episode Links:Daniel Cotlar - LinkedInTwitterLead from the Core - Jay Steinfeld Follow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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! Episode Highlights:Chris Long came from a background in finance and discovered the world of digital marketing. He’s learned it welcomes people from all backgrounds and experiences. At his first job, he worked closely with the small business owner and got an inside look at how a business operated and how marketing folded into the larger landscape.A mentor should be different things for different people; there is no one-size-fits-all approach. A mentor should guide you and help you perform at peak capacity. Chris has drawn certain traits from past mentors and uses those in his life now and tries to pass them on to his mentees. An innate curiosity for problem-solving, self-sufficiency, and empathy are key to a good mentor relationship. Chris is a frequent content creator, whether that is written content shared on various publications and LinkedIn, or through his talks at many conferences on digital marketing. He is influenced by those topics both from external inspiration, seeing someone else discussing a topic, and internal curiosity. The stories he is most drawn to tend to be experimental, where someone has a hypothesis and tries it to see how it would play out. Episode Links:State of Search ConferenceChris's Social Media LinkedInTwitterThe Splash Newsletter by Go Fish DigitalBooksHigh Output Management by Andrew S. GroveHow to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale CarnegieOutliers by Malcolm GladwellHow to Talk to Anyone by Leil LowndesFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights:Mosheh has worked for many startup companies over the years, from a virtual currency startup to a software and medical device company. He always envisioned himself in that working environment, the entrepreneurial one. After passing on neuropsychology and legal as potential career paths, he landed on marketing. He appreciates how it blends together left and right-brained thought work. For him, a mentor is someone who has experience in the career you are in and can help guide you in your path. Scheduling, planning, and adhering to a one-on-one meeting with your mentee is imperative to a successful relationship. A mentor should also diplomatically give honest feedback in a way that is direct and truly helpful. Finally, mentors should be open to feedback from their mentees and truly implement change based on that information. Mosheh believes ChatGPT and AI are powerful tools at our disposal. They will be abused like all tools before them, but they can be used responsibly to improve efficiency and performance for almost every business. We need to focus on being human and learning to work with AI because we are humans, and it never will be. Episode LinksMosheh - LinkedInMosheh - TwitterGrwth.coProduct Market Fit PodcastAppleSpotifyFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. An Optidge "Office Hours" EpisodeOur Office Hours episodes are your go-to for details, how-to’s, and advice on specific marketing topics. Join our fellow Optidge team members, and sometimes even 1:1 teachings from Danny himself, in these shorter, marketing-focused episodes every few weeks. Get ready to get marketing!Episode HighlightsLead quality is a key element often overlooked by agencies. Customer Relationship Management is a platform or program that stores and organizes data relating to leads to better inform the marketing team to optimize the campaigns and conversion process. UTMs are specific parameters appended to a URL when a user visits your website that denotes the source, medium, campaigns, and more that brought them to your website. It’s essential to track the quality of a lead to ensure you’re not optimizing on flawed data. This means connecting UTMs to one’s CRM so you can track the sources and more, bringing in truly viable and high-quality leads. One must also ensure they track all types of conversions, including phone calls. CRMs can be incredibly helpful for marketing a business, but utilizing them must be a priority. Optidge recommends assigning one or two team members the goal and focus of updating, grading, and disseminating the information in the CRM. This is imperative to ensure up-to-date, useful data is used to optimize PPC campaigns and marketing efforts.Guest + Episode LinksBrianna DeboeverLinkedInInstagramFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.Episode HighlightsBrian grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. His father and grandfather were both key mentors to him growing up. They instilled an unwavering dedication to perfection and presentation. They also taught him that if he had to the drive to do something, he could do it. This helped give him the courage to move from South Africa to the United States with a wife and young child, where he would launch his own diamond brand and be one of the first to sell diamonds online. He’s long been a mentor figure to many in his orbit. He believes encouragement and the passing of knowledge are key in a mentoring relationship. Additionally, you need to find someone who is open, a good listener, and empathetic. Brian has created numerous new diamond cuts and different brand lines under the Brian Gavin Diamonds umbrella. He was never one to turn away from something originally shunned by society, like blue fluorescence in diamonds. Instead, he found how to highlight the uniqueness and true sparkle of each individual piece. Episode LinksBrianGavinDiamonds.comSocial MediaInstagramTikTokTwitterLinkedInBrian Gavin BlueFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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 Texas' most successful pr and social media 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! Episode Highlights[5:41] To Allie Danziger, a mentor can be anyone higher or lower than you in a company, regardless of experience or age. A mentor is someone who can and will spend time on the relationship and be transparent. They should also know something you don’t know that you would like to know, and they can’t be focused on their own ego. [8:00] Over the years, Allie’s mentors have been her parents, a boss, friends, and employees. She’s learned many different life and career skills from all of them. It is essential to her that you have an open mind and growth mindset so you can take in and learn from those around you. [27:50] After many years running Integrate, a digital marketing and PR agency, Allie now runs Ampersand. Ampersand trains young professionals and those new to the professional landscape with all of the “behind-the-scenes” knowledge about being effective in a workplace. They also help managers better retain their talent by sharing information and data on the interns they hire from her so they can better manage and encourage them. Episode LinksAllie DanzigerLinkedInAmpersandBooksRocket Fuel by Gino Wickman, Mark C. WintersThe Artist’s Way by Julia CameronWorkquake by Steve CadiganThe Happiness Project by Gretchen RubinUniversity of Texas - Public Relations ProgramFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights[1:32] Glenn came to the world of mentorship and marketing via music. He got his degree in music business and then, after some years of work there, became the CMO of the Houston Symphony. He then transitioned to his own coaching business, though the path was not straight and simple and required he take some risks. [12:23] To Glenn, the definitions of coach and mentor are distinct, though the lines will be blurred at times as a mentor needs to don his coaching hat and vice versa. A coach is meant to guide you and, rather than giving you the answers, help draw them out of you. A mentor is more advice-based and shares their experiences and strategies that have worked for them over the years. [15:00] Glenn’s mentors over the years have been many. First was Susan Lieberman, a professor of a leadership course. Then, Matthew VanBesien, the GM, and CEO of the Houston Symphony, taught him a lot about trust and risk. Pat Flynn, whom Glenn has never met, has inspired him as a master content creator. And finally, Chris Kenny, hired initially as a sales coach by Glenn became a mentor and friend. [29:45] Constructive criticism can be difficult for many, and Glenn notes how important it is to develop a mindset of welcoming feedback. He helps to create cultures of feedback with his clients and highlights the terminology of “developmental” or “improvement-based feedback” might be easier to digest. [35:55] Glenn has bought into the strategy of organic content creation since the inception of his business. He began writing and enjoying the creation of all forms of content when he first launched his website. It has resulted in an amazing website with a vast library of content showcasing his knowledge and expertise. Episode LinksGlenn TaylorGoSkybound.com Social MediaInstagramTwitterFacebookSkybound leadership podcastSkybound Coaching on YoutubeLoyola University Follow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. Episode Highlights[13:27] Being a good creative director means being able to overcome your fear of your employees being better than you and being able to shape and influence their approaches, strategies, and styles rather than forcing your own. Creating a culture of learning and mentorship is the best, but it requires a strong, confident leader.[20:05] Louis Gavin was a vital element of the advertising campaign for Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress to be elected to the South African presidency in 1994.  Their campaign focused on educating many of the people of South Africa about the reality lived by many others and garnering sympathy while also building the image that Mandela was the voice of reason, democracy, and human rights. [32:05] Through his work with Wurl, Louis has seen a new approach to advertising, even within the digital age. This new approach can near-immediately aggregate advertising to a given audience who it tracks is watching a streaming program at that moment. This could lead to the lessening importance of creativity, but Louis hopes not because creativity is still where you find the magic in advertising. Episode LinksGuestLinkedInFacebookWits School of ArtTBWA/Chiat/DayAfrican National CongressWurlFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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! Episode Highlights [6:00] Jay shares how being a part of a barbershop quartet for 50 years has taught him many life and business skills, especially how to be on stage despite being an introvert.[8:03] If your employees need more skill at something, you should let them learn about it. Allow them to sit in on meetings from other departments, even if it isn’t their job. [9:37] If you want to move up in a company, do not view the path as a ladder. Instead, view yourself as a sponge. [11:38] Jay shares his definition of a mentor: anyone who systematically helps someone figure out NOT what they should DO but how they should THINK. Everyone who has someone working for them is a mentor. [17:54] Jay’s shares his keys to success in mentoring others.[28:57] Learn the difference between mentoring students vs mentoring a direct report.[33:35] Jay took the risk of breaking into the e-Commerce world in the very early days to sell blinds online.[44:19] Jay shares the journey of discovering his personal core values.Episode LinksVistageBlinds.comThe University of Texas, BBA in Accounting ProgramGuest LinksLinkedInWebsiteTwitterPodcastsCafe InsiderAll InFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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! Episode Highlights[1:22] Being a member and captain of her college basketball team taught Terri about teamwork and accountability, skills she now uses daily when running her own agency.[6:50] To Terri, mentorship is about someone with more knowledge and experience, which you can go to for advice and counseling. They need to be someone with whom you can feel vulnerable and can be transparent without the worry of feeling judged. [8:27] Terri shares how her mentors helped her embody her leadership style, and how “rough and tough” doesn't really work in today’s business world. [15:26] Terri shares about an early mistake in her career with her first clients and how she rebounded.[20:47] Now, Terri mentors each of her employees. She has weekly one-on-one coaching calls where they discuss practical work matters and where they feel challenged and need extra support. [25:23] Terri shares why she loves small business consulting.[29:39] Ready. Aim. Aim. Aim. Aim. Aim. Aim. Fire. [32:35] How Terri helps clients used to 'traditional' marketing adapt to and learn the online world.Episode LinksMichigan Tech - Marketing ProgramGoldman Sachs 10K Small Business ProgramGuest LinksMarketing Refresh LinkedIn - Terri HoffmanFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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.’ Episode Highlights[1:27] Cory shares how being an unlikely member of the basketball team at California Lutheran University taught him how to mold yourself to the a role and the importance of experience.[6:38] A mentor is someone willing to tell you the truth. They don't need anything from you, and are willing to spend the time to help mold you.[7:28] Cory's first mentor and boss, Cat, was ruthless, but helped instill a sense of urgency and the importance of being a team member. [13:19] Cory shares how he found himself loving the combination of disruption and innovation that digital marketing brings when working with a particular client - Mormon.org.[18:05] A position at Molio brought Cory to Utah and spurred the launch of his own agency.[23:55] Now, Cory is the mentor, and focuses on doing it all with transparency and love, allowing his employees the space and freedom to grow.[29:00] Cory shares his keys to mentoring success[30:00] Learn why Cory lists the role of 'Dad' first in his LinkedIn bio.[32:29] Cory's favorite element of digital marketing is data - he believes it's the gold to success in this field, and wants to be the best at mining it.[34:40] Why does YouTube hold such a place of focus for Cory?[38:32] Beginning in 2020 and into 2021, scaling a business required a talented media buyer. In the last year, successful scaling has come from those focusing on product innovation.[44:54] Cory shares is top 3 tips for getting into media buying[47:31] Cory shares why Variable Media's website uses NotionEpisode LinksCalifornia Lutheran UniversityYouTube ChannelsPaid Media ProsLex FridmanAndrew HubermanCory HenkeVariable MediaTwitterLinkedInFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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. An Optidge "Office Hours" EpisodeOur Office Hours episodes are your go-to for details, how-to’s, and advice on specific marketing topics. Join our fellow Optidge team members, and sometimes even 1:1 teachings from Danny himself, in these shorter, marketing-focused episodes every few weeks. Get ready to get marketing!Episode Highlights[1:28] Mandy is Optidge’s Senior SEO Strategist. She grew up in Greece, moved to Scotland to get her Master's degree in Applied Linguistics, and now lives in Mexico City. Her primary education in Greece certainly influenced her decision to go into the field of Search Engine Optimization with a focus on written content. [6:52] What does it mean to “write for SEO?”[8:00] Why is SEO content important and what's the goal of optimizing content?[11:50] Consider a hypothetical scenario. An orthodontist only supplies Invisalign and does not offer traditional braces. Is it okay for them to write content to try and rank for “braces?” [14:40] Mandy shares her process for writing for SEO[23:45] For true optimization, you must go back and review the content you’ve published after a month or two. Has the content been indexed? Does it rank for what was originally intended? [26:18] Mandy isn’t always writing the content herself. She shares how she works with other writers by providing them with content briefs.[34:36] The Greek education system was probably Mandy’s biggest mentor for SEO content. In Greece, every single year of formal education teaches you how to write, why you’ll write a certain way, different structures, what makes content good, and the skill of summarizing content and ideas. Guest + Episode LinksThe Ride of a Lifetime by Robert IgerAtomic Habits by James ClearDon’t Shoot the Dog by Karen PryorMandy Politi | LinkedInFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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 advertising agency. Learn about the path that got her there and how she was gifted a client list to start her agency journey. Episode Highlights[1:45] Akvile shares how her upbringing and educational background taught her how to communicate, demonstrate empathy, and help others overcome challenges.[8:23] What is a mentor to Akvile and where did she find her mentors?[11:34] A key mentor in Akvile's career took her under her wing and gave her a head start in focusing on her marketing career which culminated in founding AKvertise.[17:20] Akvile shares her insights on how she learned she was underpricing herself, and how a major mentor helped her restructure.[21:35] Why does Akvile think it’s important and fulfilling to mentor college students? How is this key to the continued success of the digital marketing world? [25:58] Akvile shares the beauty and challenges of social media advertising: Finding ways to reach an audience that will most likely be interested in the products and services you’re trying to sell and getting that audience into your funnel. She defines this as targeting people instead of keywords.[29:54] Attribution and targeting options within the Meta advertising space have changed significantly over the years., and although the attribution in Meta is more model-based than true data, Akvile still confidently recommends it to her clients. [33:30] If you’re a service provider and/or running your own agency, Akvile would recommend that you take part in both running and implementing campaigns as well as consulting.[39:18] Akvile shares that overcoming stage fright with Toastmaster led to the award she's most proud of and keeps within reaching distance on her desk - Toastmaster of the Year in 2017.Episode LinksAKvertiseAkvile DeFazio’s LinkedInPamela Lund | That Pam ChickJohn DohertyToastmastersPodcastsCriminalSold a StoryThe Daily by The New York TimesFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

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 onto the path of success as we dive deep into being open to feedback and opportunities with Martha. Episode Highlights[1:37] Martha discusses growing up in Canada and her educational background at Queen's University and MIT.[12:20] After attending a “CEO Camp” weekend, Martha left wondering if she had a current mentor in her life and, if so, what did that look like? [10:55] Mentoring - getting/giving feedback.[17:05] Martha’s mentors at Cisco each played important roles at key decision points, and her time at Cisco lit the entrepreneurial spirit in her.[28:52] Martha shares how she makes a very concerted effort to mentor her team at Schema App, and what that looks like. [33:25] Martha shares that she is writing a chapter in the book: SEO in 2023, sponsored by Majestic.[35:50] What is schema markup, and how does Schema App provide solutions to businesses?[42:05] Does Google really need schema? Martha gets asked this a lot and shares her insight.Episode Links2022 Schema App Blog Post RetrospectiveSchema App | Create an AccountMartha on LinkedInFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.

Welcome to Optidge’s Office Hours! Our Office Hours episodes are your go-to for details, how-to’s, and advice on specific marketing topics. Join our fellow Optidge team members, and sometimes even 1:1 teachings from Danny himself, in these shorter, marketing-focused episodes every few weeks. Get ready to get marketing!Summary Learn the differences between paid search campaigns with a manual bidding strategy vs an automated (or smart) bidding strategy as we discuss the best methods you can use to optimize your ad spend. Rachael Howle is the Head of Paid Search at Optidge and shares her knowledge and experience utilizing manual bidding strategies and how and when to switch campaigns to automated bidding in Google Ads. Episode Highlights [6:52] Rachael and Danny chat about the differences between manual and automated bidding, including how automated bidding utilizes Google's platform.[8:55] Rachael discusses different automated bidding strategies and goals.[9:52] The successes we've seen moving to Maximize Conversions campaigns, and steps to take to evaluate manual bidding campaigns. [17:28] Why the big push from Google to shift to automated bid strategies?[20:44] Rachael provides insight into the continued need for the human touch with campaigns. Automation is only part of it; it’s only a tool. You still need to have the master craftsman. [22:55] Danny and Rachael dive into the significant benefits of utilizing an agency to manage your paid search campaigns[24:24] Rachael shares her parting thoughts: manual bidding is certainly still worthwhile. Episode LinksUniversity of TexasUniversity of Houston, Bauer College of BusinessGoogle Ads Automated BiddingAutomated Bidding StrategiesWe Had a Little Real Estate ProblemProject Hail MaryThe Humanized LeaderRachael on LinkedInFollow The Digital Marketing Mentor: Website and Blog: thedmmentor.com Instagram: @thedmmentor Linkedin: @thedmmentor YouTube: @thedmmentor Interested in Digital Marketing Services, Careers, or Courses? Check out more from the TDMM Family: Optidge.com - Full Service Digital Marketing Agency specializing in SEO, PPC, Paid Social, and Lead Generation efforts for established B2C and B2B businesses and organizations. ODEOacademy.com - Digital Marketing online education and course platform. ODEO gives you solid digital marketing knowledge to launch/boost your career or understand your business’s digital marketing strategy.