The People of Digital Marketing is a podcast made for aspiring marketing leaders. In each episode, I interview marketing experts from around the world. Marketing leaders from Fortune 500 companies, agencies, and startups share their career advice, challenges they’re facing, and roadmaps for how to keep growing every day in the world of digital marketing.
If you want to lead a marketing team one day, start your own business, or if you just need some expert perspectives on doing marketing the right way—this podcast is for you!
“Brand positioning is much more than a marketing exercise…it underpins the entire organization.” Mark Evans is the principal with Marketing Spark, which offers fractional CMO and strategic advisory services to B2B SaaS companies. Mark's areas of expertise include brand positioning, messaging, and content-driven growth plans. Mark has a podcast and recently published the second edition of his DIY marketing book, “Marketing Spark.” Questions and topics we covered included:...
“Marketing touches every part of the business. Marketing is…equally as important to sales organizations as ‘sales’ itself.” Justin Mink has spent a career in leadership and founder roles at companies that have grown from 0-1000s of employees, raised millions of dollars in capital, and that have been valued at over $1B. In 2007 he moved to Dallas from the Washington, D.C. area to launch the Franchise Division at digital marketing firm ReachLocal, helping take the company...
“Everything we do just goes back to helping, and if we just do that authentically we know that…the value will come back to us.” Chelsea is a former journalist turned empathy-driven marketer who leads content marketing at Lavender. Her 11+ year career spans diverse industries, from agencies to publishing, branding to SaaS. She draws on her multi-faceted experience and journalistic roots in her content approach and principles, which are hyper-focused on human-centered...
Here’s a special episode for all of you lovely marketers out there! In this interview, I chat with my mentor Maurice Bretzfield about AI and how marketers can get started using tools like ChatGPT. Maurice is an AI and Marketing Consultant. He helps organizations increase revenue and decrease costs using the power of AI and MarTech. Maurice has been a digital marketer for nearly three decades and today enjoys working with organizations to integrate MarTech into their...
“The word ‘manager’ can take on a lot of different formats…there’s a lot of different ways to seek out leadership opportunities.” Trisha Gallagher is a marketing strategist and mentor with nearly 15 years of experience in planning and executing successful marketing programs. Having held various roles in marketing both in-house and agency-side, Trisha brings a unique perspective to her role as VP of Marketing at Marketri, an outsourced marketing and fractional CMO firm. She...
“66% of websites don’t need to do SEO. There’s no reason that they should bother.” Eli Schwartz is a seasoned SEO expert and consultant with over a decade of experience, helping prominent B2B and B2C companies like WordPress, Shutterstock, and Zendesk drastically enhance their organic visibility. Formerly leading SEO at SurveyMonkey, he boosted organic search to become a major growth driver. An accomplished speaker and author of the book “Product Led SEO”, Eli’s insights...
"A good well-rounded CMO is going to be someone who understands the full buyer's journey...the full marketing-sales funnel." As a Fractional CMO and GTM Strategist, Corey brings a 25-year track record of extraordinary success as an entrepreneur, sales leader, and CMO for a $150M+ agency called Scorpion (where he was the 1st marketing hire and grew the team to 30 people before leaving). Today, he helps B2B SaaS and Agencies grow from 7 figures to 8 by doing less, not more....
“If you can understand business, it will make you a better marketer.” JC Polonia is the Head of Growth at LOOP, a car insurance company based out of Austin, Texas, that takes biased and discriminatory data out of the industry. He’s also the founder of Digitality, a New York-based performance and production marketing agency. From local small businesses to venture-backed companies, JC developed his chops for growth marketing from the grassroots. Data-driven and...
"I need content to connect dots that I didn't know were connected before...Otherwise...I could go look all this stuff up already on my own." Tracey Wallace is the Director of Content Strategy at Klaviyo. Prior to that, she was the head of marketing for two early-stage start-ups (Eterneva and MarketerHire), and the Editor-in-Chief over at BigCommerce. She has 13 years of experience in content marketing, and began her career in Journalism. She is also a content creator for...
"When you stop selling, you stop growing...If you think that you're maxed out right now...what if you lose a client?" Ali Schwanke is the CEO and Founder of Simple Strat, an agency of expert strategists in sales and content marketing for B2B tech companies. Ali and her team focus on growing businesses through technology and automations, specializing in the implementation of HubSpot. Ali is a sought-after speaker and co-host of HubSpot Hacks - the popular YouTube channel...
“If there’s not a fit between your personality and the environment that you’re in, it’s going to be difficult for you to drive impact. This is regardless of how much you know in your [marketing] domain.” Patrick Moran was most recently an Executive in Residence at Reforge where he led the Growth Marketing, Experimentation and Testing, and Brand Marketing programs which he also co-developed. Previously, he was the Head of Consumer Marketing at Houzz and held leadership...
“It doesn’t matter if you’re employed or not, it matters if you’re employable…if you learn the skills around how to grow ‘capital-efficiently’, [affecting] the growth curve in a positive way—that’s incredibly employable.” Bill Macaitis is an advisor and board member, guiding aspiring unicorns and helping build out world class teams and innovative go-to-market strategies. Over his 20 year career Bill has achieved five successful exits and powered growth at three of the...
“Take a look at your agency and if their tests keep losing and you’re like ‘oh our current ad keeps performing better’…you should have a real hard conversation…[You’re losing] every time they tested…” Samir Balwani is a marketing thought leader, out-of-the-box thinker, and an intrinsic connector. As CEO and founder of QRY (pronounced “query”), Samir has built a world-class media agency of innovative thinkers and spirited doers who help brands think strategically about...
“Failure is the best way to learn…You have to try new methods and new things to surprise your audience and surpass your competitors.” Keren Pakes is the Chief Brand & Communications Officer at Bright Data and the General Manager of The Bright Initiative. After 14 impressive years as an award-winning BBC News journalist (she won an Emmy?!), Keren left the field of journalism to pursue marketing senior leadership roles in the B2B tech space. Today, Keren focuses...
“Video is great, and audio is better.” Nora Sudduth, Co-founder of Hello Audio is a leading marketing & conversion strategist who has helped businesses sell over $500M of products & services online. She’s also designed several courses, coaching, and certification programs that have generated millions more. Nora has over 20 years of experience working with startups to Fortune 500 companies and everything in between. From market positioning and messaging, to...
“When someone interacts with your brand for the first time, it’s literally a first impression.” Sydney Michuda is the owner and creative lead behind Super Creative, a design and branding studio based in Milwaukee. With a nearly decade of design experience under her belt, most of which has been focused on branding small businesses, she's most at home when working with passionate, like-minded creative entrepreneurs. Whether it's designing for brands large and small or...
“Take your top priorities and cut them in half, and then focus on doing fewer things exceedingly well.” Chad is the VP of Marketing & Communications at Jotform, a leading online form and productivity software company. He holds a master’s degree in communication and resides with his wife and cats in Oakland, California. Hiring for skills that matter and why writing is one to master! How to build a marketing team from the ground up. When to hire an employee vs...
“A podcast is like a Swiss army knife, it can accomplish so many objectives…” Dan Sanchez is the Director of Audience Growth for Sweet Fish, a podcast agency for B2B brands. Equipped with his MBA and a career that has crossed design, technology, marketing and education, Dan is ready to teach others how to grow their audience in a digital age. He contributes regularly to the B2B Growth podcast, Linkedin, and his own blog at danchez.com. Dan's also an avid runner,...