The Digital Marketing Mentor

In this episode of The Digital Marketing Mentor, Danny talks with Mordy Oberstein, Head of Brand SEO at Wix, about his unique career path from teaching to SEO expertise. Mordy discusses the importance of mentorship and education, Wix's SEO transformation, and the impact of brand identity on search rankings. He also shares insights on balancing brand building with performance marketing, along with personal stories like his love for the Yankees and ground coffee.

Episode Highlights:

• Mordy views mentorship as a deep interpersonal relationship, where mentors guide by sharing life experiences rather than just teaching skills. Key traits of a mentor include forgiveness, effective communication, and having a clear vision.
• Mordy says it was community engagement, product improvements, and strategic rebranding efforts that helped propel Wix into an SEO leader in the industry. 
• Mordy emphasized the growing importance of brand marketing in SEO, arguing that brand identity, recognition, and reputation can significantly boost search engine rankings and long-term success.
• Mordy explained the tension between performance marketing, which seeks immediate results, and brand marketing, which focuses on long-term relationship building. He stressed the need for businesses to balance both approaches for sustainable growth.

Episode Links: 

• Mordy’s LinkedIn
• Mordy’s X
• Mordy’s podcast, the SEO Rant

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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.

In this episode of the Digital Marketing Mentor podcast, host Danny Gavin sits down with Ross Hudgens, the founder and CEO of Siege Media. Ross shares his journey from studying creative writing to scaling one of the leading content marketing agencies through discussion on the role of mentorship, strategies for scaling a business, and evolving SEO practices in the age of AI. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned marketer, this episode offers practical advice and insights on business growth and effective digital marketing.

Episode Highlights: 

• Mentorship has played a crucial role in Ross’s career. Influential digital marketing figures and direct competitors such as Grayson LaFrance and Wil Reynolds have provided guidance and support in his successful pursuit of scaling Siege Media. 
• Effectively scaling his agency has meant Ross has had to learn to delegate responsibilities, particularly in sales and operations. 
• Ross’s approach to SEO has evolved from traditional link building to “product-led digital PR.” This includes creating unique, data-driven content that stands out in a digital landscape. 

Episode Links: 

• Siege Media 
• Ross LinkedIn
• Ross’s X
• Ross’s Instagram

Send us Fan Mail

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.

It’s been said that the future of digital marketing is female: creative, data-driven, and unstoppable. Join us for an inspiring episode of the Digital Marketing Mentor as we explore and reflect on past conversations that follow the remarkable journeys of women who are breaking barriers and redefining the industry. From embracing unexpected or unplanned career transitions and the importance of mentorship to overcoming imposter syndrome and balancing expectations, this group of women is laying the groundwork for the next generation and leading the charge in digital transformation.

Episode Highlights 

• From journalism and physical therapy to theater and psychology, these inspiring women shed light on the non-linear career paths that can lead to success in digital marketing. 
• The prevalence of imposter syndrome and self-doubt in the workplace is growing and it's crucial to proactively address it by finding mentors and prioritizing continuous learning.
• Mentorship has played a crucial role in all of these women's lives - fostering community and inclusivity in the workplace and allowing them to effectively build careers they are proud of. 
• This episode highlights the importance of supporting the next generation of female digital marketers by creating new opportunities, bridging skill gaps, and promoting diversity and inclusion.

Episode Links

• Sarah Presch, Purna Virji, Tracy Murray, Vicky Charleston, Sicily Dickenson, Navah Hopkins, Shelly Fagin, Adele Beiny, Emily Ryan, Batli Joselevitz, Allie Danzinger, Akvile DeFazio, Martha Van Berkel

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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.

The perfect blend of digital marketing and psychology, this discussion features Sarah Presch, Digital Marketing Director of Dragon Metrics, who shares her journey from studying marketing to pursuing psychology, emphasizing the critical role of understanding consumer behavior in this space. The conversation explores the rewarding nature of mentorship, emphasizing mutual learning, humility, structured success plans, and regular check-ins. In this episode, Sarah explores ethical considerations in digital marketing and SEO, including the influence of cognitive bias, the importance of psychological safety, and the challenges of ethical content creation. The discussion wraps with Sarah’s passion for music as a therapeutic tool and how it’s all tied into her achievements with Dragon Metrics. 

Episode Highlights: 

• Understanding human behavior is crucial in marketing and the intersection between psychology and marketing promotes innovation and perspective.
• Sarah founded Neurodivergents in SEO to provide a safe space for digital marketing professionals on the spectrum to talk and learn about marketing career paths. 
• Ethical considerations that exist in digital marketing and SEO, include the influence of cognitive bias - specifically a user’s confirmation bias, the importance of psychological safety, and the challenges of ethical content creation.
• She stresses the importance for marketers in understanding an audience’s culture and language. 

Episode Links: 

• Sarah’s professional website
• Sarah’s LinkedIn
• Sarah’s X
• Dragon Metrics website
• Dragon Metrics LinkedIn 
• Neurodivergents in SEO

Send us Fan Mail

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.

This episode of The Digital Marketing Mentor takes us through the remarkable journey of Julia McCoy, President of Content at Scale, whose early struggles finding a passion inspired a career transition to the world of freelancing.  In overcoming doubts and with the support of mentors along the way, she’s turned storytelling passion into a thriving career, pioneering several approaches to marry SEO, content creation, and AI to enhance efficiency and productivity. Julia reveals her take on the role of mentorship in shaping our professional paths - sharing stories of support through her launch into public speaking and entrepreneurial pursuits.  Tune in to hear Julia’s predictions on the future of content and SEO, and how AI is powering the charge. 

Episode Highlights: 

• Having transitioned to digital marketing, Julia shares her take on how mentorship plays a crucial role in shaping career paths, sharing stories of her own mentors who have encouraged her to step into entrepreneurship and embrace public speaking. 
• Julia says content writers should embrace the arrival of AI and learn to use it to their advantage, harnessing the power of these tools for more creative content solutions. 
• Julia has launched a feature that allows AI to replicate a writer's style and unique voice which helps maintain brand identity and integrity. 
• Her Unified Editor tool allows anyone to create powerful content regardless of their writing experience making the writing process more accessible and efficient. 
• AI is revolutionizing content marketing by allowing writers to focus on strategic thinking and creativity while keeping burnout at bay. 

Episode Links: 

• Julia’s Linkedin
• Julia’s Instagram
• Julia’s YouTube
• Julia’s books
• Content at Scale

Send us Fan Mail

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.

In this ‘Office Hours’ episode, we examine PPC budget management closely. We speak with paid search analyst, Alejandro Torres, whose frustration with unpredictability of Google Ads’ spend tracking led to a revolutionary solution. With the assistance of his team, they built a robust tool designed to help them with pacing the spending schedule and optimizing the budgets of PPC campaigns for their clients. Tune into an episode packed full of tips on the technical aspects, team collaboration, and unique challenges faced in managing PPC campaigns.

An Optidge "Office Hours" Episode

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!

Episode Highlights: 

• Despite Alejandro’s initial disinterest in digital marketing in college, his path led him back, allowing him to apply his practical knowledge in finance and management to his current role on the Optidge PPC team. 
• Alejandro initially heard about an innovative, data-tracking PPC tool, Dataslayer, from another department at Optidge and began testing the tool to see how its capabilities might help handle the headache of tracking PPC campaign spending. 
• Dataslayer and the custom solution put together by Alejandro and the team can now accurately monitor the spending habits of multiple campaigns at once and notify the PPC team when they’re under or overspending (with special thanks to color coding).

Episode Links:

• Alejandro’s LinkedIn
• Dataslayer 
• Optidge PPC Services 

Send us Fan Mail

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 we uncover the transformative power of mentorship and cause-driven marketing with Aimee Woodall, founder of The Black Sheep Agency. Amy unpacks her public relations experience for political initiatives and the pivotal role that her academic journey played in shaping her passion for politics and communication. She fondly recalls some of her most influential mentorship experiences and highlights the evolution of mentorship in business. Finally, we journey through Aimee’s establishment of a cause-driven agency, discussing the challenges and rewards of prioritizing social responsibility in marketing. 

Episode Highlights

• Aimee defines the relationship between a mentor and a mentee as a two-way street where both parties learn from the experience with each other.
• One of Aimee’s mentors showed her that there could be meaning behind her work, and that propelled her into cause-driven marketing.
• One of the greatest gifts Aimee received from her work is learning about all the different social challenges in our society and how to weave social responsibility into marketing strategies. 

Episode Links 

• Black Sheep Agency
• Aimee’s Linkedin
• Aimee’s Instagram
• Aimee’s X

Send us Fan Mail

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.

This episode of the Digital Marketing Mentor takes us back to the classroom as we talk with Noah Frydberg, full-time university student at the University of Texas and founder of the multi-million dollar social media marketing agency, Maverick Creative. We discuss with this young entrepreneur about his greatest mentor, what led him to take the leap into starting his own company, and why he feels TikTok is a social media marketing goldmine that’s being underutilized by businesses looking to scale.

Episode Highlights 

• TikTok offers an incredible opportunity to grow your company or brand. Noah highly recommends taking the time to completely understand this social media platform’s potential for creators of all types.
• As a member of Gen Z,  Noah has used his age to his advantage. He often pursues clients looking to access that specific market. Noah is in a unique position as an entrepreneur in his generation that can make the most from his tremendous knowledge of TikTok.
• Noah’s greatest mentor has been his father. He’s shown him the art of cold-calling, managing client demands, and making the sale and Noah has carried those attributes to his company when mentoring his own employees. 

Episode Links

• Noah’s TikTok
• Noah’s LinkedIn
• Maverick Creative Website

Send us Fan Mail

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.

Pack your bags and join us as we head to Minnesota to speak with Nick LeRoy, freelance SEO consultant and owner of SEOjobs.com.  In today’s episode of the Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast, we’ll explore how Nick hit the ground running by learning SEO in his first job out of college. Having experienced several professional setbacks, he shares how he used this experience and leaned into mentors to propel him into entrepreneurship and a freelance career in SEO. We’ll hear about his passion project, SEOJobs.com, and his vision to revolutionize the SEO job market. 

Episode Highlights:

• Nick’s love of SEO began after learning the necessary skills on the job straight out of university. He credits reading ‘how to’ books at the local Barnes and Noble with helping him to understand the subject.
• According to Nick, a mentor challenges another’s thinking and provides necessary guidance.
• After losing his job twice, Nick has learned that he prefers working as a freelance SEO consultant instead of within an agency. Being his own boss allows him to be brutally honest with his clients, and he feels he produces better work.
• The keys to success in the SEO industry include strong communication, genuine curiosity for SEO, and understanding the industry’s ‘hard skills.’
• Nick enjoys mentoring uniquely by offering advisory services and actively seeking out employment opportunities for SEO professionals through his passion project, SEOjobs.com. 

Episode Links:

•  Nick’s Leroy’s Company: Nick Leroy Consulting
•   Nick's  X account
•   Nick's  LinkedIn
•   SEO job board seojobs.com

Send us Fan Mail

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.

Buckle up for today’s episode as the Digital Marketing Mentor takes you on an exciting journey with Wil Reynolds, the founder, and VP of Innovation at SEER Interactive. As one of the most esteemed digital marketing agencies in the U.S., we’ll talk to this former economics teacher about his life-long passion for learning, creating value, and giving back to others and what led to his creation of SEER Interactive. Wil also discusses the power of mentorship and the importance of the human connection with customers through SEO in the face of growing AI influence.

Episode Highlights 

• Wil’s passion for giving back, creating change, and making an impact was born from his early professional years as an economics teacher. His passion was put into overdrive after being denied the opportunity to volunteer, which became a significant value he instilled in the creation of SEER Interactive. 
• Wil has been grateful for his mentors throughout his career and says they have taught him some of his most valuable life lessons. The truest indication that a mentor has done a good job is when the mentee has outgrown them, which has happened to Wil several times. 
• Will is not anti-SEO. Instead, he supports the most ‘frictionless’ way for users to access their desired information, which seems to be through AI. 
• The invention of AI has undoubtedly helped with SEO and content creation. However, Wil says it’s important not to lose the human connection,  including using your ideas instead of those from a bot and connecting with your viewers through organic social media traffic.

Episode Links

• Wil Reynolds LinkedIn
• Wil Reynolds YouTube
• Wil Reynolds Instagram
• Seer Interactive Website 
• Seer Interactive LinkedIn

Send us Fan Mail

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.