The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast

Rachel Wilson Thibodeaux is Founder, Brand Strategist, and Professional Speaker at SWAG Strategy Solutions a boutique consultancy that helps clients design unique brands to "better position their offers" and market them at least twice as effectively as they were in the past. Clients include women entrepreneurs, as well as service providers and experts, people Rachel says want to make a big impact...

Jay Taylor is the Managing Director of Leverage, an award-winning digital marketing agency and Certified Google Partner. Leverage partners with its client brands to help them dominate their market with custom-tailored, location-based digital marketing strategies and concentrates on verticals in legal, healthcare, real estate and construction. The goal is to position a client company at the top in...

John Saunders, Founder of 5Four Digital, honed his SEO, SEM, and PPC digital marketing skills when he started his career working for an agency that provided dealership-level marketing services for automobile manufacturers. When John figured out that he wanted to use his skills for different kinds of projects and a more diverse clientele (SMBs, tech-startups), he started his own company. Today, 5Fo...

Ian Garlic is CEO at authenticWEB. He started his career in marketing about 15 years ago as a consultant for one of the world's largest information companies – back when good video production required hiring high-end, expensive, technically-savvy videographers. When Google purchased its video competitor, YouTube ten years ago, Ian saw opportunity, left the information company, and started authenti...

Justin Seibert is President at Direct Online Marketing, an agency that focuses on and excels at – direct online marketing – to move clients' ROIs in a positive direction. In this interview, Justin describes the process of developing strategies to drive quality traffic to its clients, converting that traffic into leads, and sending leads through to generate sales. Justin says the process of vetting...

Twenty-nine years ago, Alvaro Psevoznik, CEO of DM Agency, was a 19-year-old Argentinian law student, designing flyers for hospitality clients in exchange for admissions into nightclubs. Alvaro found himself frustrated with Argentinian politics – which is plagued with fiscal instability, political corruption, de-motivational handouts for a large percentage of the (unemployed) citizenry, and a cycl...

Melissa Libby, owner of Melissa Libby & Associates (MLA), started her career in hospitality. Today, her friends call her the Restaurant Whisperer In this interview, Melissa talks about the challenges restaurants have faced in the face of Covid-19, the changes yet to come, and the lessons she has learned in her 27 years of restaurant marketing. In recent months, MLA has helped its clients pivot to...

Chris Carr, President and CEO of Farotech, started his agency 19 years ago as a web development company, moved into SEO, and then transitioned to what Chris calls conversion science. Today, Chris says, his agency builds integrated systems that generate leads, nurture leads into clients, and then convert clients into brand ambassadors who refer new clients to the brand. Chris says that most compani...

Jay Owen, Founder and CEO at Design Extensions, started building basic websites at age 17. He worked for a number of years as a "solopreneur," hiring contractors as needed, and, as a company, made as much as six figures. When the economy collapsed in 2008, Jay's business was still doing well. He looked around. People were losing jobs. Things were in crisis. Idea? He'd create a full-time job for so...

Kevin Hourigan is President and CEO of Bayshore Solutions, a digital agency that started in 1996 as a branch of a managed services provider – a 3-member team building and maintaining client networks. Two years later? Thirty employees.  Decades ago, one of the Kevin's engineers developed a company website and asked 100 of the company's clients if they would be interested in a 3-page website for $50...

Erik Huberman is Founder and CEO of Hawke Media, an agency serving as "an outsourced CMO -level expert" which, Eric says, "puts client success ahead of our own." The agency's "SWOT team" identifies "holes" in a client's marketing program and provides a "comprehensive à la carte menu of services and month-to-month contracts" to address those needs in a timely manner. Month-to-month works, Erik says...

David Azar is Founder and CEO of Outsmart Labs, a digital marketing agency focused on riding new trends and platforms to drive more traffic, more visibility, and more online conversions. His agency works with clients to build a 360 strategy to drive those conversions in sales, traffic, and newsletter signups. David says, "Digital marketing changes so fast that it's about whoever adapts faster and...

Bonnie Mauldin, Founder and Managing Director for The Mauldin Group, left a career in medicine to start a general, full-service digital marketing agency, helping any client who knocked on the door. Today, The Mauldin Group provides professional web design, internet marketing, and business development training to clients in "healthcare, construction, manufacturing, senior living, and education." Bo...

Justin Ramb is President and Sandra Marshal, VP of Client Services, at Bigeye, a full-service B2B and B2C agency that focuses on audiences, creative work, media and analytics, and data.  Understand audience:  Use primary and secondary research to discover who they are, where they consume media, what they look like, and what triggers them to convert Develop marketing personas that match two or thre...

Justin Gray is CEO and Founder of LeadMD, a performance marketing consultancy. The agency concentrates on achieving tangible, holistic business goals – defining a buyer, launching a product, increasing revenue – to produce bottom-line impacts, rather than focusing on middle-process goals such as website or cost-per lead-optimization. Most of LeadMD's over 3,500 clients are B2B and B2C considered-p...

Alana Sandel, Chief Experience Officer of the agency, Marketing for Wellness, has a deep passion for helping people "to be well." Her personal health struggles inspired her to create her agency, which focuses on quality of life, healthy foods, and fitness. "better-for-you products" – "to build brands for a better tomorrow" – especially brands with solutions for people with chronic health problems....

Tara Murphy owns 360 Media, an entertainment, lifestyle, and hospitality agency that focuses on public relations, event planning, and digital marketing. In the last couple of years, the agency has expanded into hotel work and commercial real estate. 360 Media will have been in business 25 years as of next January. In this interview, Tara describes how her agency utilizes a variety of complementary...

In 2007, after nearly a decade of experience in numbers-focused direct-response marketing, Matt Weber used a business broker to buy a small jack-of-all trades agency that provided sales training, traditional media marketing, and a small bit of web development. Over time, that agency became ROAR! Internet Marketing, where Matt is now President. The agency's forte today? Measurable actions. In this...

As a bestselling author and keynote speaker, Deb Gabor, CEO and Founder of Sol Marketing, has, herself, become a "brand." She defines Sol Marketing as a brand-driven, strategy-led marketing firm in the business of creating irrational loyalty. Irrational loyalty means people are indelibly bonded to a brand.  When Deb talks about her agency, she does not list the provided services: she feels marketi...

Jeff Jordan is President and Executive Creative Director of Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. Rescue offers a broad range of marketing services for government agencies ( public health departments, state and federal agencies ) and non-profits seeking to promote positive changes in public health related behaviors.  Jeff started his agency when, as a high school student, he volunteered for his loca...

Keith Perhac is the Founder of SegMetrics, a once-upon-a-time marketing agency that pivoted from marketing services to a suite of analytical and reporting products. Today SegMetrics builds and refines digital testing and tracking tools that provide marketers with critical information on where "leads come from, how they act, and how much a marketing program is really worth." In this interview, Keit...

Brian Lawson and his brother left their jobs in engineering, IT, and software development to found WebMO (Web Marketing Optimizer), a digital marketing agency. From the beginning, they focused on optimizing organic visibility/SEO and doing Google search ads, not just studying digital marketing tactics, strategies, and analysis, but digging into the "behind the scenes" mechanics. Today, WebMO is he...

Ty Largo is Owner and Creative Director at Awe Collective, a full-service agency providing branding, advertising, public relations, digital strategy , content marketing, social media, video and photography services to diverse industries across the US. Sometimes the agency does (awe) inspiring work. Currently, in the face of Covid-19, the whole agency has shifted to "show up for clients in a differ...

Dave Nobs is the Managing Director and Chief Growth Officer at Lavidge, a highly awarded, employee-owned, f ull-service advertising agency with ever broadening horizons. Lavidge started in traditional advertising in 1982, then added public relations in the 90s, digital marketing in the 2000s, and multicultural marketing about 5 years ago. A couple years later, the agency broke down the walls betwe...

Jon Boles is the Founder and CEO of Avintiv Media Avintiv Media, an award-winning boutique digital marketing agency that focuses on branding, web design, and digital marketing content creation, syndication, and search engine optimization. Starting as a full service agency 4 years ago, running ads, Facebook ads, and working with celebrities and influencers in the influencer marketing niche. The age...