The Online Marketing Institute is pleased to honor 40 digital strategists in marketing, selected as the leaders that have led the interactive marketing industry through innovation and education during the past year.
This 'Top 40' list is compromised of OMI educators, authors, digital strategists and speakers, known for:
- Embracing the latest integrated digital strategies and technologies
- Advancing the industry through education — speaking, blogging, and teaching
- Driving game-changing results for their clients and organizations
As marketers continue to shift offline budget to online channels, its critical that they stay on top of the latest changes, proven best practices, and newest opportunities. Through their speaking, blogging, and teaching, the leaders below are enabling marketers to do just that.
In conjunction with this announcement, we asked the top 40 strategists to share their best advice for driving digital marketing ROI in 2013. You can see their advice in these 3 blog posts: Part 1—Social Media Insights, Part 2—B2B Marketing Insights, Part 3—Digital Marketing Insights.
Here is our annual list of 'Top 40 Digital Strategists in Marketing', in alphabetical order:
Founder & CEO, Genoo | @kimalbee
Kim Albee is the founder of Genoo, a provider of marketing automation and integrated online marketing tools. With over 23 years of software experience including 15 years of corporate and entrepreneurial management, Kim works closely with customers to ensure that marketing and sales are able to sustain and improve their alignment. Kim frequently shares her expertise in B2B digital marketing at events such as MarketingSherpa's B2B Summit and Online Marketing Summit, and has authored a quick-read booklet, “Effective Online Marketing In A Nutshell."
CEO, SiteTuners | @Tim_Ash
Tim Ash is author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimization, and CEO of SiteTuners, a firm that specializes in improving website conversion rates through landing page diagnosis and redesign, conversion consulting, a/b and multivariate test plan creation, and client training/mentoring. A computer scientist and cognitive scientist by education (his PhD studies were in Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence), Tim has developed an expertise in user-centered design, persuasion and understanding online behavior, and landing page testing.
Tim is a highly-regarded keynote and conference presenter, and has published hundreds of articles about website usability, best practices in landing page design and tactics to improve website conversion rates. He regularly conducts live landing page critiques at in-person conferences—these sessions are informative and entertaining, and usually standing room only, too.
Co-Founder, Beasley Direct Marketing
Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president of Beasley Direct Marketing, a Silicon Valley direct marketing agency that has managed search, email, online, and demand generation campaigns for nearly a hundred companies. Laurie is an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension, and teaches in the Level 2 Demand Generation Certification program for the Online Marketing Institute. She is able to efficiently improve her clients' return on digital investment by applying her experience in classic direct-response marketing to the web. And her classes on email marketing are proof—Laurie not only focuses on how to get your messages delivered, but more importantly, how to get them acted upon.
Founder, Influential Marketing Group| @RohitBhargava
Rohit Bhargava is Founder of the Influential Marketing Group, and an expert focused on helping companies bring more humanity back to their businesses. Rohit helped found the world's largest team of social media strategists at Ogilvy, where led marketing strategy for clients including Intel, Pepsi, Lenovo, Seiko, and Unilever. He's also the bestselling author of two books including the recent global marketing best seller LIKEONOMICS.
Rohit has written over 900 pieces of marketing advice on his personal blog, Influential Marketing, and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and NPR. Rohit teaches marketing at Georgetown University, and presents keynote speeches not only on digital marketing and social media, but also on authenticity, creativity, and storytelling—because that's what great marketing is about.
Senior Manager of Global Social Media Marketing, Cisco | @LaSandraBrill
LaSandra Brill is a change agent, social media enthusiast and marketing visionary who was named ‘2012: 25 Women Who Rock Social Media’ by TopRank Marketing Blog. As Senior Manager of Global Social Media Marketing, LaSandra Brill shapes Cisco’s marketing strategy to include a mix of innovative digital, mobile and social media techniques. She's known for building and executing the social media strategy of one of the top 5 product launches in Cisco history, and for driving social innovation across the organization. Based on her success at Cisco, LaSandra demonstrates how social CRM gives businesses a more complete view of their customers in the class, Social Intelligence Drives Social CRM.
Founder, All Inclusive Marketing | @svbundy
Sarah is the founder and CEO of All Inclusive Marketing, Affiliate Management Trainers, and Affiligate.org. Her passion lies in teaching advertisers how to get more out of their affiliate marketing programs through innovation, increased profits and high value affiliate relationships. Sarah leads the affiliate marketing department at the Online Marketing Institute where she educates students on performance marketing. Her blog, SarahBundy.com has been nominated for this year's Pinnacle Award and is ranked in the Top 25 Affiliate Marketing Blogs of 2012. In her class, Affiliate Marketing 101, Sarah shares how marketers can get started in affiliate marketing, and use it to build their business.
CEO, The Buyer Group | @lisabuyer
When it comes to relationships, Lisa Buyer believes the connection between social media, search, and public relations is exponential. As the founder of three media companies and CEO of The Buyer Group, Lisa is ambitious about the influence of public relations on social media, SEO, and SEM, and she continues to share her innovative approach with clients, peers, and associates. Lisa contributes to leading publications such as Search Engine Watch, and speaks frequently at events including Search Engine Strategies and Online Marketing Summit. With experience both in-the-trenches and at a more strategic level—Lisa knows how to help marketers efficiently boost business results. In fact, she explains how B2B marketers can harness the visual web to increase brand awareness in the class, B2B Visual Storytelling.
CEO, Marcel Media
Kelly is the CEO of Marcel Media, a Chicago-based digital marketing firm specializing in search, social and analytics. Kelly has applied her knowledge and expertise to clients ranging from eCommerce to healthcare to financial services. Kelly shares her insights at conferences and events around the country, including the American Marketing Association, Search Engine Strategies, Healthcare Internet Conference and many more. She has also taught at DePaul University and University of Chicago. Kelly began her career in the online media space in 1997 with companies including Classified Ventures and AOL.
Sr. Director of Analytics and Insights, Salesforce Marketing Cloud | @DataDivaDalley
Tami Dalley oversees the analytics and insights team at Salesforce Marketing Cloud. A self-proclaimed "fanatical explorer," Tami has more than a decade of industry experience in deep-dive web analytics, usability consulting, competitive intelligence, landing page design and multivariate testing. Tami's work has been honored with the Search Engine Strategies Award for "Most Effective Use of Web Analytics" as well as the HSMAI Gold Arian Award for "Outstanding Search Marketing Strategy." Tami explains how to effectively measure attribution and digital success in her class, Changing the Way We Measure Success.
Founding Partner, Clixio | @mattdombrow
Upon entering the internet marketing industry in 2004, Upon entering the Internet marketing industry in 2004, Matt Dombrow quickly realized that everyone was chasing traffic but only a handful of people were working to convert all of those top search rankings into customers. Matt’s passion and focus has always been on increasing his clients' website conversion rates and driving bottom line results. Founding partner and head of business development at Clixo, a Denver based, boutique agency that specializes in paid online advertising combined with conversation rate optimization, Matt’s eclectic work history and holistic approach to Internet marketing routinely produce conversion gains of 30% - 250%.
Social Media Team Lead, Cisco
Leslie Drate oversees the planning and operations of Cisco social media channels focused on serving the needs of the global Cisco community. Leslie is a 20+ year marketing veteran with a background in website development, ecommerce, and content strategy. In addition, Leslie is an expert on the Cisco video landscape and building effective videos for the BtoB audience. Leslie shares advice for B2B content in the class, Best Practices for Business to Business Video.
President & CEO, Search Mojo | @JanetDMiller
Janet Driscoll Miller brings over ten years of search engine marketing experience to Search Mojo and is considered a leading expert in her field. Janet has spoken at search engine conferences including SMX Advanced, Search Engine Strategies and Pubcon, has published articles in B2B Magazine, Visibility Magazine and others, and contributes to several blogs, including Search Marketing Sage, Marketing Pilgrim and Search Engine Journal.
Co-Founder, AgoraPulse | @eernoult
Emeric Ernoult is the co-founder of AgoraPulse, a Paris and San Francisco based Facebook Marketing Technology launched in 2011. He is considered one of the European pioneers in the field of social medifa marketing. The first company he co-founded in 2000 was a technology allowing brands to create their own white label social network—four years before Ning or Facebook launched. Emeric has advised French and international brands such as Virgin Megastores, FIA and Microsoft. He is a member of the Board of the Social Media Club in Paris, France and is a regular speaker at European conferences such as iStrategy, Digital Paris and eMarketing. He shares best practices for successful Facebook Marketing in his class, Facebook's Best Kept Marketing Secret.
CEO | SEOmoz, @RandFish
Rand Fishkin is the CEO of SEO software company; SEOmoz. He co-authored the Art of SEO from O'Reilly Media, co-founded Inbound.org, and was named on PSBJ's 40 Under 40 List and BusinessWeek's 30 Best Tech Entrepreneurs Under 30. Rand has keynoted conferences on search around the world, and shares his insights on SEO and digital marketing in his popular video blog, Whiteboard Friday. He’s particularly passionate about the SEOmoz blog, read by tens of thousands of search professionals each day. Rand is an addict of all things content & social on the web, from his blog on entrepreneurship to Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
CMO, Kenshoo | @AaronGoldman
Aaron Goldman is Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Freestyle Rap at Kenshoo, a digital marketing software company that engineers global technology solutions for search marketing, social media and online advertising. Goldman has been running the digital marketing rap game for more than 12 years, and is the author of Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Google (McGraw-Hill 2010). Aaron reveals proven advice for effective search and social strategy in the class, Successful Execution of Search & Social.
16. Dax Hamman
Chief Revenue Officer, Chango | @DaxHamman
Dax Hamman is the Chief Revenue Officer at Chango, the leading company in Search Retargeting, and is based in Chicago and Toronto. Prior, Dax founded and led the global iCrossing media group, developing the concept of ‘performance display’, an innovative planning strategy that drove significant ROI from display advertising for some of the world’s largest and coolest brands. He has 13+ years in the digital space with experience in just about everything online, including media, usability, creative, technical management and affiliate marketing. He writes and speaks extensively, particularly on new and emerging techniques within the digital media space.
Director of SEO, AOL | @SimonHeseltine
Simon Heseltine is in charge of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) at AOL Inc. Simon and his team are responsible for organic search and training across all AOL and Huffington Post Media Group properties. Simon writes a regular column for SearchEngineWatch.com on a variety of topics within the marketing industry, and has previously written for other industry sites, such as SearchEngineLand.com (for their in-house marketing column). He is a frequent speaker at conferences in the US & UK on topics ranging from SEO to social search to reputation management. He also teaches SEO at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. as part of their Digital Media Management program.
Founder, JMH Marketing Group | @sdentrepreneur
James Hickey is a top leader in the internet marketing industry. He provides his clients and students with a proven internet marketing business model for retail businesses. He is an expert in all aspects of internet marketing , including Google Adwords, video marketing, blogging, article marketing and social media marketing, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, mobile application download strategy and more.
Founder, ReferLocal | @krisjonescom
Kris Jones is a prominent and respected internet marketing expert and award winning entrepreneur. He brings with him expert knowledge of affiliate and search engine marketing and has been featured as keynote, panel member, and moderator at prominent national and international industry conferences and events. In addition to speaking to business owners, marketers, and fellow technology buffs, Kris has delivered dozens of inspirational speeches to thousands of college students at colleges and universities around the United States.
Director of Strategic Marketing - Ecommerce, NCR | @emailyogi
Sundeep Kapur has been assisting organizations with their converged channel marketing strategies since 1990. From direct marketing to digital to converged, he is a passionate teacher who works with businesses across multiple industries, helping them to enable technology and services to brand, personalize and speak to consumers more effectively. Sundeep is also an avid user of social media, having leveraged words, pictures, & video into a conversational blog. His daily dose of best practices can be found at EmailYogi.com, where he wrote his 1,000th article on February 17, 2011. Sundeep shares how to effectively integrate your social and email strategy in his OMI class, 5 Ways to Leverage Social Media to Improve Email Marketing.
SEO Manager, ADOBE | @SEOCUBED
Warren Lee is responsible for over ~48 million monthly visits from SEO to ADOBE. Warren manages SEO for Adobe.com, Photoshop.com and the many web properties owned by ADOBE. Prior to ADOBE Warren worked for MOVE inc. where Warren was also an in house SEO manager responsible for keeping Realtor.com the #1 most visited website in the real estate industry as reported by Comscore. Warren frequently shares his experience and insights on SEO at events such as Online Marketing Summit and Search Engine Strategies.
Founder, DemandGen International, Inc. | @demandgendave
David Lewis is an early pioneer in Internet marketing, marketing automation, and CRM systems with over 22 years experience marketing and selling technology solutions through direct sales channels, online, and distribution channels. In 2007, he founded DemandGen International, Inc. a global consulting firm helping companies deploy and utilize marketing automation and CRM systems. DemandGen has become the trusted advisor to the world’s leading marketing and sales teams combining superior service, business process, and technology expertise.
President, Anvil Media | @kentlewis
With a background in integrated marketing, Kent Lewis left a public relations agency in 1996 to start his career in search engine marketing. Since then, he’s helped grow businesses by connecting his clients with their constituents via the Internet. In 2000, Lewis founded Anvil Media, Inc., a digital marketing agency specializing in search engine and social media marketing for Fortune 2000 companies. Under his leadership, Anvil has received recognition from Portland Business Journal and Inc. Magazine as a Fastest Growing and Most Philanthropic Company. Kent reveals best practices for social media analytics in this OMI class, What to Measure in Social and Why.
VP Sales and Marketing, Awareness, Inc. | @BostonMike
Mike Lewis is an international speaker, author of “Stand Out Social Marketing”, active blogger and Twitter personality. He is Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Awareness, Inc, a social media marketing software provider. Mike helps companies like Sony Pictures, Major League Baseball, American Cancer Society, FOX Broadcasting, and many others, realize the benefits of social media marketing and how to align social technology with practical business benefits.
Conversion Sciences | @bmassey
Brian Massey is the Conversion Scientist at Conversion Sciences and he has the lab coat to prove it. He’s helped dozens of businesses transform their sites through a steady diet of visitor profiling, purposeful content, analytics and testing. Brian’s workshops have been characterized as “memorable” and can be attended virtually here at OMI. In addition, he's spoken at the Direct Marketing Association conference, PubCon, Innotech, Destination Design Management, OMMA and almost anywhere else people will listen. He “gets them early” by speaking at major universities and is available for corporate workshops. His OMI class, The Blog Volcano, is a perfect example of his engaging, memorable teaching style.
VP Marketing, Marketo | @jonmiller
Jon Miller leads strategy and execution for all aspects of Marketo's thought leadership and content marketing programs. He is the executive editor of the popular Marketo blog, Modern B2B Marketing, and author of the comprehensive handbook, The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Analytics. Jon holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard College and has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Founder, MediaLeaders | @JoshOchs
Josh Ochs is the Author of “Light, Bright And Polite,” and the founder of MediaLeaders: The Marketing Team that Advises 36+ Brands On Social Media.
With background in marketing at Disney and a love for all things technology, Josh Ochs combines both to advise businesses on how to use social media to find new customers, nurture existing relationships and tie each campaign back to the bottom line. As the grassroots founder of MediaLeaders, the team that manages Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn for over 36 brands, Josh is leading the industry with innovative and creative campaigns that blend traditional sales methods with new technology. Josh outlines many of his counter-intuitive techniques in his latest book: “Light, Bright and Polite” which shares many of his tips with businesses of all types.
CEO, TopRank Online Marketing | @LeeOdden
Lee Odden is the author of Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing. He is also the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, a digital marketing and online PR agency that specializes in a 360 degree approach to growing new business and community engagement online. Lee has over 15 years experience in online marketing consulting, and is an active international speaker and publishes one of the most popular marketing blogs on the web.
It's hard to sum up Lee's extensive list of accomplishments in speaking, writing, and teaching, so we'll stick to this: Lee has written for top industry publications such as Mashable, MarketingProfs, and ClickZ; has keynoted Online Marketing Summit, Social Media Junction and Search Exchange, and is a long time speaker at Search Engine Strategies, PRSA Annual conference, BlogWorld Expo and WebmasterWorld Pubcon.
Industry Advisor, comScore
Jason Patterson joined comScore to help advertisers get the most out of their digital media investment using comScore’s end-to-end suite of digital measurement solutions. For 12 years, Jason has produced research solutions and analytics yielding actionable insights into media usage and consumer trends for a variety of the world’s largest advertisers. Jason teaches students how to increase the effectiveness of campaign messages in the class, Validating Campaign Delivery: How to Thrive In Our Evolving Digital Economy.
CEO, Loud Interactive | @BrentDPayne
Brent D. Payne, of Loud Interactive, started doing ‘SEO’ before it was even called ‘SEO’. He’s an internet marketer with over a decade of experience and proven success. He cut his teeth in online marketing as a vendor for Amazon.com where he became Amazon’s second largest electronics vendor by driving demand to Amazon from search engines. Brent is esteemed as one of the top SEOs in the world. He speaks around the world (just Google ‘SEO presentations’ to find them) at online conferences and has held online marketing roles at prestigious companies such as Tribune Company, where he grew Tribune’s search engine traffic from 500,000 visits per day to 1,700,000 visits per day in just 3 years.
Vice President of Strategy, Acxiom/Digital Impact | @ryanpphelan
Ryan Phelan is the Vice President of Strategy for Acxiom/Digital Impact with over 13 years of online marketing experience to help clients realize the potential within their email programs. Prior to Acxiom, Ryan served as VP, Strategy for BlueHornet and Director of email marketing and acquisition for Sears.com and Kmart.com. Prior to his tenure at Sears Holdings, Ryan managed the east coast professional services division at Responsys and was director of internet marketing and advertising at InfoUSA. Ryan is a frequent speaker on digital marketing, and he reveals the latest techniques for successful social integration in his class, 5 Fundamentals of Integrating Social into all Digital Efforts.
CEO, Strutta | @bpicks
Ben Pickering is the CEO of Strutta, a leading social marketing platform and Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer. Prior to Strutta, Ben worked at Yahoo! where he held a variety of strategic roles within the company’s display advertising business. He started his career with PricewaterhouseCoopers, providing transaction support to the firm’s global high tech client base on their M&A activity. As a writer, Ben has appeared on Mashable and Huffington Post Tech, and is a featured contributor to Social Media Examiner. He has spoken on the topic of social media promotions and marketing at events such as the AllFacebook Marketing Conference, Likeable Media’s #Likeable U Summit and as an instructor for the Online Marketing Institute.
Managing Partner, NordicClick Interactive | @adamproehl
Adam Proehl, Managing Partner of Minneapolis based NordicClick Interactive, is a seasoned online marketing executive who has a passion for helping clients use online channels to grow their business. As a practical marketer, his ability to get at the heart of the core business issues, establish measurable goals, and map the appropriate online tactics to further those objectives has served his clients well. He presents frequently at industry events, including Search Engine Strategies and Online Marketing Summit. In his class, Building the Ultimate Dashboard, Adam explains how to focus on the right metrics, and create an actionable dashboard.
CEO, Agent-cy Online Marketing | @jasmine_sandler
Jasmine Sandler is a veteran in online marketing. She has over 15 years of client experience in helping companies, both large and small, use the web to develop and grow business. She is a published author of “Branding & Sales: The LinkedIn Way,” and has expertise in the areas of using LinkedIn to grow business; B2B social media marketing strategy, and search marketing strategies for sustainable online visibility. Jasmine reveals how to develop an effective LinkedIn strategy in her OMI class, LinkedIn for Personal Branding.
Co-Founder, FusionSpark Media | @FusionSpark
Russell Sparkman is a new media craftsman with more than 25 years of visual communications experience. Sparkman has been a content marketing evangelist since 2008, the year he first wrote a blog post about the topic. Sparkman’s experience with what’s now called “Content Marketing” dates back to 1999, when he co-founded FusionSpark Media, a new media production and marketing communications firm that inspires, informs and influences through online content in support of corporate, non-profit and government communications initiatives. Russell speaks frequently at industry events, and shares his advice for content marketing success in Content Marketing Crash Course.
Founder and CEO, Social Media Examiner | @mike_stelzner
Michael Stelzner is the founder of Social Media Examiner, author of the books Launch and Writing White Papers, and the man behind large events, such as Social Media Marketing World and Social Media Success Summit. He is also host of the Social Media Marketing podcast show. Michael frequently shares his insights on social media and digital success through writing and speaking. He dives deeper into best practices for content marketing in his OMI class, How to leverage business blogging for more traffic, leads and sales.
Chief Marketing Officer, UBM Tech | @ScottAVaughan
Scott Vaughan is a 20-year passionate practitioner and student of marketing and the technology market. As a sought-after thought leader, his experience spans B2B marketing and sales strategy, revenue and demand generation, database analytics, media, and content, product, event and digital marketing. His views and observations on all things marketing, technology and business can be found on CreateYourNextCustomer.com.
Social Media Strategist, Intel | @Ekaterina
Ekaterina Walter is a social innovator at Intel. A recognized business and marketing thought leader, she is a speaker and a regular contributor to Mashable, Fast Company, Huffington Post, and other leading-edge print and online publications. She is an author of the book Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook's Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Sr. Director, Social Media Marketing, SAP | @toddmwilms
Todd Wilms is founding member of the SAP Social Media Audience Team, helping SAP's 47 solutions and 20 industries reach their appropriate audiences through social media marketing. The team is responsible for developing the strategy, helping to execute the program, and then developing repeatable processes to help other teams be more successful. A 20 year marketer, he has held executive product and marketing leadership roles with some of the world's best known brands like eBay/PayPal, Citrix, PeopleSoft, and agency George P. Johnson. He is an avid writer and blogs on Forbes, his team blog socialb2p.com, and Social Media Examiner. Todd shares competitive tips for social media marketing in his class, Social Media Marketing Landscape: Competitive Strategies for 2013.
Founder, Allinio | @joezuc
Joseph Zuccaro is the Founder and President of Allinio LLC, a marketing automation professional services firm helping organizations plan and implement web-based technologies to better gather, store, analyze, share, and act upon data that maximizes marketing ROI and drives higher revenue. He has over 25 years of experience in marketing, sales, and business development with B2B product and service companies, including angel-funded, pre-IPO and post-IPO technology companies. He is a fervent believer in properly measuring marketing and the need to relentlessly make marketing provide calculable value to sales and management.
And a few others...
As you can imagine, we had a difficult time narrowing down the list to just 40, so we didn't, and added a few additional leaders below. Equally as as influential, these leaders are making the industry a better place through their speaking, blogging, and instruction.
If there is anyone else you think should have made the cut, please let us know in the comments below. While we won't be able to add them to the list this year, we'd love to learn more and get to know them in 2013.
Co-founder & CTO, ion interactive | @chiefmartec
Scott Brinker leads product development and technical operations at ion interactive, the leading provider of landing page solutions for global marketing teams, including those at DHL, Dell, and WellPoint. With a keen understanding of the intersection of business, marketing, and technology, Scott has incredible insight into the unique challenges and opportunities in digital marketing. Whether he's wearing his technology hat, marketer hat, or both at the same time, he is able to effectively present these new (and sometimes complex) opportunities to both tactical marketers and business leaders.
Scott contributes regularly to publications such as Advertising Age, Search Engine Land, and MediaPost, and speaks frequently at events including PivotCon, Online Marketing Summit, and Search Engine Strategies. He shares his insights on digital marketing at ion interactive's Post-Click Marketing Blog, and writes about marketing technology on his personal blog, Chief Marketing Technologist. His OMI class on B2B Landing Pages is a great example of Scott's presentation style—informative, succinct, but engaging, too.
Sr. Director of Global Marketing, SAP | @brennermichael
Michael Brenner is the Senior Director of Global Integrated Marketing for SAP. He started his career nearly 20 years ago in sales, followed by field, product and corporate marketing positions at the Nielsen Company. Michael is author of the popular blog, B2B Marketing Insider, and a co-founder of the social news site Business 2 Community. He shares his B2B marketing success stories at industry events such as Content Marketing World, ConFab, and MarketingProfs' B2B Forum. Attend one of his sessions or webinars, and you may get a glimpse of his 4 kids and beautiful wife, too.
CEO, BusinessOnline | @tkahlow
Thad Kahlow is the CEO of BusinessOnline and is responsible for the entrepreneurial leadership of all operations. His visionary leadership style has helped propel the company into the online marketing spotlight; making BusinessOnline one of the nation’s leading digital agencies. He focuses on the alignment of business goals and customer needs so clients can make business decisions guided by information that matters. Thad has presented at numerous industry and executive conferences including the DMA, HTMA, AMT and Online Marketing Summit, and is published in leading trade and business publications like iMedia, ERA and B2B Magazine, and was one of the original founding members of the SEMPO institute.
CEO & Founder, Findability Group | @HeatherLutze
Heather Lutze is the widely acclaimed speaker, trainer, and consultant who literally wrote the book on search engine marketing. Two books, in fact—The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to Search Engine Marketing and the brand new Thumbonomics: The Essential Business Roadmap for Social Media & Mobile Marketing. Her writing and in-demand keynotes are delivered with the same witty, “no-geek-speak” style that has managed to demystify internet marketing for countless business owners.
Founder, Content Marketing Institute | @JuntaJoe
Joe Pulizzi is a leading author, speaker and strategist for content marketing. Joe is first and foremost a content marketing evangelist, and founded the Content Marketing Institute (a division of Z Squared Media, a 2012 Inc 500 Company), which includes the largest in-person content marketing event, Content Marketing World. Joe is also co-author of Get Content Get Customers (McGraw-Hill), recognized as THE handbook for content marketing, as well as Managing Content Marketing: The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand.
Joe travels around North America and Europe speaking to marketers and business owners about how they are indeed publishers, and what they need to do about it. If you can't catch Joe on the road, watch his popular OMI class, Opportunities in Content Marketing.
Morgan Vawter
Director of Optimization and Analytics, Piston Agency
Some say Morgan Vawter ’s first word was “Internet.” Since then, she’s demonstrated an uncanny knack for deciphering the complexities of the web. After graduating from Oglethorpe University, she spent years as a web analyst and Internet marketing consultant for Shell Oil, Qualcomm, and Cox Communications, among others. Now at Piston Agency, Morgan focuses on business analysis, strategic development, optimization, and multivariate testing, synthesizing multi–channel data to uncover insights and increase ROI for clients. When she's not optimizing for Piston's client set, you can find her leading sessions on the future of Analytics at Conferences such as ad:tech, WebVisions, Digiday and the Online Marketing Summit
Digital Strategy Practice Director, ISITE Design | @UsefulArts
Dave leads the digital business practice at ISITE Design. In this role, he manages ISITE's consulting practice which helps clients drive digital innovation that squares with the strongest market opportunities and organizational capabilities.
Dave is a faculty member in Northeastern University's graduate program for Digital Media. His experience as a brand marketer includes building digital teams for Thomson Reuters, Christian Science Monitor, and Sokolove Law. He has keynoted and shared his vision of the future of digital marketing for eConsultancy, MarketingSherpa, Online Marketing Summit, MarketingProfs, ExactTarget, Marketo, and e-Dialog. In addition, he dives deep into how marketers can harness mobile in this Mobile Marketing Crash Course.
Thanks Megan, I am truly honored to make it onto the list with these amazing folks.