The day Aashna Makin's employer offered her a promotion, she quit, a decision that has looked more strategic with every year since.

She's gone on to manage over $75 million in paid media across 150+ niches, building a full-time practice from the ground up and recently sharing a panel stage with Danny at SMX Advanced in Boston.

In this episode, Aashna breaks down what separates paid ads that actually grow a business from ones that just burn budget, why lead gen is a fundamentally harder problem than e-commerce, and the one habit she wishes every junior media buyer would build from day one.

Episode Highlights:

• Aashna and Danny discuss why paid ads that drive real growth require a predictable, documented system, not just a well-structured campaign, and what happens to accounts built on checklists instead of strategy.
• She gives the B2B team-building example: how a campaign performing perfectly on every platform metric was creating a lead-quality problem that had nothing to do with the ads and everything to do with calendar availability.
• The reveal why lead gen is fundamentally harder than e-commerce in paid media, from messaging precision to seasonality to the scarcity of quality resources for practitioners working in the space.
• Aashna makes the case for pinning headlines, explaining why she hasn't been convinced by Google's arguments against it, particularly for businesses where a single wrong audience segment can poison the entire pipeline.
• The conversation details the ownership mindset: treating every dollar of ad spend as if it's leaving your own bank account, and why she considers it the single most important habit a new media buyer can build.

Episode Links:

• Aashna Makin on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/aashnamakin
• Website: reachaashna.com
• Sell Like Crazy by Sabri Suby: Available on Amazon
• SMX Advanced 2026 Panel, "Agentic PPC: What's Real, What's Hype, What's Next": searchengineland.com

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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.

This week’s guest, Sophie Brannon, details her first big move to London at 18 to chase a career in music journalism, landing concert tickets and festival passes as pay for her reviews at Kerrang Magazine. When the economics stopped working, she moved into a copywriter role at a digital agency and never left the industry, eventually becoming co-founder and director of StudioHawk US, one of the world's most respected specialist SEO agencies.

In this episode, Sophie traces that winding path from rock journalism to SEO leadership, breaks down the real signal inside the AI search noise, and makes the case for why genuine relationships remain the foundation of everything that works in this industry.

Episode Highlights:

• Sophie shares why the fundamentals of SEO, technical health, authoritative content, and brand signals are exactly what drive performance in AI search, and why the numbers never supported the "SEO is dead" narrative.
• Sophie details her initial refusal to move into an SEO role at 20 years old, explaining how her managers, who insisted she could do it anyway, set the entire trajectory of her career.
• She makes the case for treating AI search as an additional channel rather than a replacement, and explains why the real fix is to pull SEO into a holistic brand strategy it should have been part of all along.
• This conversation shares why StudioHawk turned away significant revenue by being honest about client fit, and why that honesty has become one of their strongest marketing assets.
• This episode illustrates what adaptability looks like in practice for an SEO agency leader as the search landscape changes in real time.

Episode Links:

• Sophie Brannon on LinkedIn: Sophie Brannon
• Sophie on Instagram: @sophiebrannonseo
• StudioHawk US: studiohawk.com
• Product Led SEO by Eli Schwartz: Available on Amazon

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 solo episode, Danny Gavin reveals how he automated his Google Ads Search Query Report process using Claude Cowork and Windsor.ai, eliminating the 3-4 hours per account it previously took to complete manually. The system pulls live metrics, merges them by keyword and ad group, and outputs a structured Excel file with an ad group summary, KPI-focused observations, and pre-populated negative keywords.

It's a must-listen for those looking to systematize time-consuming account analyses and free up time to tackle other tasks.

Episode Highlights:

• Search query reports are one of the highest-leverage tasks in Google Ads management, and doing this job manually can eat up three to four hours of work per account per cycle.
• Danny shares how he connected Claude Cowork to live Google Ads data through Windsor.ai and turned Optidge's entire SQR methodology into a repeatable automation.
• He shares what the six-tab Excel output actually contains, including auto-generated observations, pre-populated negatives, and an ad group summary that flags structural problems before anyone looks at individual search terms.
• The 80/20 split: See what Claude handles automatically versus where human judgment still makes the final call.
• This episode gives four practical lessons for building AI automations in an agency context, from documenting your process first to understanding why the ROI compounds over time.

Episode Links:

• Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast
• Danny Gavin on LinkedIn
• Optidge
• Claude Cowork
• Windsor.ai

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.