On your website it says that you are a founding partner at Ionic Media, how did it all begin and how were you involved?
Back in 2002, a group of executives at GoTo/Overture (now Yahoo Search Marketing) decided to take a break and we left Overture to start something new. We'd been part of the birth of the PPC search industry and we knew how hard it could be for advertisers to navigate those waters successfully.
So, it really all began with us identifying the place where we could bring the most value to clients…search. Then, very quickly as we began serving clients we realized we had a unique approach to SEO, online banners and landing pages, something that is near and dear to my heart.
In 2006, we met up with Jeff Bender and Michael Kubin, who were running Ionic Marketing, an offline agency that had much the same philosophy to serving marketer's needs that we did. Both companies focused on delivering bottom-line results for companies using proven, proprietary techniques and technology. It was a perfect fit and, in January 2007, we merged the offline company and online company to become Ionic Media.
What is your current role at Ionic Media?
I am Executive Vice President at Ionic Media and my day-to-day activities include working with clients to structure new engagements, making speeches at various conferences and venues, and helping the Managing Directors (there are four of them) set the corporate strategy so we are continually improving our service offering to clients.
I am most excited by the opportunities I have to go out and speak at conferences and workshops. In the last 5 years here at Ionic, we have managed millions of keywords, built dozens of sites and landing pages and have placed hundreds of millions of dollars in ad spend. That is a lot of experience that we can bring to bear on a client's project and it is a pool of knowledge that we like to share with advertisers.
For those marketers who are doing it on their own, we like to be an educational resource at conferences, like the PPC Summit, which is all about hands-on skill building for marketers. We offer up our expertise and give them some best practice techniques, so they can do things better and grow their businesses. In the future, at some point, they might be big enough to hire an agency like ours and we hope they will think of us.
It also says you have an MBA from Stanford in Business. Did you always know that you wanted to work in a Marketing field? Why?
Most of my professional life has been working in marketing, in one way or another, but I didn't plan it that way… From a marketing position at Wells Fargo Bank for my first real job, I went on to get my graduate degree and that experience was really eye-opening for this girl from Simi Valley, California.
After business school, I had a chance to work for McKinsey & Company as a consultant and then as an Engagement Manager in their London office. While there I specialized in marketing projects, although there were plenty of research, organization and M&A projects thrown in for good measure! The consulting environment is a great training ground for someone who is not sure exactly what they want to do. Fast paced and high pressure, the projects are educational pressure-cookers that embed valuable skills in you quickly.
Tell me a little bit about the other founding partners.
I am really thrilled to be working with such talented, great people. My four partners and all of the team members here are fun people, people you would definitely want to have a beer with on a Friday evening.
But back to the Managing Directors, they are all terrific and smart and fun to work with. Check out their bios, pictures and top 10 favorite books and websites on our site: http://ionicmedia.com/about-ionic-media.html
Michael Kubin is our Managing Director out of New York. With over 30 years of offline media experience, he has seen it all. He's the guy to consult if you need the big picture about an industry or company. Michael is super smart (he speaks four languages) and really knows his stuff.
Jeff Bender is a Managing Director here in our Los Angeles office and he is really capable and has a fantastic sense of humor. With experience as General Manager of Ecommerce at Disney and many years serving clients, he is our go-to-guy for DRTV and integrated media planning.
Mark Evans is a Managing Director and he was GM of U.S. Search while we worked together at GoTo/Overture. Mark is incredibly smart and analytical. He can sum up the most complex issue quickly and in a way so that everyone can understand what needs to be done.
Ted Huffman is the last of our four partners and he is my husband. I'll have to be careful not to show favoritism here with my description…No, actually Ted is incredibly good at what he does. He is one of our heads on the online side and leads all of our technology initiatives to build proprietary tools to serve client needs.
How long have you been in business?
We have been serving clients since 2002 and have been working in the paid search space since GoTo's founding in 1998.
Where are you located?
We have an office in New York and our main office is in Encino, California
How many employees?
35 employees
How many accounts?
We are currently serving about 50 companies.
What is Ionic Media's philosophy?
Our focus is working with clients to fuse direct response marketing with branding in order to more cost effectively acquire and retain customers. We take a cross-channel portfolio approach to placing media in order to better manage risk and ROI. Our focus is on continuous improvement and optimization that drives better results. Our tagline says it all: We are obsessed with results.
You website says that you are “media-agnostic,” what do you mean by that?
Media neutrality is a core philosophy for us. In essence, it means that whatever a client's target, goals, objectives, past performance, we can develop a plan using the right media to achieve success.
Because we aren't tied to one specific media channel or strategy, we are free to recommend the best options for each client, and to test vigorously across all channels. We frequently recommend clients move budget into areas that may be completely new for them, simply because we are always looking for the most efficient source for their marketing dollar.
How does your company help marketers who want to take their company to the next level?
When we work with a new client, we spend time getting to know their business and understanding what has happened in the past. Then we structure a plan for a successful future.
We are especially effective for clients who have been managing their campaigns in-house. We can generally achieve a much higher ROI for the same spend by virtue of our dedicated teams and proprietary technology and approaches. It is just hard for an internal marketing person who wears lots of different hats to be as effective as we can be.
When you are pitching your company to a potential client, what do you tell them to set yourself apart from other agencies?
Often we are the only agency that a given company is considering but in the cases that we go head-to-head with another agency, we have a really compelling story to tell about how we drive results.
We have years of deep experience driving online and offline results for clients. We've proven that we can achieve outstanding results whether our client needs help with PPC, SEO, banners, landing page optimization, email or DRTV and more traditional media. We can do it all very well.
Ionic Media combines high-touch and high-tech to drive results. Each account is assigned four people and one of our Managing Partners is always involved in a hands-on way with the client's work.
Tell me about one of the biggest successes the company has had.
We have lots of successes with all different types of clients. Here is a recent example.
We started working with a large entertainment company who had previously worked with one of the big-name online agencies. Within 2 weeks we were able to triple leads while cutting spend in half.
We've found that our high-touch approach using smart tools and technologies to make our teams more effective works better than the all-automated approach that many other agencies take. You can't just staple on an online capability (and this is especially true of search) onto a big offline agency and make it really work for clients. You need to bring deep online expertise to the table and we definitely provide that for our clients.
Thank you for taking the time to interview with us.
My pleasure, thanks for having me.