We’re delighted to be bringing in some of the top names in search and digital marketing yet again to provide insightful, action-packed information that you can use in business moving forward.
Allow us to present to you the full lineup of speakers for the 2020 MnSearch Summit!
Britney Muller is a MN native who moved out to Breckenridge, Colorado after graduating from the University of MN (Twin Cities) to fulfill her life long dream of being a snowboard bum *cough* she also couldn’t find a job. In her spare time, Britney taught herself how to code and script kitty hack websites. A few years later, realizing she could make money doing some of these things she founded Pryde Marketing, a boutique medical marketing agency. Britney is currently the Senior SEO Scientist at Moz.
Ross Simmonds is the founder of Foundation Marketing. Foundation is a B2B content marketing agency that helps ambitious brands create content that drives results. The team at Foundation works with everything from startups to Fortune 500 companies looking to create and distribute content that shapes culture.
Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions.
John is the founder of Credo, where they help businesses find and hire the right marketing provider to help them grow. Credo has worked with 3,500+ businesses since late 2015.
John is also an international speaker, well known blogger, and have bylines across Entrepreneur, The Next Web, and more as well as having his work featured on CNBC, Today.com, and more.
Before Credo, John was the lead growth manager at Trulia Rentals, head of marketing at HotPads, and head of and senior consultant at Distilled NYC.
In his personal life, John is married to Courtney, who is a product design manager at Trello. They live in Denver, Colorado with their daughter Tatum and large black labrador named Butterbean.
Ross Hudgens is the founder/CEO of Siege Media, a 80-person content marketing agency with offices in San Diego, Austin, and NYC. He also co-founded GrowthComet, a training course/community for agencies.
Gary Illyes is a webmaster trends analyst dedicated to creating a better search experience for users by helping webmasters create amazing websites. When not crunching data to find ways to improve web search, Gary is contributing to the Webmaster Central Blog and helps users debug their websites in the Google Webmaster Forums.
Prior to joining Google in 2011, Gary was teaching online journalism in Romania and abroad. He was a technical consultant for several high profile media outlets, and he spent his free time on online forums helping webmasters troubleshoot web- and news-search related issues. He has studied IT at the University of Phoenix and holds an associate’s degree in journalism from the Ady Endre College of Journalism in Romania.
Before Digital Marketing and SEO, Zee worked in several web development and digital communications roles in the nonprofit space. That’s where she learned how to make the most impact with shoestring budgets, harness data, and communicate technical changes to stakeholders of all skill levels. Today, Zee is a Senior Consultant and Consulting Team Lead of Distilled NYC.
Joe Martinez is the Director of Client Strategy for Clix Marketing. While he is hands-on in all aspects of PPC, his true passions lie in display, remarketing, audiences, and YouTube. He is a regular contributor to Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, and WordStream. He has also written for PPC Hero, SEMrush, Unbounce, Leadpages, Optmyzr, and AdStage. He has hosted webinars for SEMrush, Unbounce, Quora and Microsoft Ads. He regularly speaks at conferences such as SMX (Advanced, Munich, East, West), HeroConf, Pubcon (Pro, Florida, Austin), SMXL, SEMPO, and more. Finally, he was named a Top 25 Influential PPC Expert by PPC Hero in 2017, 2018, and 2019.
Lee Odden is a lightly bearded B2B marketing strategist, author, international speaker and CEO of the fine team at TopRank Marketing. His work integrating search, social, content, and influencer marketing for B2B brands has been recognized by numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Forbes. As a recovering SEO practitioner and author of the book Optimize, Lee has worked hard to evangelize an integrated, customer-centric approach to marketing with 250+ presentations at conferences in 18 different countries. By combining a “best answer marketing strategy” together with “do well by doing good” values, he’s attracted top industry marketing talent and clients including LinkedIn, SAP, 3M, Dell, Oracle, Adobe and Content Marketing Institute.
Christi is the Head of Evangelism for Bing at Microsoft and is on the Board of Directors for the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), the Paid Search Association, and the University of Idaho School of Business. For over a decade Christi has led in-house Digital Marketing teams at Microsoft, Expedia, Harry & David, and agency teams at Pointmarc and Point It. She is passionate about search marketing and has spent her career helping businesses solve their marketing challenges and goals through studying and analyzing data to develop actionable insights and strategies. Christi has been recognized by PPC Hero and her peers as one of the top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts for the last 5 consecutive years.
Christi is a recognized keynote speaker across the globe at events such as AdWeek, Mumbrella, DMEXCO, SMX, and the Digital Summit Series. She also writes for Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and has been published on HuffingtonPost, Venture Beat, Forbes, AdAge and MarketingProfs. She is the author of the Microsoft 2019 Voice Report, When she isn’t writing or speaking you can find her crawling with her daughter Adelinde (born in April 2019), or literally jumping through hoops and chasing her 3 year old, Roy, or spending time with her husband Jason.
Lianna Patch is a conversion copywriter and comedian whose greatest dream is to make your customers pause, smile, and click (in that order).
Trained in the not-so-dark arts of buyer psychology and customer research, she specializes in punchy, engaging landing pages and email copy. Her work has been featured by Copy Hackers, HubSpot, Conversio, Autopilot, BigCommerce, ConversionXL, and more impressive publications whose names you probably don’t know.
She’s written copy for Freshbooks, Manly Bands, GhostBed, and The Contract Shop, among other delightful clients, and regularly speaks at ecommerce and software conferences around the world.
Not sick of hearing about her yet? Great! Conquer campaigns with Lianna at Punchline Conversion Copywriting, or get quick copy jobs done at SNAP Copy.
Partner & Co-Founder at NordicClick Interactive in Minneapolis (full service digital agency with local and national clients).
National and International Conference Speaker; Seen at Pubcon, SMX, Digital Summit, MN Search, State of Search, Zenith Marketing, and more
Contributing columnist to Search Engine Journal
Advisory Board Member for The University of South Florida Digital Marketing Certificate Program and the Paid Search Association
In digital marketing since 1998
Lifelong lake obsessed Minnesotan. Married with 2 kids and a dog. Dog worships me and thinks I’m the best. Kids think I’m a dork.
Lily Ray is the SEO Director at Path Interactive, where she provides strategic leadership for the agency’s SEO client programs. Born into a family of software engineers, web developers and technical writers, Lily brings a strong technical background, performance-driven habits and forward-thinking creativity to all programs she oversees. Lily began her SEO career in 2010 in a fast-paced start-up environment and moved quickly into the agency world, where she helped grow and establish an award-winning SEO department that delivered high impact work for a fast-growing list of notable clients, including Fortune 500 companies. Lily has worked across a variety of verticals with a focus on retail, e-commerce, b2b and CPG sites. In addition to overseeing SEO strategies across Path’s clients, Lily loves diving into algorithm updates, assessing quality issues and solving technical SEO mysteries. In 2017, Lily was nominated by Search Engine Land for Female Search Marketer of the Year, and she continues to contribute ideas and strategies to the SEO community through major digital marketing publications and speaking engagements.
Carrie is the creative director at UK Creative SEO agency, Rise at Seven, leading the content marketing, Digital PR and social media offering.
Her work closely aligns with SEO strategy, building links on top tier publications to improve organic performance by creating stories, data, and on-site content that journalists want to talk about or link to naturally and users want to share just because it’s awesome.
Carrie made the shortlist for Young Digital Marketer of the Year at the Northern Digital Awards 2019.
Jeff Sauer is the Founder of Data Driven, agency owner, business coach, blogger at Jeffalytics, lecturer, and a recently retired digital nomad after 4 years on the road. A firm believer in data-driven marketing, Jeff’s work has been featured in many industry publications and “best of” lists. Jeff has had 15,000+ digital marketers enroll in his Google certification programs. He has delivered over 100 keynote presentations and workshops in 20 countries.
Edutainment and big 80s hair at its finest, Angie is an incredibly actionable speaker with an uncanny ability to package complex concepts as easy-to-understand frameworks. Recognized by Forbes as a “Top 10 Online Marketing Expert to Follow”, she specializes in power plays for SEO and conversion optimization. As Founder and Chief Optimizer of Interactive Artisan, she’s a master of conversion-centered content strategy, landing pages, and organic lead generation — delivering winning results for clients like Nestle USA, Red Wing Shoes, University of Wisconsin, and many more. She’s spoken at over 70 major conferences across 10 different countries. When she’s not optimizing marketing campaigns, you’ll find Angie kayaking lakes of Minnesota with her German Shepherd, Nikita, or geeking-out on the latest Star Wars or Marvel movies.
Darren founded Whitespark in 2005 as a web design and development company, however, his passion and curiosity for all things local search led to a shift in focus in 2010, and ultimately to what the company is today. These days, Whitespark specializes in local search software and services and is one of the most respected and cited in the industry.
Darren has been working on the web for over 19 years and loves everything about local SEO. He leads research initiatives such as the Local Search Ranking Factors survey and the Local Search Ecosystem. He is a regular contributor to search marketing publications, and speaks at conferences around the globe.
Darren loves to provide audiences with information and knowledge that can be applied to existing local search strategies; whether it’s for a small business owner, in-house marketing team, or enterprise/multi-location corporations, you can expect that his presentation will have strategies you can use in your business. Darren has a knack for taking complex local search marketing topics, clearing out the clutter, and getting down to what’s really important. Darren’s mission is to educate audiences on what matters in local search, provide actionable advice, while sharing his good ol’ Canadian charm and humour with the crowd.
