115: Saying Yes Before You’re Ready: Content Systems, ICPs, & Leadership with Ashley Segura

Danny Gavin (Host) : 00:05

Hello everyone, I’m Danny Gavin, founder of Optage Marketing Professor, and the host of the Digital Marketing Mentor. Today we are joined by digital and content marketing veteran Ashley Segura. She is the director of marketing at Search Lab, but her path to this leadership role started in a way many of our listeners will find incredibly relatable with a simple yes to a problem she hadn’t yet solved. 

 

With 15 years of experience, including founding her own agency and speaking on global stages, Ashley has moved beyond just creating content to building the actual marketing departments and operations that make that content successful. Today we’re going to talk about her transition from journalism to marketing, her philosophy on audience analysis and building personas, and what it will look like to lead a marketing team in 2026 and beyond. 

 

Ashley, how are you doing today?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 01:08

I’m good. I’m so happy to be here.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 01:10

Yes, a long time coming. All right, so let’s jump right in. So let’s talk about your educational work background. So how did you get here today?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 01:19

Oh my gosh. Okay. So I have an interesting story, which the more marketers I talk to, the more they have a very similar background, which I just love. But I started in journalism. I was a journalist. I was reporting on the news, on weather events, on local community events. I was telling people’s stories through literal newspapers way back in the day. And then everything started to turn, print started to unfortunately die quite a bit. And everything was going to this new online realm where that’s where you got your stories and Tumblr was just taking off. And so there was a new way to do storytelling. So after I graduated, I had a few articles under my belt, was writing for the Time Standard, and had a very what I thought was a clear path to being a journalist. And then my insurance agent asked me, can you build a website? You just graduated college. You got to be, you know, hip and tech with all those things. Can you create a website for my insurance agency? And as a just recently graduated student who was still starving and looking for any and all kinds of work, I was like, sure, I can Google wordpress.org and figure out how to build a website. I can piece all of that together. And so I did. I got a theme, learned what themes were and knew how to write content, knew how to describe, because that’s the full journals and background. So writing the website copy came pretty naturally. And then he loved the website. He was able to start getting customers from it. So fast forward to about six months, he reaches back out to me. He’s like, hey, Art, are you able to come and speak to the California Board of Insurance agents and teach them what you did? Because my website is working great for me. Like I’m getting found all the time. I’m getting new customers. I was like, sure, I’ve never spoken before. I’ve never even put together a presentation other than for schoolwork, but sure, I’ll do that. So I did. And that naturally gave me a bunch of different opportunities. A lot of the people that were in the room were like, hey, we want you to build a website for us too. We want you to start doing social for us and start writing blog posts for us. So I realized marketing and journalism, there’s some synergy here. Instead of telling people stories, I can tell brand stories and I know how to capture people’s attention. So if I can combine all of that, there’s something here with marketing. And since print was going through this terrible journey of everything going online, I saw this as a really good opportunity to make my break and join the online world instead of going against it. And so I got a job at a marketing agency. I wanted to learn as much as I possibly could about digital marketing. And I would take clients on the side and work evenings and weekends and did that for years until I went on my own, worked in-house, opened up four different marketing companies over my 15-year journey, and have gotten the pleasure to work from SaaS to mom and pop businesses to huge enterprise companies. And journalism really helped shape all of that. And I get to meet so many marketers now who have a journalism background too. And now we get to tell stories still.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 04:36

Looking back, how much of your success today do you attribute to that specific journalistic curiosity and the willingness to figure things out on the fly?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 04:44

100%. Absolutely all of it. That and my lovely insurance agent, who he was my family’s insurance agent for like my parents, their parents, like he had been in our family for a long time. So I also give him quite a lot of shout-outs because if he hadn’t asked, I don’t know if I would have found a place in marketing, let alone digital marketing.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 05:06

But I just love that go-getter attitude. Like, so I teach a lot of people digital marketing and they’re looking for their first position. And so many of them are scared to be like, okay, but I don’t know if I have enough experience or I don’t know if I’m able to do it. And I tell people, like, you just got to be confident in who you are. And there’s so many resources around you that you’re able to look if you have a question. And obviously you don’t want to lie and say, you know, um, I can do something when you’re not able to. But there’s nothing wrong with jumping in, getting your hands dirty. And those are the types of people, right? So if you would have said, hey, I’ve never built a website before and I’m gonna say no, your whole trajectory may have changed. But the fact that you’re like, yes, I’ve got to jump on this, it opens this amazing door. So I hope people learn from that. Like, don’t be scared, just try it.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 05:50

Yeah, and even if you are scared, that’s great. I mean, I’ve learned to read that if I’m saying yes to something and it’s terrifying me, I might be on the right path. And that’s worked for me. Some people, it’s different feelings and different behaviors, but it is curious. Like, don’t be afraid to say yes to things.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 06:10

Yeah, it’s kind of like going up on the stage and speaking in front of an audience, having those butterflies in your stomach is a healthy thing, right? If you’re not afraid at all, being too overconfident, sometimes that can lead you in a worse place.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 06:22

Absolutely. I now get the pleasure of speaking to sages around the world. And I have been able to travel, which since I was a little girl, that was my dream, if I wanted to travel. I want to see the world and I want to see cultures in the world. That’s what inspired me. And that’s also a big reason why I got into journalism . You can’t tell people stories if you don’t go talk to people and if you don’t go meet them. And so, because of that, yes, many, many years ago, I have had the pleasure of being able to travel around the world. And every single time I get on stage, those butterflies are still there, but I get to live that dream of exploring new places, meeting new people, meeting new cultures, and teaching at the same time.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 07:05

So obviously now you’re working for an agency, but you managed many agencies, like it sounds like four or so throughout your time. 

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 07:13

What were some of the hardest hard knocks that you learned during that agency owner phase? And potentially why today are you sitting in a place of working for an agency and not for yourself?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 07:23

I wanted to be a one-stop shop because I thought, from a business perspective, if a client can come to one company and have them do everything for their digital marketing, that’s the dream for the client. That’s the ease of experience. So I spread myself really thin, trying to learn every single aspect of digital marketing. And this was right around the time when Facebook ads started becoming a thing. So then I had to throw in social ads, not just PPC. And I quickly learned that no one can be an expert in all things. You just can’t. You’re gonna burn yourself out, or worse, you’re going to give mediocre results to your clients who are now expecting that one stop shop experience. So then I started to hire out and I found contractors that I could develop relationships with, whether I was growing really fast or growing really slow. And I would find people who were experts in just advertising or just SEO or things I didn’t feel as confident to go down. And even then, it was hard to scale. It was hard to grow because as more clients would come on, there would be bigger demand in some of these areas. And as many people learn, working with contractors or even working with employees, there is no crystal ball. So I didn’t know how long I was going to have clients for. I didn’t know how long I’d be able to pay people for. So that whole business model, it just didn’t work long term. I made the decision to let’s hone this thing in on what I am very passionate about and what I know I can lead this organization in. So restructured the company, completely rebranded, new name, new site, new services, everything, and just focused on content and social media marketing. That’s where I was the most passionate about. And I knew I could also have the most support. I had a good team there. Even from that, this was like, goodness, what this was like 2016-ish time. So social life was just booming. And it was every single day something was changing with social algorithms or new social platforms were coming out. And that was very much so, also around the time period where as a company, you have to be on everything and everything needs to be unique. And there has to be like at least four pieces of blog posts every single month. Like it was very cookie-cutter and very spread yourself thin and see what lands. And so, even niching down to those two, I realized that’s still too big. That’s still not gonna do it. So then went through another process of just opening a social media marketing agency that just focused on social, and then another content company that just focused on content. That’s where I found the most success. That’s where I was also the happiest, and my clients were the happiest.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 10:08

Amazing. So, what brought you to leave that world and come and work for an agency?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 10:13

So, after opening four companies, there were a lot of opportunities along the way, especially coming from speaking and getting my own thought leadership out there. A lot of different opportunities started coming. And one of the ones that really stood out was the opportunity to just focus on one brand, tell the story for just one brand. And after many, many years of working with dozens and dozens of clients at the same time, also trying to manage the org, carrying all of the responsibilities on the shoulder, it sounded really, really good. And it was like, you know, I do want to go back in-house so badly. Like I want to be able to just focus and put all of my energy towards really crafting the messaging and positioning for one singular company and see what comes out of that. Because now things have changed once again. Now we have LLMs and like now we’re in a whole nother environment. And I wasn’t able to continuously learn all of these new things and keep on top of everything while being spread thin, focusing on so many different clients. So when this opportunity came knocking, I was like, you know what? Let’s give it a try. My company was in good hands, had a credible business partner that I was able to step back from and know that everything’s still gonna work very smoothly. And it was just kind of great timing.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 11:37

Yeah, and it shows such a beautiful thing about our industry, right? Some people, if they’re in a certain area, you know, let’s say 10, 15 years, it’s difficult to move. But in our world, like agency, in-house, in-house agency, there’s a lot of flexibility. So so so wonderful that you were able to make that move. And I’m sure that all of the experiences that you had with so many different brands just further amplifies your expertise and how awesome you are. And therefore, I’m sure Search Lab was really excited to be able to bring you on the team.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 12:06

Yeah, it’s funny because I’m in-house, but I’m in-house for an agency. So it’s like I’m still not out of the agency life, which is where we’re, you know, I’m happy and I thrive. So I still get to hear about client work and still get to see what the different systems and processes are in place for local SEO and PPC. I still get to have a pulse on that. But personally, my day-to-day is focused on promoting one brand and getting their messaging down.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 12:31

Very cool.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 12:32

 All right. So on our podcast, we’ve heard mentorship defined in many different ways. How would you define a mentor in your life?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 12:38

A mentor is someone who does a great combination of inspiring, but also holding you accountable. I think we can get lost with the mentorship philosophy I just need someone to tell me what to do if I’m doing

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 12:52

 Is it right or wrong? If you lose the mojo of what mentorship really should be. And that’s an equal combination of inspiring you, yet pushing you, someone to actually hold you accountable for, yeah, you’re going through your day to day, but is your battery full? Or are you draining it on the wrong things? Like a mentor can inspire you to follow that compass and make sure that you’re staying on track.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 13:16

Do you have any specific mentors that stand out as pivotal to your career journey and success?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 13:20

Yeah, I gotta give a big shout out to Olga. Um, Olga Landrienko, I worked with her at SEMrush and I learned so much from her. It was like drinking from a fountain of knowledge. And to this day, I just took her Claude Coer course a couple of weekends ago. It was a weekend-intensive course, and I’m still learning from her, uh, just how to call with her and still getting motivated and inspired by how she markets, how she builds systems, how she builds frameworks. So she is my, what would you call it? My um, you’re not titled this, but you’re like voluntarily titled it, like you’re like a token.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 14:02

Elected.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 14:03

Yeah.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 14:03

Yeah. Kind of like my token mentor that I have continuously followed her journey and been inspired by, but also like to compass my roadmap based on, oh, she’s diving into LMs and how to create marketing workflows. How can I be doing that? Because I’m a marketing leader too, and I have workflows that I could probably be automating if I just take a weekend and learn about it. Growing through my whole journey from in-house to agency to opening up companies, I had several different small business mentors that I would get in touch with from uh local communities. I’m from San Diego. So San Diego had a really great small business program that would tie you in with different mentors. So I had one that would help me with pricing because we never price ourselves well.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 14:53

One of the hardest.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 15:00

Hourly rates are everything, and that’s definitely the way to go when you’re trying to figure out how to price services. But I had a pricing mentor, I had a service offering mentor, and that was he was the one who helped me go from offering everything to narrow down, narrow down, narrow down. I also had just like a regular business mentor who I would check in with her every once in a while and just be like, this is where we’re at. This is we’re having scaling problems or I’m having hiring issues, like that, this is where we’re at. So it’s nice to have mentors who have different backgrounds and specialties too to help you where you’re at today.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 15:38

So it’s kind of like you had your own board, right? Like your board of people that depending on what you needed, you went to them. I think that’s awesome.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 15:44

Yeah, that makes it feel extra fancy. I did have my own board.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 15:49

Well, if they say, right, a person needs to surround themselves with good people and to be on your own, whether it even if you’re running your own agency, you need that support. You need the people to reach out to.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 15:59

Oh, absolutely. By the second, I’m sorry, no, by the third company as a business partner, and he’s phenomenal at sales. He ‘s just like he shines at that. It’s never been my strong suit. I can get the messaging and positioning and get the GTM going, but then need someone who’s closer. So like together we were able to yin and yang what our specialties were. And when you’re looking for a mentor, it’s so great to find the opposite of, well, this is where I am the weakest link. And this is exactly why I need an outsider perspective, someone who is incredibly intelligent in this and has the experience.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 16:36

So in your current role, you aren’t just doing the work, you’re leading the people doing it as well. So, what are your keys to mentorship success when you are mentoring others?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 16:45

Meeting people where they are communication-wise is everything. I have a variety of people on my team, and every single one of us has a different personality. Every single one of us has a different communication style. I can do a video recording to show exactly how to do something and that may work for someone. Another person’s gonna need that written in a Google Doc of here’s a step-by-step. And then another person’s going to need to be told what it looks like, and that’s all I need to know. And I’ll get you to that. So taking the time to get to know your team and how they can learn and work with you the best is vital. You absolutely have to take the time as a leader to understand communication styles and be willing to meet people where they’re at, even if that means sending a Google Doc, a screen recording, and what done looks like.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 17:37

Yeah. And that way you’re treating people like humans, not just like a resource.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 17:41

Yes. That’s what ChatGPT and Cloud’s for. Those are the resources. Those are the ones that we don’t always have to say please to.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 17:49

Although it’s always good to say please, because we never know in the future if they want to get back at us, right?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 17:54

This is true. This is true. Lots of like heart emojis, and I’m so sorry, I prompted wrong. That was on me, not you.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 18:00

So I think this is a good segue into part of leading a team is building systems. So when you are building marketing operations, how do you ensure the operational rhythm, like the meetings, the Slack channels, the workflows actually support the team rather than just add more noise?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 18:15

One, it’s taking an audit of how much the activity is in the first place. So, how many meetings does an average person on my team have, whether it’s within the marketing department, other departments, other stakeholders, what does that look like? Then also auditing your Slack communications, your channels to see what is the frequency. Are we chatting with each other more than we’re meeting? Is that an issue? Or does that actually work better for this team? They like that open feedback versus having a formal 30-minute meeting on their calendar. Being able to look at things holistically from the 360-degree view of how much time is really being spent on things, that’s the first indicator. And now with LMs, you can connect Cloud Cowork to your Gmail calendar, to your Slack, to your Gmail, your inbox as well, and literally have it do the audit. How many meetings is my team in on a weekly basis over the last three months? How many meetings did we have? How many meetings were back to back? What was the summary? Like giving the kaizen or whatever you use for your meeting transcripts, give them the meeting transcripts, to make it so easy to collect that information. And then it will clearly identify hey, here’s your bottlenecks. Here’s where things did not need to be a meeting at all, or here’s where Slack channels are on fire. They need to be meetings instead. Doing exercises like that is kind of like the first place that I would start.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 19:42

So I did a really cool Claude cowork type of deal. Same thing. Like last Thursday, I was inspired. And I just so we have like our meeting transcripts, and uh I basically found a way to automatically find which Slack channel they belong in, depending on what was discussed, and automatically get it in. It was pretty cool. Um, but I love your idea of using it as more of an audit tool and kind of figuring out exactly. And sometimes we think like only one direction, where it’s like too many meetings, all right, it should have been more of discussions, but I like the opposite where too many discussions and it really should have been a meeting. Sometimes you don’t think about that. Um, but it’s important that it’s bi-directional.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 20:19

Oh, absolutely. I mean, and there’s so many times in a week, Slack will be firing off. And it’s like, wait, wait, what if we just pause and just jump in a huddle real quick? Because the huddle would probably take two minutes. But if we keep going to the street on Slack, we’re looking at at least 20 minutes, we’re bothering everyone at this point. Let’s just huddle real quick and talk this out. But again, if you know how your team communicates and their communication preferences and their style, you’ll start to have those indicators a lot sooner before those slack fires happen.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 20:50

So when you’re tasked with building a marketing department for a company that has none, how do you identify which solutions or roles tire first? Do you start with a generalist storyteller or a technical operations specialist? How would you approach it?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 21:02

It’s going to depend drastically on where the company’s at. Like, is this a brand new company or has this company been operating for like five years and they just have an incredible sales team? They’ve never needed marketing and this is new. Those are two different workflows and two different ways that I would approach building out a marketing department. But if you’re like, okay, regardless of the scenario of the company, what’s a good rule of thumb of where you should start building out? That’s where running a marketing audit, if the company has been established, identifies what’s been working, what hasn’t been working. This is going to give a big bird’s eye view of not just what social channels and like what your engagement metrics are, but where are you getting the most revenue from marketing efforts? Whether anyone was doing the marketing before or not, your site is still marketing for you, even if someone’s not regularly optimizing it. It’s a marketing channel. So identify where the biggest wins are, what channels are the biggest players. And then from there, who do you need? Do you need an SEO to further optimize the website and make sure every single month it is driving even more conversions because that’s the number one player? Is it all of the PPC ads, the social ads? Like that’s how I start to identify what roles I need first. I always want to focus on what’s going to give or what’s going to be the closest to giving money to the company immediately. So that’s where demand gen or a go-to marketer, a GTM marketer is going to come into play. Let’s get that wheel spinning there so we can make sure our product, our positioning, all of that’s good to go while we’re still getting some kind of ROI from marketing efforts. Simultaneously, you’re cleaning up all the operations or you’re building all of the operations at the same time. This is where marketing leaders need to get their hands dirty, do some of the execution themselves, especially with the small, lean teams in the beginning, hire someone that can help put more effort and resources towards the conversion engines that are working already, and then simultaneously start building out processes, start cleaning up all of the operations.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 23:17

So similarly, when you’re leading a marketing department, how do you sell the value of invisible operational improvements to executives who want to see immediate results or jump on trends? I feel like sometimes with marketing, like, okay, we got the one marketing person, you know, in-house, and suddenly like, oh yeah, but we really need this and this. And sometimes it’s difficult to sell that up the chain. How do how do you

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 23:36

 approach that?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 23:37

It is difficult. It is absolutely difficult. And that’s where having someone or some kind of process in place that can keep the ROI engine moving. So, oh, we are seeing MQLs, marketing qualified leads coming in. We are getting sales qualified leads coming in. That’s happening simultaneously while we’re redoing our tagline, we’re redoing our messaging, we’re building out ICPs that have never been done before, we’re conducting mass marketing audits or competitor intelligence. Also doing presentations on the results of those and giving those to the larger stakeholders is usually really eye-opening because it usually doesn’t just affect the marketing department. One of the first things I did when I joined Search Lab is I did a marketing audit and I did an ICP analysis. And so I pulled a bunch of transcripts from sales calls, I interviewed different account managers on the team, uh, went through all of the marketing data and compiled all of that to identify who we’ve been talking to. Here’s who our customers actually are in the industries that represent them. And here’s where we think we want to go. These are all three different stories, and these are all three different paths. So, how do we get on the same page? How do I identify who our real ideal customer persona is based on these three things? Well, that took the owner of the company, Wayne and Opinions, that took the director of sales, that took the director of account managers. Like it involves so many other stakeholders. And we were able to come out of that with a very clear vision of who we actually want to target. This is who we actually want to see. That took about a little over four months of a process to do. So that’s a big, big time suck for a marketing department to be focusing on. But at the same time, we had lead gen campaigns running, we had webinars going, we had the typical nurture sequences going. So sales was still getting marketing qualified leads being sent in. And we were able to start the new year all right, now we know how to update our messaging, our product positioning. Now we know how to update our advertisements. Sales knows who they’re going to talk to, what the pain points are, like showing the value of what you’re doing and how it impacts company wide, usually people will start to pay attention and appreciate it.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 25:59

So obviously going through the ICP process there can be movement and change. So, how do you help stakeholders realize that what they care about, for example, the technical specs of a product or of a service might not be what their ICP actually cares about?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 26:14

So I took the transcripts and took transcripts during the discovery call to the actual strategy presentation where we do the full pitch to all the follow-up calls. And I looked for what are the most commonly used phrases, what are the most commonly used words, what are the pain points, what are the hesitations, and use the actual quotes from people. If I could find them on LinkedIn, I used their photo. If I couldn’t, I gave them a Canvas stock photo and put this into a presentation deck and was like, this is who we are actually talking to. They don’t speak in marketing technical jargon. They still don’t know what LL LLMs mean. Granted, a lot of marketers don’t either, and that’s okay. So we need to simplify things. And here’s the words that they are using. They’re literally telling us on calls how to sell them. So why not use that terminology that they’re the most comfortable with? And let’s put that into our marketing efforts. Let’s put it into how we converse on the phone with them or when we’re in person with them or when we’re on stage at these industry events. And having that, the literal transcripts, like you can’t argue with that. That’s facts and data, right there. You can’t argue, you can’t have feelings. And that’s where a lot of companies get lost as well, I feel like a lot of the calls that I have of people look like this, or the results are like this. No, you got to go straight to the data.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 27:41

And thank God we have transcripts now, right?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 27:43

Oh, yes.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 27:44

I mean it’s a lot easier.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 27:45

Thankfully, 90% of the time. As marketers, we’re thankful.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 27:49

True.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 27:50

I don’t know about everyone else, right?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 27:51

Yeah, exactly.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 27:53

So I don’t know if you had this with search labs. So it’s not really important, but just in general, for a company that has an established

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 27:58

 and loyal customer base, how do you advise them to reanalyze their ICP and adjust their content strategy over time?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 28:05

So usually this comes in a play when a company is looking for expansion. So this is actually something that we are up against with Search Lab. Search Lab Digital is really well known in the auto industry. We have a lot of clients that are auto dealerships, used car dealerships, even car washes, like the auto industry as a whole represents a lot of our clientele. But it’s not all of our clientele. So we’re also specialists in all these other industries that just don’t seem to get the attention publicly from Search Lab as the auto industry does, because we became known for that. And so what we’re working on now is creating a bunch of case studies, uh, doing Google Business Profile reports, doing local search reports in these other industries that we have a ton of clientele and a ton of experience in to say, hey, we also have something to contribute to the conversation of the law industry. We just did a study for cannabis industries, trying to show how versatile our experience and background comes from. And that’s because we want to grow, we want to expand. So this is a problem that businesses usually face when they are trying to expand, if they don’t want to be pocketed in just one specific industry or one specific type of customer. But you also can’t do it for everyone. That one stop shop applies here too. You can’t be that one-stop customer and be like, all customers are my customers. Apple, Apple is a great example of this. Not everyone in the world fits an Apple user. Some of them are so much happier and fit the Microsoft demographic and persona so much better. And there is nothing wrong with that, but taking the time to identify what audiences you would like to go down, what paths you’d like to go down, and how that will impact your growth, how that changes your messaging. Instead of just publishing studies about the auto industry, publish them about these other industries. Like that’s gonna look different for every company, but it’s usually gonna come down to that growth spurt of where do you want to go and how many different customer personas are you willing to have.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 30:08

So pivoting a bit, let’s get into content. 

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 30:10

What is one piece of content you’ve created that still holds up years later? Or what is one element of your content strategies that you use that has stayed relevant over time?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 30:19

So I wrote a blog post for Search Engine Journal years ago. I did one about how to do a content audit and one about how to do a social audit. And I still get tagged in these posts. Like this was probably eight years ago that I wrote these articles, and I’m still getting tagged in them. And what I find wild is that obviously doing a social media audit now is drastically different. Even just going into Facebook’s back end, the business analytics are such a different user interface than it was before. The content audit is the same thing. We have access to so much more information. We, the tools that we use, like HRFs and SEMrush, how we do crawls, like all of that. We just have so much more and we can get data so much faster now. But yet those two pieces are still standing and I’m still getting mentions from. And I think it’s because how I went through those articles was a literal step by step. Whether you’re brand new to marketing or you’ve been doing this for a while, the language fits any type of persona that, hey, if you just need to get an audit done, here’s an entry way into doing so. There’s, of course, much more technical ways on how deep you can go with doing audits, but here’s a starting point. Being able to create a piece of content that reaches different personas is and especially how-tos, that’s going to be something that can be evergreen, even when the information gets outdated.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 31:47

And it’s crazy because typically when you’re approaching a persona, it’s like very specific. But here’s a good example where it’s kind of general, but I mean, still specific to what it’s teaching you, but it applies to so many people and it actually works really well. Have you thought about going back and editing those? I don’t know if you would even be allowed to.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 32:05

Yes, yeah. Search uh Search In general has reached out and the social audit one, they’ve done some updates too, which I’m very thankful for because things have drastically changed and I don’t do social media audits anymore. It’s 2026, I’m doing just content things, whereas before I was way more in the weeds and social. I have thought about going into the content audit one and updating that as well, but it’s not ranking. It was more of I’m able to still be a part of the content conversation with it. So for search engine journals, I’d be happy to update them for ranking purposes, but otherwise, yeah.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 32:40

So we often focus on the creative side of content,

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 32:43

 but you also focus a lot on the operations. How do you bridge the gap between a great creative idea and a system that can actually scale it?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 32:50

Oh, it’s so hard. It’s difficult. So you have people who are the ideas people. They are creative to their core. They’re the ones who get the best shower thoughts where it’s like, oh, this is a billboard-worthy idea. And then you have people like myself who can tell me an idea and I’m already processing in my mind how to operationalize it. What’s the first step? What does done look like? And what’s everything in between and how to put that together? I think being able to have a combination of the two is where this really wins. A lot of great ideas die because they don’t have anyone to bring them to fruition, or there’s a lack of resources, there’s a lack of time and money to make that happen. So when you’re coming up with great new creative ideas, make sure it’s something that’s manageable with what you have today, resource-wise, not what you’ll have next quarter. Is this something that you can accomplish this quarter with the resources that you have? What is the value going to be from it? How long is it going to take to get ROI? Like mapping all of that out will drastically help as you’re trying to get buy-in on this idea or get operation, operational help to make something like this happen.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 34:08

All right. It’s

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 34:08

 time for our lightning round. I’ve got five quick questions and hopefully they’re quick answers. So, what is one marketing operations tool you can’t live without that isn’t an AI tool?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 34:17

That isn’t an AI tool. Well done. That’s a good question. Okay. So clickup. Project management. Yeah, clickup’s my go-to.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 34:25

I imagine over the years you’ve done or you’ve used different prep project management systems. Do you love ClickUp the most?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 34:31

No, I love Monday the most.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 34:33

Okay.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 34:33

But yes, I remember very early base camp days and I’m very happy we’re not in base camp anymore. But Monday is my favorite. Clickup is what the teen uses and is comfortable with now. So I’m in ClickUp. It’s nice. It’s similar to Monday.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 34:47

Very cool. What is the most recent thing you said yes to before you felt 100% ready?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 34:52

Uh, planning a company party. I’ve got like, it’s into the quarter. I have like eight initiatives all wrapping up this quarter. The company party is in the first week of Q2. And I’m like, yeah, I’ll take it. I’ll put the agenda together.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 35:07

You’re brave.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 35:08

Thank you. I love the good part.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 35:11

I’m sure it will turn out well. One book or leader that changed how you view marketing operations or leadership.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 35:16

Let my people go surfing. This is just, this is absolutely an inspiring book about leadership. And it’s not marketing specific, it’s not operations specific, but it’s about business and leadership. And it’s one of my favorites.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 35:31

Very cool. I’ve never heard of it. I’m going to check it out. So, in one word, what is the most important trait for a marketing leader to have right now?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 35:37

Flexibility. You need to be flexible. You need to be resourceful too, but flexible because the times are changing.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 35:45

And since your career started with a bold pivot after graduation, what is the best piece of advice you’d give to new grads?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 35:50

To say yes, to try new things, even if you’re unsure and if you don’t know if you want to be an SEO or content marketer or even in marketing, try it. Give it a go and see where your passion really lies.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 36:04

Before we wrap up, what is your next big project?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 36:07

I’m gonna be growing the department. So that’s gonna be a very big and exciting, exciting task.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 36:14

How many members are there now?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 36:15

We have seven.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 36:16

Oh wow. And what are you looking to grow?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 36:19

Uh nine. I’m looking to add some two very core roles onto the team and very much so looking forward to the full marketing wheels stunning once we have that.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 36:29

Wow, that’s amazing. So where can listeners connect with you?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 36:32

LinkedIn is probably the best spot.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 36:35

How much time would you spend on LinkedIn?

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 36:37

I spend about 30 minutes a day. Some days a little bit more, some days a little bit less. It just depends on what my feed decides to show me, whether it’s a post from three weeks ago or three minutes ago. But sometimes I’ll go down a rabbit hole, especially when people are like, I just did this data analysis. Look at what I found. And that’s a little bit longer.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 36:56

Cool. I think that’s a very healthy amount of time.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 36:59

Yeah. It’s the only social network that I’m on or using. So I think it’s fair.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 37:04

Totally. Well, Ashley, thank you so much for joining us and helping us peek under the hood of content marketing and leadership and marketing departments. This was so valuable, so many awesome quick wins and things that our listeners can take away. So thank you again.

 

Ashley Segura (Guest) : 37:17

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.

 

Danny Gavin (Host) : 37:19

Pleasure. Thank you for listening to the Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast. Be sure to check us out online at thedmentor.com and at the DM Mentor on Instagram. And don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts for more Marketing Mentor magic. See you next time.