117: From Concert Tickets to Client Contracts: Sophie Brannon’s Path to StudioHawk US

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 I’m thrilled to welcome Sophie Brown into the podcast. Sophie is the co-founder and director of Studio Hawk US, one of the most respected specialist SEO agencies in the world. But her path here is a very interesting one. She started as a music journalist in London, writing for magazines and online publications before discovering the world of SEO and never looking back. Over the past fifteen plus years, she’s climbed every rung of the agency ladder, from copywriter to head of SEO to client services director. She’s traveled the world on a career break, launched her own consultancy, led SEO at a major US e-commerce brand, and ultimately co-founded Studio Hawk US based in Atlanta. Today we’re going to talk about the future of search in an AI world, what businesses consistently get wrong online, and how she leads with a relationship-first philosophy. Sophie, welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor.

 

Sophie Brannon: 01:16

Thank you so much for having me, Danny. I’m so excited to share my story

 

Sophie Brannon: 01:18

 and chat.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 01:19

All right. So your career story is genuinely fascinating. You started as a music journalist writing for publications in London. Can you paint a picture of that world and what you loved about it?

 

Sophie Brannon: 01:28

I moved down to London. I moved out at 18. Moved down to London. Um just thought, you know, this I lived in a small town before that. I was like, I need city life. No, in my head, I was like, I’m always going to move to New York because it’s going to be like, you know, sex in the city vibes and all of that. So moved down to London at 18. Um, I didn’t go to university or college. I just did like the qualification just out of school to get like my, it’s called the NCTJ, which is like the National Council of Journalism. Uh got the gold standard in that. And then was just applying for like internships and like different things like that. And I have always been very interested in music. I was in a band for a little while. I was a singer of a band, always into rock music and stuff. I was always going to festivals and gigs and being in London, it was like, you know, a gig every night. And fell into a role with Kerrang magazine, which was, you know, a dream for me at the time. It’s the magazine I grew up with was always watching like Kerrang TV and Kerrang Radio. It’s like a big kind of rock music channel in the UK and absolutely loved it. And then was just writing for an online publication. And yeah, it was just, it was just crazy. I was working in a bar like part-time, then I was going to gigs in the evening and then writing up my articles and getting sent to festivals. And it was just incredible. But the downside was that they generally didn’t pay that well. And they typically would pay by giving me gig tickets and sending me to festivals. And it was like, oh, it’s a one-to-one. We send you there and you write the content, and that was kind of it.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 02:50

Yeah, long term, that’s not going to work. But just I’m so curious. What is your favorite band?

 

Sophie Brannon: 02:55

Generally speaking, there’s a band called U Me at Six. And I’ve grown up with them. Um UK based band, absolutely love them. They actually just broke up, so I was devastated last year. They did like a final farewell tour and then bring me the horizon as well. But I’m also into like really old school kind of like dad rock era, I call it. So I’m only 30. So like every all of the music my dad grew up with and and you know, electric light orchestra and fans like that to you, I

 

Sophie Brannon: 03:20

 absolutely love.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 03:21

Outside of the money, what eventually pulled you away from journalism and into the world of digital marketing and copywriting?

 

Sophie Brannon: 03:26

The money side of things definitely made a difference because like I couldn’t pay rent of gig tickets, right? And I was trying to like make a name for myself and I couldn’t quite land a full-time role. It’s so, so competitive in journalism. And then I ended up actually moving out of London to Champsford, which is about 30 minutes, 40 minutes out of um London, like another smaller city, and was kind of like a bit of a loss because everything at the time was, you know, in it was in office kind of working. So there wasn’t a whole lot of like journalism stuff happening in this kind of smaller city. And I fell into a copywriter role at an agency, and I was like, oh, that sounds great. I can like write content all day and actually get paid for it, which is a new experience for me at like 1920. So yeah.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 04:06

Did you hear about it from a friend or was it like a job hosting? How did you get in there?

 

Sophie Brannon: 04:09

Job posting, yeah. So it was literally just scouring for everything. Again, I was working in a bar, but it wasn’t very good. Um, like hours and things. It was very unsociable hours, as like, you know, working hospitality generally is. I was just looking for something that was a little bit more nine to five. And I was like, right, what am I good at? Like what can I actually do? I’ve done content, I have loads of experience and content. And it was full service uh marketing agency based like around the corner from where I lived, was looking for a copywriter as like an entry-level role. And so I just applied for it, had a good interview with them, um, done a couple of yeah, pieces of content as like examples and managed to get the role and that kind of kick-started my marketing career.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 04:46

You’ve spent a significant stretch at Absolute Digital Media, rising from the digital copywriter all the way to the client services director. What was it about SEO specifically that made you want to go deeper rather than stay on the content side?

 

Sophie Brannon: 04:58

This is a really funny story, actually. I was in the copywriting side for a while, kind of moved up the rungs there, did a little bit of social media content as part of the copywriter role. Like that was new for me. So that was exciting. And as part of that, started to like speak to clients on the phone and things. Um, then was head of content for a little while, about a year or so, I think, year and a half, um, where I was just, you know, starting to manage the team and starting to really upbuild processes and all these kind of things. And the agency owners came to me one day and they were like, hey, a couple of our SEO account managers are actually leaving the company and moving on to other roles. Um, you’re good with clients, like you’ve worked with us for a few years now. Like you speak on the phone to clients. Do you want to like jump into an SEO role? And I was like, no, that sounds awful. I absolutely don’t want to do that. I was like, I don’t want to talk to clients every day. I like my little bubble, like I’m really happy like in this kind of area. And the more I thought about it, I was like, there’s nowhere up from here for in a content role. I’m already ahead of content. I think I was only like 20, 21 at the time. I was like, I don’t really know what is like what’s there for me after that point. Um, and I’ve always been the kind of person that’s like, I always want to keep pushing, I want to keep learning, I always want to do new things. Like I’m just very, like I don’t stand still very often. I’m always like doing something new. So yeah, I eventually, after a lot of thought and a lot of people being like, just do it and see if you like it. I said yes, I’ll move into a SEO account manager role. And then yeah, it just, you know, got my first few clients, started to dive into more of like the technical side of things and starting to like just learn more. And I was like, wow, this is like endless. This doesn’t stop changing. Like, this is crazy.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 06:32

So then a little bit later, you did something a lot of people dream about, but rarely do. You took a career break to travel and you started your own consultancy. What did that chapter teach you about yourself and what you wanted to do next?

 

Sophie Brannon: 06:44

You know, I was devastated to leave absolutely at the time. I’ve been there for seven years. I’ve built my career there. They’d really supported me and pushed me in a lot of really amazing ways, like got me on stages for the first time and starting to like build my personal brand as well as building the agency’s brand. And it kind of opened up a lot of doors for me, lots of networking and all these kind of things. But at the time I decided to leave, I would I’d just moved into this client services director role. They’d never had a client services director before. Going traveling was something I’d always wanted to do and always put on the back burner for a number of different reasons, whether that was money or relationships at the time, you know, all of these different things. It just got to a point where I was like, this isn’t a role that the agency itself needs right now. And it’s a good time for me to also just go. Like I’ve I’ve got some more cash behind me at this point, like I’ve been saving up for this. I didn’t know what this was at the time. So he’s like, gonna buy a house, whatever. And I was like, always wanted to go to New Zealand, always wanted to go to Australia, never been able to. It’s like if I don’t do it now, I’m probably never gonna get a chance to do it. So I took the leap. And like I said, I was devastated. They were amazing. They were like, I think my flights got cancelled because it was like just after COVID and things. Getting into New Zealand was a nightmare to start with. So like extended how long I was working for them, my notice period, and all these kind of things. And then when I got to New Zealand, I realized I had absolutely zero life skills whatsoever. It was a very nomad lifestyle. We did for about six, seven months, where it was me, my partner, and a friend of ours, and we slept in a tent and a car for six, seven months. And it was crazy. And I was like, I don’t like, I don’t know how to cook very well. Like at the time, I was like, I didn’t, I don’t even know how to boil hasta. Like I’d always had someone doing this stuff for me, right? Um, even like housemates and things at the time, I would just always be caught up with work. I just had no basic life skills. So going and doing and experiencing all of that actually taught me so much, like personally, about okay, I need to actually grow as a person outside of just SEO and outside of my job. And I need to experience new things and I need to like really just build up more of the practical side of myself. And it’s funny because when I came back, there’d just be things like my sister was trying to put shelves up on the wall and she was like, Oh, I don’t know how to do this. I just caught the gadrilla and started doing putting this shelf up on the wall. And she was like, When did you learn how to do that? That’s crazy. Um it sounds so basic and silly, but it was just a big growth thing for me. At the time, again, just needed more cash. Like New Zealand’s bloody expensive, and we were running out pretty quickly. So I reached out to a few friends at the time that it had, one of them being Harry, who is now my co-founder with Studio Hawk uh in the US, but he owns Studio Hawk in Australia and London. And I’ve met him just before I went traveling, actually. And I reached out to him and the Australian side of the agency and was like, hey, I’m in New Zealand, I’m in your time zone, I can coming over to Australia soon. Do you have any part-time or like remote type consultancy work that I can, you know, just support you guys and your growth and things like that, while also like continuing to fund my travels because I was just having the time of my life. And then yeah, one thing went to another. I spoke to Lawrence, who was the general manager at the time, and we managed to get like a bit of a contract situation going where I was just working, say like 20 hours a week kind of thing with them. Um and it just evolved from there. So yeah, I just learned loads of new practical skills and met new people and started to dive back into the consultancy side and picked up more clients and things like that along

 

Sophie Brannon: 09:52

 the way too.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 09:53

So then how did the move to the US and eventually co-founding StudioHawk US come about?

 

Sophie Brannon: 09:56

When I eventually got back to the UK, at the time in the UK, there was a lot of at the time I left the UK actually, there was a big salary bubble that happened and there was a big kind of marketing, especially digital marketing, like trend of everyone jumping agencies, moving into new roles, getting promoted, like salaries were inflated and all this stuff happened. But by the time I got back, that had burst completely. There was no real roles happening, there was not a lot of opportunities. I possibly could have gone back to absolute, but probably not in the same position because obviously I’d already been gone for almost a year. Like they were like rehiring and replacing me because they weren’t like, you know, waiting for me to necessarily come back or anything like that. So I reached out to a friend of mine based in the US, Nick Dubanks, and basically said, Hey, I know like we’re moving into this remote first world now. Do you know of any US companies that might actually be hiring, whether that’s in-house or agency side? And he connected me up with Rush Altes, where I then worked for a few years with, I worked remotely from the UK, but then based in Philadelphia, really getting to know like the US e-com kind of side of things, really digging into more of the in-house side, which I’d never done before as well. So getting more of that commercial mindset and really building some of that up. And was there for about two years or just under two years when Harry then reached back out to me and we’ve been friends, like I say, for a long time, but at that point, like four or five years. And basically he was like, It’s Studio Hawk’s time now to launch out in the US. We’ve been thinking about it for a while. Timing was never quite right, but now it is. You’ve worked in the US for like the last couple of years. Prior to that, I’d obviously like absolute also had US clients and things like that at the time. He was like, Do you want to be a part of this journey? And I was like, What do you mean? He’s like, Do you want to co-found this with me? And I was like, Okay, like sure, let’s let’s do it. Like, my heart’s always been agency. Um, and I think like, you know, talking to Rush Order, my boss there, Matt, he also could see that my heart was always in agency side and I was always just wanted to just go, go, go, always like doing all this new stuff. Um, so yeah, he was just like, you know, we’re sorry to see you go. They tried to counter, but we know that this is you know where you wanna, where your heart is. So then we launched, and that that was that.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 11:59

What a colorful story and path. So cool. And it’s it’s another example of like where you start off. Often you have no idea where you’re gonna end up. Absolutely. But it’s so cool. All right, so

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 12:09

 let’s pivot. Let’s talk about the evolving search landscape. So let’s set the stage in plain terms. How would you describe where search is right now in 2026? And what’s changed most dramatically in the last couple of years?

 

Sophie Brannon: 12:20

So I think the big thing and the big buzzword right now is AI, right? So everyone’s talking about AI. Basically, every sales call I have at this point is how do we shop on ChatGPT? All of our customers are on Chat GPT. Well, they’re not, but like, sure, yeah, cool, that’s the buzzword. Everyone wants to know about it. But there has been a significant fundamental shift leaning towards not necessarily just AI, but just new discovery channels for brands overall. And that’s come from social media, you know, TikTok becoming more of a search engine, YouTube becoming more of a search engine. Google’s search, like search results pages have changed dramatically. They haven’t been 10 blue links for years now. There’s so many new SERP features coming in, lots of this zero-click kind of mentality where people are finding their answers without even having to visit websites and all these kind of things. And in 2026, you know, that technology is just changing so rapidly. We’ve now got the idea of agentic commerce. So agents actually purchasing on actioning, you know, whether it’s booking hotels or whatever that is, without you having to do anything and the bots are going to be doing this automatically. And that’s coming into Google, that’s gonna be coming into Chat GPT. There’s the search landscape is changing quickly. So I think for brands generally, like they just need to stay up to date without chasing the new shiny thing, because that new shiny thing is changing every day. So it’s it’s definitely been an interesting, especially last few years. But yeah, back in 2026, we don’t know what search for results pages are gonna look like. It’s gonna be a crazy ride.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 13:43

So that fits into my next question. So I’m sure with you, you go onto LinkedIn and there’s all this, all these different opinions and things, a lot of noise all around AI-powered search. So, from your vantage point, leading an SEO agency, what’s actually signals versus what’s just hype and noise? And how can you like see the difference between the two?

 

Sophie Brannon: 14:00

There’s been so much noise, especially when I’m gonna say back end of last year and kind of early this year, SEO is dead. SEO is dead. We don’t need SEO anymore. Like brands are not gonna get organic traffic anymore, organic traffic is dropping, like all of these kind of like scary things all being posted out on LinkedIn. The fundamentals of SEO, having a very technically sound, fast, well-user experience structured site, having strong authoritative content and being and really owning your brand and being an authority in that space, whether that’s you know, backlinks pointing to you, whether that’s just brand mentions, listings, all these kind of things, that’s core SEO, but that also influences the AI search realm too. So I think the biggest thing is to like not get scared by all of this stuff and also like look at the numbers a little bit more closely. Because just because like you as an individual or the CEO of a company only ever spends their time searching for things on ChatGPT or what or Claude or whatever it is, as opposed to Google now, doesn’t necessarily mean the main customer base is gonna be is gonna be doing the same thing. And we actually run a study, I don’t have the updated numbers in front of me, but I remember the first version of the study kind of back end of last year coming out where we looked at e-commerce brands and we looked at how much revenue was actually coming from ChatGPT and other AI like channels, other LLMs, it was about 0.04%. So it was tiny, tiny little fraction. So yeah, just don’t chase the shiny stuff.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 15:15

So for a business owner or marketer who isn’t deep in the SEO weeds, how should they be thinking about AI search right now? What’s the practical implication for them?

 

Sophie Brannon: 15:24

So I think a lot of it is as opposed to AI search replacing traditional search, it’s a new channel. It’s another way for your brand to be seen. But I think that’s the biggest thing to capitalize. And it’s the same way as what you’d think about your social media, the same as what you’d think about your paid. All of these different things are technically individual channels, but they all need to work together in a really holistic sense. SEO should never have been just floating over here doing its own thing while paid and social and email and all of these other channels were over here connected. SEO is now forcibly being pulled into that strategy, which it should have been anyway. And the same goes with LLMs and like AI search as well. It’s like thinking holistically about your brand. How can my brand own the space, own my niche? What is my main USP? How do I really differentiate from competitors? And then pushing that out into all of your marketing channels. That’s going to be the way brands are technically gonna win as part of this kind of move into AI search. Whether that becomes like, you know, 100% of revenue comes from AI or whatever that looks like in the five, 10 years, could be three years, could be two months, we don’t know. But the main focus for brands is stop thinking about channels so individually and think about how the brands connected across all of them.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 16:29

Who do you think was the cause of that separation? Do you think it was the SEOs kind of saying like we’re our own world? Or do you think it was everyone else kind of not knowing what SEO was or like looking?

 

Sophie Brannon: 16:39

I think finance teams, quite frankly, because it’s very difficult to attribute what goes in and versus what goes out in SEO. It’s very much a gray space versus something like a paid channel where you can see, okay, I have spent X amount of money, my return on ad spend is X amount, so therefore I can put X amount back in in terms of my budget. So because of that kind of gray area of SEO, that then makes it very difficult for especially like C-suite individuals to justify putting more budgets and things like that into it. So because of that, they’re starting to then, you know, okay, what are my metrics that I need to care about for SEO? Because they’re not gonna be the same metrics as paid, or they’re not gonna be the same as email or whatever that is. But at the same time, you have companies investing millions in billboards, right? You can’t actually say, oh, I’ve put up three billboards and that’s the created to X amount of revenue. Yet people are still investing in billboards. So the way I see SEO and yeah, like how we’re gonna pull that in more easily, is we are gonna need to think about revenue. We are gonna need to think about those bottom line metrics because you know, SEO should have always been looking at those things. But then also how SEO is implementing and integrating with other channels, like how is that bringing down your uh ad spend because your quality score is getting better on your Google ads, as well as how is that then, you know, repurposing content for social media that’s then going viral? You know, there’s all of these extra connections. So yeah, I think probably more C-suite finance, you know, that’s what then split that out. And then also SEOs being like, oh, but SEO is better. It needs to all be brought back in.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 18:00

So do you feel like the loss of the traffic metric, or not completely, but that going down? Do you think it’s actually going to make it easier for SEOs or harder?

 

Sophie Brannon: 18:09

I think we need to move away from vanity metrics, and that’s making it harder for a lot of SEOs. I think it’s I think it’s starting to expose bad practice in the SEO industry where traffic metrics and things like that were actually being inflated, like being massively inflated because one blog did particularly well. Did that blog drive any revenue? Probably not. Um, like at all. It’s probably completely bloody irrelevant. But ultimately, we should be focusing on the most bottom line metrics. And if SEOs have not been doing that, they’re the ones who are going to be exposed. So yeah, it’s gonna be harder. It’s gonna be much harder for SEOs, especially if they’re not, they haven’t been doing the right things in the first place. And even when we’re talking about, you know, if we want it to get super technical and we’re looking at chunking in AI search and we start to actually break down like how LLMs actually work, a lot of that, again, is what SEOs should have been doing in the first place. Well-structured content, like making sure your schema’s right, like all of this stuff is stuff that SEOs should have been doing. So if they weren’t doing that, then yeah, that it’s gonna be a lot harder for them.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 19:03

So I know you said that things change, right? We don’t know what it’s gonna look like tomorrow. But where do you see search heading in the next two to three years? And what are you building currently at Studio Hawk in anticipation for that?

 

Sophie Brannon: 19:14

Yes, there’s gonna be a lot more AI in search results. The search features are gonna be very, very different. We’re already seeing so much change in that space. We’ve got new things being released all of the time. It’s gonna be very AI generated. It wouldn’t surprise me if things like AI mode becomes the default experience in Google search results, be completely frank. I think we’re gonna definitely see a big reduction in the amount of links and things on search results pages, which will therefore impact things like traffic. That being said, we will then probably see more of a shift within LLMs where they’re starting to cite more because ultimately they need people to keep coming back and they need people to start doing these things, right? And then at the same time, we’re gonna see that bigger genetic switch. So businesses and brands are gonna need to make sure that the checkout experience, for example, is not just good for users, but bots can actually navigate from start to finish. Um same as like filling out forms and booking inquiries, things like that. Again, making sure those kind of elements, if they’re completely built of JavaScript, it’s probably like bots aren’t gonna be able to crawl it, or at least not efficiently, right? So that’s where I see a lot of search moving to. I think brands again need to focus on that bigger picture. Like how do they build their brand, how do they own that space? And then in terms of prioritization, I definitely see more internal use of AI tools in order to be more effective. So at Studio Hawk, we are building something at the moment that can’t be too specific about because it’s very kind of early stages. But ultimately, what is, you know, we’re we’re gonna be looking at leveraging AI so much more internally, but not necessarily just to make us like, oh, we’re gonna be really profitable and we can charge clients the same amount and do less work because we’ve got bots doing it. It’s about actually actioning things so much faster. So clients see a return on investment a lot quicker than what they did before. It may get to a point where, you know, to see SEO impact, it may not be 12 months, it may be six months, it may be three months, you know, we can start getting a lot more of these high impact move the needle tasks done quicker. And our SEO specialists are gonna be more strategic, they’re gonna be more quality assurance, they’re gonna be more human connection. Um, and that I don’t think that’s ever gonna go away. Like having the need for someone to really understand business’s challenges, a business’s, you know, like everything to do with the business, like how they operate, like how all of the teams are connected, AI bots can do a decent job of that. And I’m sure it’s gonna get better. But a human’s always gonna want to have a human connection at the end of the day, whether that’s someone to then complain to or whatever that looks like. Even me personally, like if I have to go through customer service, I’m always like speak to a human, speak to a human, speak to, I don’t want to speak to the AI bot ever. I never want to speak to an AI bot. So I think having that human connection is going to be vital.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 21:50

Yeah, I think one of the things that is going to affect is entry level, because typically entry level or interns come in and they were, you know, people they learn on the job, but also by taking those tasks that you know the expert doesn’t want to do. At this point in time, we can get AI to do it a lot of that. So I think a lot of firms hopefully are still going to be in the world of we still want to bring in interns and still and yes, we may not need them to do the tasks that are at the bottom of the totem pole, but we’ll bring them in in an in another capacity or bring them in to bring them up. So I’m sure there’ll be certain agencies that aren’t going to do that. But hopefully there are businesses and companies that still do that so that we can increase and give opportunities to new people.

 

Sophie Brannon: 22:30

Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean with Studio Hawk as well, like our whole mentality is we hire wholesome nerds and we typically train people from the ground up. So we don’t like obviously we have to build out a senior team and we hire a lot of senior people. But even like our general manager who runs the London office was a junior in Australia for a couple of years before he then made the move over to London. And a lot of our junior are kind of specialist talent and now head of departments and like leads and things like that. We have a really good system of like how we train people the studio walkway, teach them SEO, but then like help them along their own career path. And that’s not something I ever see changing. Maybe we don’t need to hire as much in the US as what we did in Australia to start with because we do have a lot of these automations. That’s definitely a possibility in terms of head count but I definitely still see a big use case for like training juniors and put and mentoring juniors and pushing juniors through from the ground up because you need those fresh ideas like someone who’s 30, 35, 40, 50, they’re not necessarily going to be like, oh, I’m all over TikTok and I or like whatever the next like trend on channel is going to be someone younger than them can come in with this new amazing creative idea that could take the brand to the next level. I think we’re always going to need that kind of junior level, regardless of what tasks are there for

 

Sophie Brannon: 23:43

 them.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 23:43

Talking about juniors, on this podcast we hear mentorship defined in many different ways. How would you define a mentor?

 

Sophie Brannon: 23:49

I think a mentor is someone who’s always there to listen and to support. It’s not always necessarily as well about mentoring their skills as such or in terms of like, oh, this is how you do this particular task. There is an element of that definitely I think a lot of it is more okay I’ve identified where your strengths and your weaknesses are based on my experience in the industry and the amount of people I’ve like spoken to and trained and teams I’ve managed and all of these things. And then directing them towards where they want to go, whether that’s just genuinely being there to listen, whether that’s training like you know from a work perspective, whether that’s supporting them almost in their personal life to a degree as well. Like some of the best mentors I’ve had I’ve I consider genuinely good friends. And if I’m having a personal issue as well as a work issue or something like that, I happily give them a call and I met them through work and things like that, you know, being that supportive arm is how I would describe a mentor 100%.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 24:41

So you’ve mentioned that previous bosses gave you significant opportunities for growth and pushed you into things like public speaking for the first time. Can you tell us about a specific moment where someone believed in you before you believed in yourself.

 

Sophie Brannon: 24:52

Absolutely and I think that’s probably going back to when I was absolute then and Lou were my old bosses there and they gave me that opportunity to move into SEO and I went no because I didn’t believe in myself. I didn’t I didn’t like speaking to people on phones. Like I hated calling clients. I’d get on the phone and I’d like panic almost I’d be like shaking I’d be like I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know what I’m doing. And they were like no you can do it. Like we’ll support you like you we can get you to that next level you just need to take the leap. So yeah a hundred percent like just throughout that journey of them pushing me into that kind of position and being quite adamant that like no you are good at this you can do it. If I didn’t have that I would absolutely not be where I’m at today.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 25:30

So on the growing in agency side you’ve had quite a few mentors uh Kirsty Hulse for confidence coaching Nick Eubanks what were the most important lessons each of them imparted?

 

Sophie Brannon: 25:39

I think the biggest thing for me was owning the room I think especially like Kirsty’s like really big on that and being a woman in business I’m young I’m just turned 30 like last month and especially in the US I definitely see it a lot more here. There’s so much more in person. And I’m going into these big entrepreneur organization like rooms and things like that. And then there’s like 50 men and maybe three women and stuff like that. And it can be quite intimidating especially because a lot of people are older than me. They have a lot more experience than me and like running a business and all of these things. I just have to take in what Kirsty has said as going in, owning the room genuinely being confident in myself and like not being afraid to walk up to people and just being like hi I’m Sophie I’m the co-founder of Studio Gorg. And there’s been times where I’ve been mistaken as like Harry’s partner like his like his wife or his girlfriend and things like that for a similar age like I understand why people automatically like think like that but I have to just be like straight up like hi I’m Sophie I run the business like it’s it’s mine and all these kind of things. So yeah just going in owning the room being confident and just like even if you don’t feel confident projecting that and just again not being afraid I think

 

Sophie Brannon: 26:45

 is the biggest thing.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 26:46

You also shared that the senior leadership team at StudioHoc. So Harry, Anthony Lawrence they play an important role in your world how does that senior team dynamic shape how StudioHoc US operates?

 

Sophie Brannon: 26:57

It’s very interesting because we are all over the world. So Lawrence is in Australia Anthony’s in the UK and Harry spends his time between all three regions and I’m in the US most of the time. So even just getting us all on a a call is is a nightmare in terms of time zones a lot of the time we have like global board meetings and we do have like touch bases but genuinely just to have like a rant about something I would just have to like slack one of them just be like hey guys I just need to talk like give me a call like as soon as you are because I need to rant right now. And that’s been great because we’re in three very different stages of the business like the Australia team is the big brother 80 odd people like really grown from the ground up been doing it 10 years all those kind of things and are the biggest I think we’ll claim it we’ll claim it for now for now like SEO agency in Australia like specialist SEO agency in Australia or independent one of those. London is a very different dynamic because the competition in London and in the UK generally is so fierce. So they’ve been going since 2019 they’re kind of hitting a point in terms of like the team in terms of like revenue coming in like where can they go next it’s very difficult the economy in UK has not been great for a long long time. So then that’s like a whole different stage for them and then in the US we’re like grow grow grow. Like I think we were projected to hit $400,000 in year one was our like that was our idea of what we was going to hit. We hit 1.2 million without really thank you yeah but without really trying too hard like we weren’t doing a whole lot on the marketing side we were very new here no one knows who I am in the US in the UK I have like a lot more connection but in the US no one cares. Like they’re like well we don’t know you so like what’s going on and so we’re in like grow, grow grow like let’s just like throw it everything at it and see what sticks kind of thing. So being able to learn from each of the region’s experiences has really also helped me to shape like what I’m doing in the US like what works in Australia, what doesn’t work in Australia. A prime example is Australia never did time tracking to start with like in terms of their individuals so their utilization and things like that. There’s something they’re really working through. And in the US I was like what do you mean you like you don’t do time tracking we’re doing that from day one. So that’s always been like a part of our kind of process. So I’ve really been able to like learn from each of them individually because they each have their own strengths they each have their own personalities and taking the best of everything and building that in the US is essentially my strategy is like what can I learn from everyone and how can I make this the best it can be in the US.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 29:18

Are there ever scenarios where like there’s like a really good strategist in Australia and like you have this problem in the US and like you pull them on a project. Does that ever happen?

 

Sophie Brannon: 29:26

Yeah we don’t necessarily pull them into projects but we always will like throw troubleshooting questions at people if we need to and same vice versa. We have like on our Slack we’ve got great global channels as well as like our only individual like regional offices as well. We’re trying to connect them as much as possible. We had our head of operations in the UK go out to Australia for like three weeks try and really learn from the leadership team there and all of those kind of things. We have a really nice base in the US and we’ve had um some of our Australian team come over and do in-person training and stay with the team for like a week or two and we’re hopefully going to get some of the UK team over here too and then send the US team out as well. So I’m trying to really connect the dots globally because that’s a really big win for us. Like we have so much talent and so much experience to tap into. Everyone in Studio Hawk, bar a couple of office and marketing people are SEO specialists all in different parts of their journey. Some are seniors and been doing it for like five, six, seven years, some are juniors and coming in from the ground up we try and do coffee catch ups. We try and just like do something to connect everyone all together and just leverage the experience that we have. I think that’s the biggest win with Studio Hawk like it’s how connected we all are and what we’re really trying to push for that.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 30:35

Yeah you’re lucky to have like your cousins across the world which you can help you with very cool.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 30:40

 So let’s get into just a couple questions around common online marketing mistakes. I know you’ve dealt with a lot of companies throughout the years so it’d be cool to get your insight so what is the single most common mistake you see businesses making with their online marketing?

 

Sophie Brannon: 30:52

I will say website migrations and not managing them through correctly like the amount of big big no no’s I’ve seen with website migrations where they’re then like oh we we launched this our traffic’s dead can you come and fix it it’s like if you just involved us a few months ago we probably could have stopped that from happening. Honestly it is amazing to me to this day how many issues can come across from a website migration if it’s not handled correctly. So definitely that.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 31:17

Is there a pattern in the mindset or assumption that leads businesses astray? Is there something they believe about search or content that simply isn’t true?

 

Sophie Brannon: 31:24

Less is more I think most of the time we want a streamlined website with no content on it at all because the design’s really nice and that is what will get people to convert. Less is not always more sometimes less is more but less is not always more when it comes to especially like growing your brand having good authoritative trustworthy signals about who you are and exactly what you do. The amount of times I’ve actually on board of clients where I had calls with clients where I’m like, but what do you do and they’re like oh isn’t obvious I’m like no actually no it’s not so I think yeah being too buried in their own brand and then just less is more it’s not always less more and the less is more do you feel like that’s the same thing with actually producing content on a site right there was a strategy for a while push out as much as you can uh today it might not be the right thing.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 32:12

What do you say about that?

 

Sophie Brannon: 32:13

Yeah I again it’s very um dependent on the brand itself and the strategy and who they’re going after and the industry and the niche. There’s so many variables to this for some brands more is better because they’re able to actually really define we are the experts in this field. This is everything you need to know. I think we’re now moving with AI search back into a oh everyone just push out as much content as possible because uh AI search and LLMs love freshness and that’s a recency is a really big signal, which it is, but then you end up just channeling out as much content as possible and it typically isn’t very good. So my perspective ultimately is quality over quantity, making sure that everything is actually really well thought out and there’s like a clear roadmap of like what you’re trying to achieve with your content as opposed to just pushing out content for the sake of it.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 33:01

So in 2026 for a smaller mid-sized business with limited resources, where should they focus their online marketing energy first?

 

Sophie Brannon: 33:08

I think they need to first define who they are as a brand I’ve had numerous situations um more so recently and I think this is coming from like again businesses leveraging AI so they can build a brand new SaaS company like a drop of a hat. So they don’t really know who they’re going after or what they’re trying to achieve. So I think first things first is actually like define who you are, what you do, who your target audience is and don’t don’t change that unless you’re obviously adding service lines and things. Then look at what is actually most sustainable for you and where are your target audience consuming content. If it’s social media then why are you looking at paid like ads on Google search or whatever that is. Build your brand on social media. If you want a long-term kind of more sustainable strategy where you’re trying to just grow the expertise of the brand and grow the trustworthiness of the brand then maybe SEO is the right thing for you. If you’re looking at getting leads very, very quickly in order to like prove out like either a campaign or prove out like a target audience, whatever that is, then put that budget into paid. So I’m never going to be no I own a specialist SEO agency and it’s like oh SEO is the best thing ever. It’s not necessarily the best thing for every single brand and everyone really needs to think that through rather than just like throwing money into a channel and hoping it’s the right thing.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 34:17

And I’m sure when you’re working or trying to find to work with your ideal clients, if you’re going to think that SEO is not good for them, then you’ll let them know.

 

Sophie Brannon: 34:24

Absolutely yeah I’ve had numerous conversations. I think we’ve turned an insane amount of revenue I think Harry did a post recently on LinkedIn about like how much we’ve actually ended up turning away because it’s just not been a good fit for us as well as for them. Like SEO wasn’t necessarily the right channel for them at that time. And we’ve ended up actually having like a ton of good reviews on a Google business profile because we’re genuinely honest about it and we’re like, why would we just take like a bunch of cash from you if that cash could be reinvested somewhere that’s actually going to be more beneficial. Like we want to work with clients long term and we want it to be the right clients where it’s the right fit 

 

Sophie Brannon: 34:55

at the end of the day.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 34:56

All right it’s time for our lightning round I’m going to ask you a quick question and you’re going to let me know what comes to the top of your mind. Can talk a little bit about it. We’ve got five of them. What is one SEO or marketing tool you can’t live without and it can’t be an AI tool.

 

Sophie Brannon: 35:08

I’m a SEMrush girly. I’ve used HRS before many many times and I love that as well. But um yeah I use SEMrush for basically everything every single day.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 35:16

Me as well our agency is a SEMrush agency. Any concern that Adobe has bought them out and they’re going to change who they are I think they’re going to be very expensive soon. That’s true.

 

Sophie Brannon: 35:26

That’s the concern they’re already expensive. That’s my biggest concern is like they’re going to just massively up their prices and they’re only going to look at enterprise models. We’ll see we’ll see what happens with that. But yeah. Could I say another as well? Can I be cheeky? Of course you can for sure SEO gets is another amazing amazing tool. Combines your Google Search Console and your analytics data into a fantastic dashboard you can really start seeing trends a lot easier. We use it a lot in our reporting as well. So yeah like that’s a great one and just in terms of like actually seeing what’s going on at scale.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 35:55

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

 

Sophie Brannon: 35:59

Starting Studio Hawk US in Atlanta and moving up yeah I just bought a house in England actually of my partner and my partner’s still out in the UK in our house. Oh wow I don’t know what’s going on I’m basically spitting my time we’re going back and forth figuring out what life is like like that. But this was the time to do this, right? And I just had to jump in head first and just see where it went.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 36:18

One book leader or voice in the industry that changed how you think about SEO or leadership?

 

Sophie Brannon: 36:22

Eli Schwartz’s product led SEO book is fantastic. Yeah like I had the pleasure of meeting him actually at an event in Cancun at the same rush event. It’s great. And he gave me a copy of his book at the time and I was like oh yeah cool. Like just another SEO right books like whatever. Fantastic like really just thinking especially more for like the smaller brands who are just like one or two product brands like how you can then build a strategy and think more commercially. And that commercial thinking is probably the biggest miss in the SEO industry right now. And this is where like AI is really going to start impacting like again the SEO agencies who weren’t necessarily doing the right things because we all have to think commercially. It’s like what are we getting bottom line out of this? So yeah that’s been really inspirational in terms of how you think about strategies and like actually build out more of that product led focus.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 37:09

Very cool. Ila actually moved uh right around the block during COVID. I hung out a lot with him uh for about a year or two with that when he lived in Houston. So got to get to know him better. And I agree he’s a he’s great.

 

Sophie Brannon: 37:20

Yeah so smart.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 37:22

In one word, what is the most important trait for an SEO leader to have right now?

 

Sophie Brannon: 37:26

Adaptability simply because things are changing so fast. You cannot physically be stuck in your ways. Your processes need to change how you think about SEO needs to change types of clients you might get on might need to change the team the structure all of that is probably going to have to change. So yeah you have to just be as adaptable as possible.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 37:42

And the final one is you started as a music journalist. What did that world teach you that you still use every single day today in marketing?

 

Sophie Brannon: 37:48

Honestly like structuring content correctly like quite frankly like oh my goodness sub editors at journal like journalists publications. They were tough they are tough because I did learn like local and regional news as well as the music stuff too and oh my goodness like even just like down to like tiniest little grammar thing and then obviously being from the UK and coming out to the US, your grammar is all different like this way you spell words is all different. So that’s also been a crazy learning experience. But yeah like genuinely structuring content making it engaging like that’s a skill that I’ve then been able to teach to all of our copywriting team and things like that just essentially from that experience.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 38:23

I always say that SEOs have a journalism or English background or make some of the best and obviously the proof’s in the pudding that’s really cool Sophie very definitely. So before we wrap up what’s your next big project what are you currently building or working on at Studiohawk US?

 

Sophie Brannon: 38:38

Next big project is more automation within the agency like how we can be more efficient and do more for our clients at a faster pace. I think that’s going to be the ring ring big thing. And then again looking more at the globalization like how we can get Studio Hawk US to like the next level we hit a really good goal in year one. I would love to double that more in year two I’m very ambitious for a lot of this stuff. I’m like oh I want to keep going keep going there’s never really a ceiling for me in terms of achievements it’s like what can we do next? How can we take it? And then just like building that globally as well as like how we can we combine everything and everyone all together.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 39:11

Very cool. Yeah I find that you have to put it out there even if it seems like it’s a big audacious goal right but yeah that’s cool. Keep keep shooting for the stars. Absolutely so Sophie where can people connect with you?

 

Sophie Brannon: 39:21

LinkedIn’s probably the best is the one I’m most active on just Sophie Brennan on LinkedIn or I’ve also got Instagram Sophie Brandon SEO posts a little bit about you know day-to-day life and we’re going to be doing more video content and things like that coming out over the next few months too. So yeah, those are the best places.

 

Danny Gavin (Host): 39:35

Very cool and I look forward to catching your content as well. So thank you Sophie for joining us and helping us demystify the future of search and for reminding us that the best careers like the best SEO are built on genuine relationships and keeping your eyes open to all the wonderful opportunities that are out there and maybe traveling a little bit here and there as well because that can help. But thank you for joining. Thank you listeners for tuning in we’ll speak with you next time. Thank you for listening to the Digital Marketing Mentor Podcast. Be sure to check us out online at theddmmentor.com and at the dmmentor 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.