Meet Mannix Marketing’s Senior Digital Marketing Strategist
Walking around the Mannix Marketing offices you will meet many employees who have been with the company for a decade or longer. Just speaking with the employees who are in the office won’t give you the entire picture of Mannix’s early history, however. Mannix Marketing’s most senior employee actually works from her home office in central Virginia.
Early days and the evolution of Mannix Marketing
Seventeen years ago Lisa Bishop started working for Mannix Marketing at the kitchen table in Sara and Mark’s home. According to Lisa, those early days were just her at the table; a programmer named Blase watching cartoons in the living room; and a rather green, often morning-sick Sara working diligently from her home office. This original team of three spent their days cranking out websites and working hard to keep their promise to clients that they would “get you found on the web.”
Though Lisa is now undoubtedly one of Mannix’s most valuable SEO and digital marketing strategists, she’s fairly certain she was originally hired back in the 90’s for her typing speed – a whopping 77 words per minute (ICYMI, average is about 40 wpm). Taking a trip down memory lane for a moment, back to Web 1.0 and the pages and pages of static content needed for new website development, why Sara would value a quick, clever typist is immediately obvious – Mannix needed someone to do data input and content development for all of its original websites.
What makes Lisa so special and valuable as an employee, however, is the growth and initiative she’s shown during the intervening decades. Since the late 90’s the Internet has changed immeasurably and the skills required for excellent web development and search engine optimization have ballooned right along with it.
According to Lisa, the biggest challenge she’s overcome in her career is learning how to stay ahead of the trends in the fast-paced world of online marketing. From days of doing keyword research by hand to now developing shareable content and interactive social media strategies, “SEO is much different than it used to be,” said Lisa. “Today it borders on PR. The different aspects you need to pay attention to in digital marketing have increased quite a bit since the early days. Being able to look at a website and listen to a client and determine the best route for them is what we do.” So Lisa, along with Sara and the ever-growing Mannix team, determined they would always be at the top of the learning curve.
Lisa – Mannix Marketing’s Virginia Office
Lisa is an early bird. With 15 or so clients, Lisa starts her day between 6 and 6:30 am and “tries to get the most difficult things done in the morning when it’s quietest.” Lisa loves how her clients all have “different goals and battle plans.” For her, work is “a different piece of marketing every part of the day.”
When asked what she enjoys most about her position with Mannix, Lisa spoke of curiosity and an openness to new ideas and new challenges: “I really love the different things I’ve learned – from working on industrial manufacturing to fishing guides. It’s so interesting. You have to switch gears when you switch from client to client. That’s been fun. I never thought that I would enjoy manufacturing, but one of my favorite clients is in manufacturing and his website is up for a national award. I love working with clients, getting to know them, getting to know how they run their business, what’s important to them, and how we can help their business thrive.”
What makes Lisa’s productivity and dedication even more incredible? She works from home in an office a good nine-hour drive from Mannix’s sprawling office suite in Glens Falls, NY. When I asked Lisa how she does it, she said, “I have a very strong work ethic. I work from home. Not everyone can do it. I have designated office hours. Everyone who knows me knows that when I’m working I’m not available. Hard work pays off. It really does.”
Lisa attributes much of her success working from home to the leadership at Mannix. “I’ve known Sara and Mark Mannix for 17 years and they are really exceptional people,” Lisa said. “Jennifer Manz [the Director of Digital Marketing] is an amazing person and a great manager. I have to connect with people over the phone. It takes a special group of people to allow me to connect like that – to accept that I’m not there but still develop that relationship with me.”
From kitchen table to home office hundreds of miles away and seventeen years later, the one thing Lisa could not do her job without is the Mannix team. While “the Internet is the driving force that keeps us on our toes and constantly looking for ways to improve, we need each other, we really do. To be an all-encompassing, full-service digital marketing firm now is so different from what it used to be. But Sara and Mannix have really weathered those changes beautifully.”
