Growing an Engaged Audience of 600,000 on Social Media with Sophie Miller, Pretty Little Marketer (From Marketingland 2025) | Ep. 370
What really drives explosive organic audience growth in 2025: algorithms, content hacks, or something deeper?
From Marketingland 2025, Sophie Miller, founder of Pretty Little Marketer and the creator behind a 600,000-strong community across Instagram and LinkedIn, breaks down the visibility, shareability, and social SEO strategies behind her meteoric rise. Sophie shares the real story of how she went from overwhelmed university student to full-time creator with one of the most engaged marketing communities online.
She unpacks:
-The strategic “visibility opportunities” that fuel organic growth (and why it’s not about being everywhere)
-How to design content that gets shared — from emotional triggers to identity-based resonance
-Why social search and platform-specific SEO are becoming just as important as shares
-The role of “thin content,” clear bios, and frictionless profile design in converting discovery into follows
-How to use your existing audience to reach their audience — and build a community that sticks around for years
Whether you’re building a personal brand, growing a startup’s social presence, or trying to break through on saturated platforms, this conversation will challenge how you think about reach, retention, and what it truly takes to build a loyal audience from zero.
CallRail is the lead engagement platform built for marketers who need clean attribution, smarter insights, and zero missed leads. From AI-powered call tracking and conversation intelligence to a 24/7 AI voice agent, CallRail helps teams maximize every inbound touchpoint and convert more leads into customers. Visit https://www.callrail.com/proveit?utm_campaign=q4_2025_marketing_millennials_podcast&utm_medium=thirdparty_advertising&utm_source=marketingmillennials to check it out.
Follow Sophie:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiealicemiller/
Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter: https://themarketingmillennials.com/
Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: https://workweek.com/
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Product vs. Performance: How Modern Brands Really Scale with Ari Murray and Stefani O'Sullivan (From Marketingland 2025) | Ep. 369
What really scales a modern brand: product or performance?
From Marketingland 2025, Ari Murray sits down with growth powerhouse Stefani O’Sullivan (STAUD, Savage X Fenty, Moda Operandi, Chanel) for a deep dive into how today’s most resilient brands actually grow. Stefani breaks down the truth behind two very different paths: Product-led growth (STAUD, RHODE, category disruptors) and Marketing-led growth (DTC engines powered by paid media).
They unpack:
> The real tradeoffs between product-first and performance-first models
> How product intuition, merchandising, and customer feedback shape long-term equity
> When to expand into CTV, OOH, retail media, and how to know it’s actually working
> Why consistency matters, but context matters more
Whether you’re leading a growth team, scaling your first brand, or rethinking how product and performance should truly work together, this conversation will challenge your assumptions…and reveal why the smartest path to scale might not be the one you expect.
CallRail is the lead engagement platform built for marketers who need clean attribution, smarter insights, and zero missed leads. From AI-powered call tracking and conversation intelligence to a 24/7 AI voice agent, CallRail helps teams maximize every inbound touchpoint and convert more leads into customers.
Visit https://www.callrail.com/proveit?utm_campaign=q4_2025_marketing_millennials_podcast&utm_medium=thirdparty_advertising&utm_source=marketingmillennials to check it out.
Follow Ari:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arimurray/
Follow Stefani:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefaniosullivan/
Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter: https://themarketingmillennials.com/
Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: https://workweek.com/
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29:27
A New Email Metric to Track in 2026 | Bathroom Break #83
Want more replies, but all you hear are crickets?
Daniel and Jay unpack one of the most slept-on tactics in email and social right now: getting your audience to reply to your campaigns. It’s simple, it’s human, and it’s about to blow up as AI makes responding at scale easier than ever.
They explain why reply-based engagement is becoming a cheat code for deliverability, how “just reply with a word” outperforms any form fill, and why adding Easter eggs or lightweight personal questions can instantly tell you who’s actually reading your emails.
They break down:
> The reply-rate signal that keeps you out of spam and in the inbox
> The Easter-egg trick that proves people read to the middle of your emails
> Why “reply with GUIDE” beats every landing page for conversions
If you’re a Marketer looking for an easy win to boost engagement, deliverability, and conversions before 2026, this one’s for you. 🚽
Follow Jay:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schwedelson/
Podcast: Do This, Not That
Follow Daniel:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featured
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing
Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter:
https://themarketingmillennials.com/
Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: https://workweek.com/
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The Truth About Marketing Analytics with Sid Malhotra, EVP at Snap | Ep. 368
Your analytics might be lying to you.
Snap’s EVP Sid Malhotra joins Daniel to unpack what marketers still get wrong about measurement, why last-click thinking is failing modern buyers, and how to build smarter growth systems in a world where customers don’t follow clean conversion paths anymore.Sid shares why Snapchat’s nearly one-billion-person audience behaves differently than other platforms, why so many of your future customers aren’t on Meta or Google, and how marketers can finally fix the hidden gaps in attribution…including the “Hot Wheels Problem” that explains why your analytics are lying to you.
You’ll learn:
> Why your next best customer is probably not where you think
> How impressions, long-form content, and non-click behavior actually drive purchases
> The exact 3-step playbook for testing a new channel like Snapchat
If you're planning holiday spend, testing new channels for 2025, or trying to make sense of modern attribution, this episode is for you.
Optimizely helps thousands of brands create, personalize, and optimize exceptional digital experiences. See how Optimizely Opal, our AI agent orchestration platform, automates real marketing work and helps teams scale their impact at optimizely.com
Follow Sid:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malhotrasidharth/
Follow Daniel:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing/
Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter: https://themarketingmillennials.com/
Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: https://workweek.com/
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How To Measure Brand with Preston Rutherford, Co-founder of Chubbies | Ep. 367
What happens when you treat brand like a growth channel and not a guessing game?
You get Chubbies, one of the most iconic DTC brands of the last decade, built on humor, short shorts, and measurable creativity.
As co-founder of Chubbies and now the brain behind Marathon Data Co, Preston Rutherford has spent the last decade proving that brand and performance are the same thing. He and Daniel break down how to make brand measurable, how to grow through community and content, and why the best marketing always starts with being interesting.
You’ll learn:
> How to measure brand like a performance marketer (and make it pay off)
> Why community and creativity drive long-term profitability
> How to escape the discount trap and grow sustainably
If you’re tired of the “brand vs performance” debate and want a practical blueprint for building something people love (and that actually makes money), this episode is for you.
CallRail is the lead engagement platform built for marketers who need clean attribution, smarter insights, and zero missed leads. From AI-powered call tracking and conversation intelligence to a 24/7 AI voice agent, CallRail helps teams maximize every inbound touchpoint and convert more leads into customers. Visit callrail.com
Follow Preston:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonr/
Follow Daniel:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing/
Sign up for The Marketing Millennials newsletter: https://themarketingmillennials.com/
Daniel is a Workweek friend, working to produce amazing podcasts. To find out more, visit: https://workweek.com/
Bored of the same BS Marketing podcasts? With insights from the sharpest minds in the world, Daniel Murray unpacks their playbooks just for you to take into your weekly Marketing meeting.
We'll get deep into the conversation with Marketing leaders from companies like Gymshark, Shopify, and Infiniti. Every week you'll hear from guests who run 9-figure businesses, manage communities of 20M+ people, and execute the campaigns you see on your timeline every day. The best part? We'll give you ALL of their actionable insights.
From building profitable newsletters to scaling on TikTok, Daniel gets into all of it. The one request he makes to all his guests? Stories or it didn't happen.
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