Amazing People
Brimming with Intelligence
We’ve spent a decade refining our hiring process to build a team that will walk toward challenges, cheer on their peers, and drive change for clients and the digital marketing industry.
Pat East Founder & CEO
With 20 years of experience in online marketing, Pat’s professional background spans B2C and B2B marketing and includes the creation of PPC Hero and Hero Conf. As CEO of Hanapin Marketing, he has overseen 12 years of profitability and 11 years of double-digit revenue growth. He is an avid angel investor, advising startups with high-growth potential, and is the president of the Bloomington chapter of VisionTech Angels.
Jeff Allen President
With over 15 years of experience in digital advertising, Jeff started his career by leading the development of an email marketing platform before moving on to developing sales and marketing departments for several service-based start ups. Since coming to Hanapin, the company has grown employees and revenue by 5x. His role is to translate goals into strategies and plans, without removing the company’s ability to be flexible and make decisions for the best performance possible.
Tom Hootman VP of Revenue
With 14 years of experience in client acquisition and retention, Tom leads the Sales and Client Services teams toward growth and success by removing obstacles and developing unique solutions for a varied client set. Before Hanapin, he was named Sales Growth Champion & District Sales Manager of the year. His experience of building and scaling a Sales team from scratch pushed Hanapin to 5x growth while repeatedly landing on the Inc. 5000 list and record-breaking client retention.
Jeff Baum Director of Services
Jeff leverages his thirteen year record of success scaling PPC accounts and building strong client relationships to provide his team with the tools and resources to successfully manage Hanapin’s clients. Jeff shares his industry knowledge by writing for Hanapin’s blog, PPC Hero & Search Engine Land and has spoken at industry events such as Hanapin’s Hero Conf and SMXL Milan.
Our People Win Together
Mitch has been a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) since 1980 and currently serves as a part time CFO for a few privately owned businesses in Indiana. Prior to offering his CFO services as a consultant in 2005, Mitch held various roles in public accounting and private industry. These have included being a CFO for a few private and public businesses, a General Manager operating two different service businesses and beginning his career in public accounting.
Mitch’s role at Hanapin Marketing focuses on assuring our company has the financial information and processes in place to continue its growth in a profitable way. Mitch grew up in Philadephia, PA and graduated from La Salle University. He now lives in Indianapolis with his wife. He enjoys time with their four grown children, their grandchild, traveling, photography, gardening and sports.
Kristine brings a passion for exceptional customer service to her role as Associate Director of Client Services. With nearly 5 years of experience at Hanapin and 18 years of sales experience, Kristine has honed her customer service skills helping her to ensure the longevity of the agency-client relationship. By being a new client concierge as well as applying true listening skills to really hear what our clients are saying, she is able to help create the best experience possible for all of Hanapin’s clients.
Kayla has grown from Account Manager at Hanapin to her current role as Associate Director of Sales based on a passion for connecting the agency’s solutions with prospective client needs. She’s played a part in signing many of Hanapin’s largest clients and now focuses on helping the entire Sales department achieve annual revenue goals. Kayla facilitates process development for the Sales team, alongside managing accountability, expediting completion & implementation of projects, and continuing work on expanding our Enterprise client roster. She’s also our Hero Conf emcee and one of Hanapin’s biggest brand ambassadors.
As an ambassador for Paid Search advertising, Carrie delivers a diversity of management skills to her role of Associate Director of Services at Hanapin. She contributes to the PPC Hero blog and regularly speaks at conferences such as State of Search, ClickZ, and Hero Conf. No stranger to numbers, Carrie achieved her Masters degree in Policy Analysis with a focus on statistics and economics. This training has allowed her to successfully lead her accounts to improved revenue, higher returns, and more strategic customer acquisition. In her role as Associate Director, she is responsible for shaping account strategies and ensuring client/agency goal alignment, as well as managing the work that makes goal achievement possible for some of Hanapin’s largest clients.
With over eight years of PPC experience, Cassie is Hanapin Marketing’s Associate Director of Services, Growth and PPCHERO.com author. Throughout her PPC journey, Cassie has had the opportunity to work on some of the world’s largest Fortune 500 PPC accounts in tech, travel and eCommerce. Today she spends her time at Hanapin managing enterprise level accounts while helping manage a team of PPC experts focused on analysis and finding opportunities for our clients to expand their digital reach.
With 14 years of PPC experience under her belt, Diane has had the opportunity to watch the paid search industry grow from the ground up. Having worked in both the in-house and agency sides, Diane currently serves as Hanapin Marketing’s Associate Director of Services where she is responsible for working directly with the account management team as they manage and grow their accounts. In addition to her role as Associate Director, Diane is an active contributor to the PPC HERO blog and has spoken at Hanapin’s Hero Conf events.
As Hanapin’s Associate Art Director, Megan oversees the branding for Hanapin, PPC Hero, and Hero Conf. She designs high-quality graphics and manages website presence for all three brands on a regular basis and produces reports, promotional materials, and case studies on a daily basis. Megan has been with Hanapin for nearly 5 years. Her machine-like mentality to produce high-quality work in a short amount of time as earned her the nickname: “Megatron.”
Matt has been in the PPC industry for over a decade, working and collaborating with clients across several industries to attain better ROIs, improved lead generation, and increased brand awareness. Along with leading Hanapin’s search initiatives, Matt runs content production for the most popular PPC blog in the world, PPC Hero. He also writes monthly articles for search publications such as Search Engine Land and Marketing Land.
You may also know Matt from PPCChat (#PPCChat), a weekly Twitter chat where industry specialists across the world discuss various PPC topics. Every Tuesday at 12 PM EST, everything from the fundamentals to metrics and theory to the future of PPC is discussed.
The Hanapin Team Boasts Great Results
Our History
Hanapin was founded in 2004 by Pat East, at a time when the PPC industry was changing, developing quickly, and the effectiveness of digital as a sales and marketing channel was just being realized. The company then secured its first and current client to this day, Author Solutions. What followed soon thereafter was a company that deliberately and consistently contributes to the advertising industry through education, thought leadership, and highly revered capabilities.
Soon after Hanapin’s founding, PPC Hero was created. The popular industry blog is written by the Hanapin team and delivers expertise and thought leadership daily to the PPC industry. The blog spans a variety of topics including search, display, social, mobile, programmatic, career growth, tools and industry news. Since launching, PPC Hero has grown to have a readership in the hundreds of thousands, and receives over 2 million page views each year.
In 2012, to address an underserved need for conferences specific to pay-per-click advertising and the growing community on PPC Hero looking for an outlet to discuss PPC in person, Hero Conf was founded. Today, Hero Conf is one of the most popular marketing conferences on the market, offering both US and international events, and provides deep, actionable information on the most relevant PPC topics.