From Building Websites In Middle School to Managing a $100M/Year Advertising Agency with Alex Melen
Born in Kiev, Ukraine, this week’s guest and his family dropped everything and moved from the USSR to New York in the early 1990s barely knowing any English. Fast Forward to today, he is an Award-Winning Serial Entrepreneur who went from starting to build websites in the early 90s, to now managing over $100MM/year in advertising spend for his clients. Alex Melen is this week’s guest on “The Jake Dunlap Show”
Alex’s family settled in Washington Heights/Harlem, and he moved to different schools every year until his family resettled in New Jersey. While in Middle School, Alex’s father was in Computer Science, and the access to a computer allowed Alex to build his first website business in Middle School. This business grew to over 600,000 active users in High School prior to studying Business Administration/Management at Babson College.
Over his career, he wanted to move away from coding and into growing businesses, and at that time, everyone wanted to be in finance. Alex held Analyst positions at both Citi and Electric Insurance prior to taking a role at Toys R Us.
At that time. Toys R Us didn’t have a website, and were so focused driving traffic to their brick/mortar stores that they drove online business to their competitor, Amazon. From there, Alex made the shift from Finance to Digital Marketing at MediaVest.
At MediaVest, Alex was a Digital Analytics Manager for companies such as Samsung and Walmart.
Now, Alex is the Co-Founder of SmartSites, a best-in-class digital marketing services company that is the #1 rated digital marketing agency that specializes in:
- Digital Marketing Agency
- Online Marketing
- Web Design
- Website Development
- Search Engine Optimization
- Pay Per Click Advertising
- Search Engine Marketing
- WordPress
- Google/Facebook Ads
Awards and Publications:
Awards
- Babson Business of the Year
- Bloomberg Top 101 Best Freebies
- Bloomberg Businessweek Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25
- Empact 100 2013,2014
- INC 5000 Fastest Growing Company (2017-2021) 5 Consecutive Years
- NJBIZ Top 250
- YoungBiz Top 100 Young Entrepreneurs
Publications
- Driving Digital Success
- How to Use Digital Marketing to Plan for Success with Dwindling Inventories and Uncertain Market Conditions
- Pivoting Your Marketing to Capture the New Digital Shopper
- What Can We Learn from the Last Financial Crisis?
- The 4th Technological Revolution: AI & Machine Learning
Alex’s Social Links:
Website: https://www.alexmelen.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexmelen/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alexmelen
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/cinsatag
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alex.melen/?hl=en
Learn more about Jake Dunlap and Skaled by visiting the links below:
Jake Dunlap:
Personal Site - http://jakedunlap.com/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/JakeTDunlap
Instagram - http://instagram.com/jake_dunlap _
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/JakeTDunlap/
Skaled:
Website - https://skaled.com/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/skaled
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsw_03rSlbGQkeLGMGiDf4Q
