Meet the brains (and guts) behind the results
In a world of algorithms and stats, we’re a tight-knit team of real people who care about your growth as much as you do. We have pretty radically different personalities, but each of us thrives on momentum, takes smart risks, and isn’t afraid to make the first move when the rules start changing.
Agency Leaders
Neil Welsh
Chief Executive Officer
Neil Welsh is the Founder and CEO of Silverback Strategies, a leading performance marketing agency built to close the gap between marketing metrics and real business results.
Silverback has been recognized by Ad Age, Inc Magazine and The Washington Post as a top workplace, and Neil has been named a DIGIDAY Top Boss. Neil serves on the executive committee of the YPO Global Marketing Network and the Board of Directors of iFoster.
Allyson Cochran
Chief Revenue Officer
Allyson Cochran is the Chief Revenue Officer at Silverback Strategies, where she leads revenue, partnerships, and growth strategy for one of the most respected performance agencies in the U.S.
She started her career selling radio advertising—long before dashboards and attribution—learning how to connect intangible campaigns to real business outcomes. That mindset still drives her work today. With 15+ years in media and marketing, Allyson is known for helping brands navigate platform shifts, AI-driven optimization, and modern measurement with clarity and confidence. She’s been a featured partner at the American Marketing Association, MarComm, Digital Summit, and executive marketing forums within Pavilion and PartnerStack, where she explains complex changes in performance marketing in practical, no-fluff terms.
Jordan Crawford
Senior Director of Client Services
Jordan Crawford specializes in helping clients find the right strategy to hit their performance goals. With 10+ years of experience in digital marketing, she brings expertise across Paid Media, SEO, and Measurement.
Her hands-on background supports effective cross-channel collaboration, ensuring clients get the most out of every activated channel.
Jordan has led marketing strategy that drove 2x YoY revenue growth for a PE-backed company and has been featured in Search Engine Land’s daily digest. She was recognized as a 40 Under 40 honoree by Charlottesville Weekly.
A key part of her role is translating complex marketing performance and strategy into clear, simple language that resonates with marketing leaders, C-suites, and boards alike.
Mat Ingham
Senior Director, SEO
Mat Ingham is the Senior Director, SEO at Silverback Strategies, where he specializes in turning real business goals into performance-driving strategies.
With over a decade of experience driving business growth, he brings expertise across a variety of channels, including SEO, AI Search, Paid Media, and Measurement. His testing mindset helps drive the innovation necessary to drive growth in today’s evolving landscape and ensures clients reach their goals. He helps clients turn complex SEO topics into actionable strategies that drive meaningful results.
Client Leaders
Haley Nininger
Director, Performance Creative & Strategy
Haley Nininger is Director of Performance Creative at Silverback Strategies — part analyst, part creative strategist, and firmly convinced that the best marketing lives at the intersection of both.
With over five years at Silverback and a background spanning paid media, creative strategy, and UX design, she helps brands stop guessing which ads will work and start building the systematic testing programs that find out.
A James Madison University graduate, Haley’s blend of analytical and creative thinking showed up early. While at JMU, she captained an all-female team that became a finalist in the 2018 Global Online Marketing Academic Challenge (GOMAC), earning an Honorable Mention for excellence in Google Data Studio reporting. That same year, she won a design competition to create the 40th-anniversary bus wrap for the Harrisonburg Department of Public Transportation — a piece celebrating the Shenandoah Valley that was seen by the entire city. She also co-founded the first national Digital Marketing Honors Society, built to connect top-tier digital talent with the recruiters and companies looking for it.
Haley writes on the power of psychology in advertising, media and creative strategy, performance creative trends by channel, and activating research insights in paid media campaigns
Terry Guttman
Associate Director, Ad Ops & Data
Terry is a seasoned marketer and strategic thinker with extensive experience in paid media, data analytics and measurement.
He enjoys digging deep into complex issues to uncover insights and develop actionable solutions that move organizations forward.
Sarah VanLandingham
Associate Director, Media Strategy
Sarah VanLandingham is the Associate Director of Media Strategy and has over seven years of industry experience and four years of management expertise. In that time, she’s mastered the art of bridging the gap between “big ideas” and actually driving business results.
While she’s got a proven track record of leading and developing teams of media superstars, her bread and butter is acting as a strategy maven on her accounts, and as the person who can translate complex technical data into something the C-suite can actually use.
Sarah has managed monthly budgets ranging from $40K to $1.5MM across e-commerce, legal, and finance, proving she can handle both a shoestring and a firehose. In 2024, she took $7MM in yearly spend for a legal client and drove a 105% lift in case volume—because who doesn’t love a triple-digit win? Whether she’s coaching her team on how to stay ahead in our everchanging media landscape or translating complex themes for her C-suite stakeholders, she ensures her clients and her team are positioned for scalability. She’s been told she’s a bit of a powerhouse; in fact, her boss once begged the question, “could the world even handle two Sarah VanLandinghams?” and for the sake of the competition, let’s hope we never find out.
Benjamin Johnson
Associate Director of SEO
Ben is someone who enjoys building things—both professionally and personally. With over 10 years of experience in SEO, Ben’s worked across the spectrum, from large enterprise organizations to small, family-owned businesses, which has shaped a practical, results-driven approach to growth.
He specializes in developing and executing SEO strategies that drive measurable impact, whether that’s scaling complex enterprise sites or helping smaller businesses compete effectively in crowded markets. Outside of work, Ben spends time on carpentry projects and experimenting with 3D printing, and he enjoys hiking, reading science fiction, and catching up on movies and TV. Fun fact: He builds most of his own furniture, including tables, chairs, desks, etc .
Thought Leaders
Featured Blog
How Google is Using Trust Signals to Personalize AI Results
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Featured Blog
What Separates Winning Paid Social Accounts From Stalled Ones: A Creative System
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Google I/O + Google Marketing Live: Key Announcements & What They Mean For Marketers
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What a Study of $1.3B in Meta Ad Spend Reveals About Paid Social Creative Strategy
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AI Is Rewriting the Rules of Personalization. Are You Ready?
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What is Agentic Commerce? How the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is Changing Commerce in 2026
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Modern SEO Measurement Playbook
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YouTube is the #1 Source for Google AI Overviews: Is Your SEO Strategy Ready?
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The Causal Pivot: Why Google and Meta Are Giving You the Tools to Grade Their Homework
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Reporting to Leadership: Translating SEO & Paid Media Metrics into Business Impact
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Aligning Marketing Metrics with Business Goals: A Reporting Framework for In-House Teams
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Google vs. OpenAI: The Myth of Fragmentation and the Reality of 2026
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Creative is the New Targeting: How to Master “Entity IDs” and Unlock Scale
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Where SEO Ends and Paid Media Begins: How Both Channels Work Together
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AI-Powered Reporting: Making Monthly Performance Reports More Actionable
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The Simplified Meta Ads Funnel: Why “Signal Density” is the Key to Unlocking Scale in the GEM Era
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Why Your Competitor Analysis Is Missing the Mark
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The Algorithmic Pivot: GEM, Andromeda, and How Meta’s $100B Bet on “Predictive Intent” is Rewriting the Ad Market
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Meta Andromeda Broke Your Paid Social Playbook
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Last Click Addiction: How We Fucked Up Marketing
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How AI Optimization Mistakes Fuel Ad Fraud and Waste Paid Media Budgets
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There’s War in Your C Suite, And Growth Is The Casualty
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How a Google URL Parameter Wiped out $3B in Reddit’s Valuation, and What Marketers Should Learn From It
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How ChatGPT Is Reshaping the Way People Search. And What Marketers Should Do About It
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Creative Strategy in Digital Advertising
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Your CRM Attribution Is Unreliable — Here’s How to Improve Marketing Measurement
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Why Hire a Digital Marketing Agency
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7 Questions to Ask a Digital Marketing Agency
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Why You Need Audience Research in Paid Media
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How to Generate Leads in Google Local Services Ads
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Creative Testing: How to Maximize Success
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How to Convert Web Traffic into Leads
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A Digital Marketing Team Structure Built for Performance
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Digital Marketing Objectives to Support Market Share, Revenue and Profit
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Measuring Marketing ROI for Mid-Market Consumer Businesses
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"Working with Silverback is easy. We see better engagement and more revenue for less spend."
Romain Coetmellec, Digital Fundraising Director
Want to work with us?
Think of us as a senior-level extension of your team. We plug into your goals, align with your KPIs, and bring the strategy, creative, and execution needed to move the needle — consistently. From big-picture thinking to day-to-day delivery, we’re here to help you hit your numbers (and then beat them).
Work With UsWant to work here?
Join a team that values thoughtful work, creative problem-solving, and real impact. We collaborate closely, move quickly, and care deeply about what we build — for our clients and each other. If you’re looking to grow, contribute, and do work you’re proud of, you’ll fit right in.
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