Dana typed her first line of code in 1982, knew from a young age that she wanted to be an entrepreneur, and has been giving talks and presentations since 1998. The Internet has always been a source of opportunity and challenge for Dana, and the three businesses she has owned have all taught other entrepreneurs and organizations how to benefit from digital-first marketing.
When Dana owned a web design and development shop in 2000, clients started asking her, “how do I get more people to come to my website?” Search Engine Optimization (SEO) introduced Dana to a brave new world of marketing, and to a large community of marketers, SEOs, business owners, and other speakers. Because she has always been future-focused, Dana paid attention to proven principles instead of quick tips, and to this day, not a single one of her clients have been affected by a Google penalty.
After working with clients to improve their SEO, Dana realized these clients needed a better analytics know-how than what was currently in use. With a more accessible version of Google Tag Manager coming out — one where you didn’t need to be a skilled developer — Dana was excited to jump into the world of analytics, and well, never left!
Dana is the founder of KP Playbook, a learning platform for digital marketers, where she teaches analytics courses. Dana’s first course on this platform, Analytics for Agencies, comes highly recommended from renowned digital marketing experts Aleyda Solis, Rand Fishkin, and Andy Crestodina. Analytics for Agencies teaches agency teams to properly segment, accurately assess, and thoroughly report on data for their clients so they can grow their agencies.
Her focus on the future contributes to the topics Dana speaks on and the courses she develops, and she is often asked to cover emerging techniques because her digital marketing agency is committed to pushing for better opportunities for its clients. This commitment means that Dana always has new tests and experiments to incorporate into talks and presentations. Dana was also nominated as “SEO Speaker of the Year” in 2018, by Search Engine Land.
Dana has taught digital analytics at the University of Alberta since 2020, and has had over 90,000 learners take her LinkedIn Learning courses. The reception to these courses led Dana to create KP Playbook.
Dana lives on the unceded territory of the Sc’ianew First Nation near Victoria, BC with her wife. In her spare time, she yells at football players and collects hobbies.
