Catalyst Employee Spotlight: Meghan Lavin

You can have the best data and most sophisticated tools, but it doesn’t mean anything without great people. Fortunately, at Catalyst, we have no shortage of great people. From Search Associates to Search Directors, and from Project Managers to Managing Partners, each member of the Catalyst team is committed to maximizing client business results and making Catalyst a world-class agency. Read our Employee Spotlight series to meet some of the team members responsible for making Catalyst an all-star agency partner and a great place to work.

Meghan LavinMeet Meghan

Name: Meghan Lavin

Title: Partner, Director of Marketing

How long have you worked at Catalyst?

I have been at Catalyst for six years.

How long have you worked in digital marketing and what type of clients have you worked on?

I’ve worked in digital marketing for 8 years and have supported a wide range of clients during that time, including healthcare clients, CPG clients, and professional salon brands.

How did you get your start in digital marketing?

I got my start in digital marketing by working for a company that provides digital marketing services to private medical practices, primarily plastic surgery centers, cosmetic dental practices, and rehab facilities. I partnered with the practices’ marketing team to develop and launch new websites, manage their social media presence and campaigns, and lead their search marketing efforts for both SEO and paid search.

I enjoyed the performance marketing aspect of that role the best, which led me to Catalyst. I started off in Account Management at Catalyst where I led several accounts for CPG clients. From there, I transitioned onto Catalyst’s marketing team.

What do you like most about working at Catalyst?

It’s hard to pick just one! I really like the people at Catalyst as well as the openness to new ideas and innovation. We have a really great team here – everyone is always willing to lend a helping hand and is genuinely passionate about helping our clients succeed. Leadership is also extremely open and welcoming of new ideas and different approaches. They encourage testing, curiosity, and innovation to continue to evolve and grow our business and our clients’ businesses.

What has been your greatest achievement or success in marketing?

My greatest achievement has been leading our technical SEO conference, TechSEO Boost. We took it from a small conference in 2017 and have grown it into one of the industry’s top SEO events. It’s been an amazing learning experience and extremely rewarding to share so much advanced SEO thought-leadership with the industry. I look forward to continuing to learn as we adapt the event in light of the COVID crisis. 

I’m also really proud of the original research that we produce at Catalyst. This year we conducted a landmark ecommerce study with Kantar called The State of Ecommerce 2021. It’s an in-depth analysis of ecommerce trends and opportunities across retail media, search, social, programmatic, and more. It was a huge undertaking with lots of collaboration, and I’m extremely proud of the insights we’ve been able to share with the marketplace. We’ll be presenting some of the findings virtually at our New Commerce Conference if anyone wants to learn more.

If you had to give one recommendation to an advertiser, what would it be?

Prioritize progress over perfection. In our research we found that many brands’ ecommerce marketing programs are hindered by the drive to achieve perfection and many find themselves in a state of “analysis-paralysis” due to the overwhelming and rapid change in the space.

The leaders are the ones are who quickly testing and activating to uncover learnings that enable them to make incremental changes over time that eventually compound into greater change a and business success. Don’t be afraid to test, and don’t wait until something is absolutely is perfect to launch. 

Share a fun fact about yourself

During quarantine, I’ve been teaching myself how to drive my husband’s manual transmission car. I’ve enjoyed learning a new skill and am really starting to get the hang of it, though, I wouldn’t recommend being behind me on a hill yet.

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