President, Direct Online Marketing
By Samantha Redd
Justin Seibert has come a long way since his youthful days of making tennis balls into fire balls with his friends. After growing up in Wheeling, WV, and graduating from Vanderbilt University, Seibert moved to Los Angeles where he met his wife. It was after the arrival of their first child that he and his wife decided to move to Wheeling to give their children the same type of childhood he had experienced.
“Most of us strive to give our children a better childhood than we had growing up,” Seibert says. “I don’t think that’s possible in my case, with what my parents and the community provided. I’m fortunate that I can run my company from anywhere in the world, and I get to do it in West Virginia.”
Seibert, whose family now includes two daughters and a son, is excited to be able to live in his childhood home, provide career opportunities for locals and improve the area. He considers convincing his wife to marry him his greatest success, with convincing her to move to West Virginia a close second.
With the support of his family, the help of great mentors and hard work, Seibert started his company, Direct Online Marketing, an Internet marketing firm specializing in search engine and social media marketing and online reputation management, in 2006. The company handles online marketing campaigns for major public and private companies from around the world.
Seibert’s success is made obvious by the prestigious awards and honors his company has earned over the past few years, such as being named a Google AdWords Certified Partner and Bing Ads Preferred Agency, the latter of which being a distinction only held by 17 companies worldwide. He attributes his business success to his talent for solving problems and his calculated practices that include hard work, staying on top of industry trends and heeding advice.
Moving back from the West Coast with a young family and starting his own business comes in second as the riskiest thing Seibert’s ever done, topped only by stand-up comedy, which he refers to as “always either exhilarating or, more often, soul-crushing.” He regularly speaks about paid search and search engine optimization at events and has been widely published. Being a leader to his peers is only a small side of his community service, though. He serves on the West Virginia Northern Community College Board Foundation, and he is a co-founder of OVConnect, a Wheeling area young professionals’ organization that serves the Ohio Valley region.
Seibert says the inspiration for founding OVConnect came when he realized people in his community were always complaining that there was nothing to do when there is always something fun going on in Wheeling.
“Wheeling always has some incredibly talented, fun and interesting people, but it can be tough to find them, particularly if you are new to the area,” Seibert says. “I would frequently witness young, talented folks coming into the area for work who would fail to create roots and then leave after a year or two. For a community like ours, being able to hold onto a small number of these people year after year can have a tremendous impact.”
Seibert believes that everyone has a responsibility to contribute to their community to the best of their capabilities. “Contribution can come in a variety of forms, and for me as a business leader it comes from creating and sustaining jobs, donating, serving on boards and other volunteer efforts. I have been extremely fortunate to have been raised in my community and to be able to raise my own family here, so I owe it to Wheeling and West Virginia to do what I can to foster what makes it great.”
Photography by Tracy Toler on location at Adventures On the Gorge
