Career lessons from Lani Sodunke - Founder, BaxAnalytics
It’s ironic how life unfolds for each of us. For some folks, the path is winding, full of trials, pivots, and lessons. For others, clarity comes somewhat early. Chatting with Lani Sodunke was a reminder that no matter the path, it’s possible to take ownership of your story through sheer will, curiosity, and consistent action.
From Nigeria to the UK and beyond, Lani has carved a path marked by passion, creativity, innovation, and intentional growth. She’s been featured in notable publications, launched a SaaS company, and spoken on a global stage.
In our conversation with Lani, we tapped into her rich experience in marketing, how marketers can set themselves apart with analytics skills, and what they should know about ethical AI in content creation.
Whether you’re new to marketing or have years of experience under your belt, Lani’s story will leave you inspired to stay curious, build with purpose, and own your growth.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background? What inspired you to focus on digital marketing and tech?
I started as a freelance writer years ago on platforms like Fiverr, Freelancer, and so on. During the time I was freelancing, I was studying entrepreneurship at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB).
After writing for a while, I started learning SEO on my own, but didn't get to practice it until 2020 during lockdown. So I got a full-time job as an SEO content lead at CribMD, and in less than a year, I was the digital marketing manager in the company.
From left
Image 1 - Lani during her early career days
Image 2 - Lani with team members at CribMD
Image 3 - Lani chilling at the beach
When I got promoted, I thought to myself that since I have a passion for this thing and I enjoy it, I might as well get that theoretical, industry-wide knowledge. Though I had that practical experience and a few certifications, I didn't have the in-depth theoretical knowledge.
At that point, I decided to pursue a Master’s in Digital Marketing (MSc) at the University of Salford, and I've since moved up the marketing ladder.
You have rich experience handling different marketing projects across SEO, PPC, content, and email. How do these areas intersect?
I would say all of these aspects of marketing have one common objective, and that is delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time. So the intersection of all of these efforts is actually in the customer journey, mainly on how we understand our audience and how we take them through the buyer journey with value-driven, data-informed communication.
When all of these channels are aligned and feeding into a single customer-centric strategy, marketing will become more scalable and sustainable to deliver valuable results.
As the Founder of BaxAnalytics can you tell us some specific challenges or gaps in existing web analytics tools that inspired you to create yours?
I created BaxAnalytics out of frustration. As someone who has been in SEO, optimizing pages, running ads, and all of that, you definitely experience a lot of visitors leaving your website without converting. I wanted an in-depth understanding of what my audience was actually facing whenever they land on my site.
As I began to research tools that could help me do that, I discovered that lots of web analytics tools were either too expensive, too complex to set up, or had privacy issues. And the ones that even provided the basic metrics weren’t precise when it came to data.
So, I took it upon myself and decided to bridge that middle ground that I felt was missing.
From left
Image 1 - Lani representing her SaaS company, BaxAnalytics, at DTX Manchester, United Kingdom
Image 2 - Lani speaking with some of her mentees
I built BaxAnalytics for business owners and marketers like myself so that we can always make analytical decisions that align with business goals. Even though I wanted to close the gap, BaxAnalytics was born out of the need to make data and analytics very useful, not just for reporting, but for decision-making as well.
And since then, we've designed BaxAnalytics to solve real issues that business owners and marketers care about when it comes to customer behavior and data.
Understanding data and using it effectively for decision-making can help marketers set themselves apart. But what's a common analytics approach that you marketers overrate, and what would you do instead?
In my years of working in marketing, I've noticed that most marketers overrate the last-click attribution. They over-rely on it, especially when evaluating campaign performance. Focusing on last-click attribution is misleading because it doesn't capture the full story. You need to understand how people make decisions.
You need to understand the stages of the customer’s journey, especially if it's a B2B environment. Let me give you an example.
Let's say a user discovers your site through a blog post, reads it, maybe does XYZ stuff, and bounces off. Then later, they saw an ad on Instagram or YouTube that retargeted them back to your website. Let’s also say they also saw your newsletter or a webinar and decided to sign up for that.
Then lastly, maybe through one of your emails, they've converted and purchased your product. Most marketers will actually pick that last click as the main conversion metric and sometimes the only conversion metric that matters.
But that’s not how it works. They're supposed to credit every touch point, not just the email that they converted through, because the user went through a journey before they converted.
What I always do instead is adopt a multi-touch attribution mindset and approach. This helps me compare both the first touchpoint and last touchpoint and understand what influences a buyer's decision at both ends.
I also do a lot of UTM tagging to consistently track users’ journeys. You’ve probably seen a lot of websites include post-conversion surveys asking how users found or heard about them. Something like that also helps you track what you might miss.
So with all of this, I just try my best to make smarter decisions and not faster ones, and also not just say, “Oh, it's the last action that converted”, because there was actually a journey to that last action.
💡 Pro-tip: Want to understand data better and confidently justify your marketing spend? Get lifetime access to our marketing analytics masterclass video, which includes free templates, checklists, presentation slides from instructors, and much more.
In your current role, how do you use data to defend long-term marketing bets for a brand-building campaign or SEO?
What I always do from the onset is to shift conversations with stakeholders from “what did we get this week?” to “what are we trying to build?” Or “what would this strategy or campaign mean in the next three, six, or 12 months?” That alone already sets the expectation that the campaign is for the long term.
Also, I try to educate stakeholders, helping them understand that long-term investments pay off, and convince them that if we do not build our brand name, use organic channels or other brand-building channels, we can’t get that visibility when we are relying on just paid ads.
So, what that means is that relying on one channel doesn't cut it. We adopt a multi-channel approach, interchangeably using PPC and SEO and brand.
What's one unexpected insight that completely changed how you approached SEO, and what did you do next?
The biggest shift for me came from AI. AI has been doing wonders both positively and negatively. However, the biggest shift has been understanding that the way users search now is changing every single day. Before, users would just go on Google, search for XYZ, and they're fine.
But now, a lot of users just go to ChatGPT and other LLM tools to search. So this has played a huge part in our approach.
Rather than approaching SEO, the traditional way, focusing primarily on keyword research, I approach SEO as Search Everywhere Optimization. This allows me to tailor my strategies and approach to the other channels and AI that user behavior is changing towards.
In your talk during a recent Women in Tech SEO conference, you touched on the ethical use of AI. Can you tell us how marketers can draw the line between automation and authenticity in content creation?
To everyone who has never attended any Women in Tech SEO events, you are absolutely missing out. A big shout-out to the Women in Tech SEO team!
Lani speaking at The Women in Tech SEO conference in Berlin, Germany
Regarding drawing the line between automation and authenticity, I would say that before any automation is carried out, we should always ask ourselves if that automation will negatively impact our search quality, user trust, and our brand's reputation.
The reason is that automation is not about what you can do, but it's about what you should do.
First, you should understand that not all automation is created equal. This means you should always learn to automate the right tasks.
Second, let your strategy lead, not the tools. There are a lot of tools out there that are doing wonderful stuff, but always keep your strategy at the forefront.
Third, make sure that you have the search engines' guidelines in mind, and always have that human touch.
And lastly, sanity-check the output of whatever task you're trying to accomplish.
Can you share a specific moment in your career when you faced a major challenge and how you handled it?
I was very young and early in my career when I landed a gig with a client in Portugal. I kept accepting loads of tasks from them than I could realistically handle. Eventually, the workload became unmanageable, and I decided to outsource.
Unfortunately, this led to a drop in quality compared to when it was just me. And I ended up losing the client. So when this happened, I said to myself that I was never going to outsource again.
I had to start looking for new clients from scratch. That experience taught me to only take on work I could confidently deliver and to set my rates based on industry standards and not on the volume of work a client offers. Moving forward, I did that, and it has always worked for me.
As someone who loves to share knowledge and is always eager to mentor others, what keeps you motivated to stay on top of trends and continue growing your expertise?
What keeps me motivated is knowing that others look to me for guidance and mentorship. It drives me to stay ahead, refine my craft, and keep up with industry trends.
Lani celebrating her graduation from the University of Salford
I also dedicate time to studying and researching regularly, not only for my personal growth, but to ensure I can offer real value to those who reach out to me.
If you were training a junior marketer today, what specific tasks or projects would you assign them in their first 90 days?
Everyone is different, but for me, within the first 90 days, I’d want the junior marketer to learn and observe. I’d ensure that they take a lot of courses and training that align with their role and familiarize themself with the tools that they’ll be using daily. So, I won’t just get them to start working on XYZ projects immediately.
Once they’ve spent the first 30 days learning, observing, and understanding the tools they use daily, I’d start giving tasks, but mostly recurring tasks. I wouldn’t just give a one-off task and say, “Okay, do this today, do that tomorrow”. Giving them a recurring task will build their skill and understanding of that specific task. This will make it easier for them to carry out similar tasks.
The next thing would be teaching the junior marketer how to report on these tasks that they've been doing. For example, if they're learning how to do keyword research or create optimized content, they should be able to report on the outcome of that. This is because there’s no point in learning XYZ if you cannot even report to stakeholders.
Looking ahead, are there any exciting projects or goals you're currently working on that you'd like to share with us?
What I'm working on right now is still BaxAnalytics. I am not doing anything out of the blue or anything crazy. I'm trying to make sure that the platform is more focused on our mission, which is making insights and data very intuitive for marketers and business owners, because I believe that data should not just inform, but it should actually drive results.
We're still focusing on that same goal, and for every feature we release or build right now, it’s centered on giving the best experience to our customers. So they can confidently discover what’s working, what’s not, and know what to do next.
Enjoyed Lani’s story? Join her for an exclusive AMA session with the Smarketers Hub community on the theme “Planning your next career move when the path isn’t clear”. To be a part of this, join us on Slack today.
You can also connect with Lani on LinkedIn.
If you want more expert stories and insights like this? Get Inside the Marketers’ Room!
