Jeff Allen is CEO of OuterBox, the Copley, Ohio ecommerce and performance-marketing agency he has led since early 2024. A longtime paid-search operator and former Hanapin Marketing president, he became CEO after founder Justin Smith moved to the board.
PPC in College and Hanapin
Allen got into PPC in college after answering a classified ad to handle customer emails. Rewritten replies lifted response rates, which led to writing outbound copy and then running paid search for the business and for friends. In a 2015 PPC Hero interview, he said that chapter lasted eleven years and ended with a partnership stake before he moved to Hanapin Marketing.
At Hanapin he became president, helped grow the team several times over, and became a regular voice behind PPC Hero and Hero Conf. Speaking credits from that era include SMX, SES, and Hero Conf itself.
From Brainlabs to OuterBox
Brainlabs acquired Hanapin in 2020. Allen later served as COO for Brainlabs North America, with public bios citing more than a dozen M&A transactions and integrations across his agency career. In February 2024 OuterBox announced him as CEO, with founder Justin Smith shifting to the board.
In the appointment release, Allen said he was "honored and excited" to build on the foundation Smith and the team had built, with a focus on ecommerce website design and enterprise digital marketing.
Running OuterBox
On LinkedIn, Allen calls professional services a people business and says the best ideas sit in people's experience. He frames the OuterBox job around client satisfaction, new-business growth, operational excellence, financial rigor, and capital allocation.
OuterBox still sells SEO, paid search, CRO, email, and ecommerce builds on platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, and WordPress from its U.S.-based team.