INTERVIEW WITH PABLO RODRIGO, A DIGITAL MARKETING PROFESIONAL

There are many ways to learn: reading, studying, working… However, we usually forget one of the most significant: listening (which is, also, one relevant skill in the business world). In this post we have the opportunity to listen to Pau, a digital marketing professional, in the interview format. 

Pau, whose real name is Pablo Rodrigo, has been working as a digital marketing consultant for more than 10 years. He has studied multiple academic training in which the audiovisual communication degree, digital marketing master, electronic commerce master, master in Personality Profiling and Negotiation and master in non-verbal behavior and credibility analysis stand out. Previously, he worked as a journalist, sales force member and director in several associations.

Before start I would like to explain the text’s structure. At the beginning we are going to know more about Pau, following we will discover some things about his professional career and finally his point of view and some tips about digital marketing.  

How did you start in digital marketing?

Through the communication world and its digital aspect. I realized that a great amount of the company’s communication problems were marketing troubles in the digital environment. Therefore, I decided to invest in formation to know more about this continuous-development field. I am keen on the digital marketing as it is the field where there are more challenges and evolution capacity nowadays.

What do you do in your work?

My business, a digital marketing agency called NeoROI, consists in helping professionals and companies to develop their business on the Internet. This means to support them to have more visibility, a better communication with the target and, naturally, gain more clients and sales.

How do you get new customers?

My acquisition sources are mainly 2. The most conventional and powerful one is the worth-of-mouth. The recommendation marketing is tremendously strong and it reduces a great amount of sales work. The second one consists in the advertising campaigns I realize in order to gain clients.

Are your social media profiles (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn…) a showcase for your business? Do you believe that you gain clients thanks to your posts in this kind of media?

In fact, these three are the most important ones for my business. There is a real showcase. People “google” you, revise your profile and read opinions about you, then assess if they can trust you. It is logic since in the marketing world there are many selling smokers.  

Can you tell us which is the professional project you feel most proud of?

I feel specially satisfied about the personalized mentoring to entrepreneurs’ projects. I prefer working with managers side by side more than supporting companies. Usually, the relationships I build with the entrepreneurs are gratifying. Also, the businesses experience a high growth thanks to the cooperative work.

I remember a mentoring with a Colombian entrepreneur who has a company of solar plants for businesses. We developed a digital marketing strategy in order to reach new companies, tell them about the product and sell the solution that companies were looking for. A few months later the results started to arrive. Each client meat an income of 17000 USD.

What lessons you learnt from your failures would you highlight? 

In 2021 I ran a music online school with a friend and an acquaintance. The students started coming, nevertheless I soon realized that the team was unbalanced. One of the partners, the capital investor, couldn’t invest all that was planned. Soon I could see the other partner, didn’t have an entrepreneur mentality, but an employee one. He wanted a job. I saw that all the important operations were mine, when at the beginning I was just going to work as the marketing person. I realized that my dedication to this project was going to be excessive and that the possibilities to have problems with the partners in the future were high. So, I decided to quit the society before the troubles came. My quickly leaving caused me financial losses. However, this decision saved the good relationship I had with this two people.

My main lesson in this “failure” is that it's essential to start a project with the correct people (with the necessary abilities and in disposition to spend the required energies to the project). Running a business with an acquaintance, family or friends, might not be the best idea if the responsibilities, compromises and competences aren’t clear and equally assumed.  

What advantages do you see in the digital marketing over the traditional marketing? And disadvantages?

On one hand, the digital marketing has a lower entry barrier. It is not necessary to have a huge budget to begin. There are a lot of possibilities to adapt the strategies to a specific budget, goals and entrepreneurship style. Besides, digital marketing allows you to segment the audience and measure effectively the results. The traditional marketing is based on a large number of massive and indiscriminate impacts, which is not effective.

On the other hand, I would like to highlight the enormous noise caused by the strong competence. Nowadays investing in advertising is not enough, you must be creative, stand out and communicate in a different way. If not, you would not be anything. It’s the creativity and authenticity moment.

A great majority of the society «confuse marketing with the sale or the publicizing, when these are just some marketing tools» (Miguel Santesmases, 2007). Many consider that the digital marketing consists of hiring advertisements in social media, websites, etc. But… what's behind it? What actions/work that the user doesn’t see are carried out?

Nowadays the “marketing” label is applied to everything. Sometimes I have found companies that were looking for a “digital marketing expert” when what they truly wanted was a media buyer, a person specialized in buying in publishing platforms (Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok…).

The access to these publishing platforms is really affordable. Nevertheless, the effects we get from the adverts are not the expected ones very often, even if the campaigns are well executed. The real problem is in the marketing strategy, the process that is going to be carried out in order to get a stranger to discover us, feel interested in us, like us and purchase our offer and later…  buy again and recommend us. 

What is the way that the digital marketing is going to take in the medium-long term?

The successful marketing is the marketing with influence, not the one focused only in sales. The influence is what gives you presence, scope, persuasion capacity, community and, also, customers and sales.

The keys of the future digital marketing are not in the technology, but in the way you will adapt to talk and to have the future client’s attention. The way you are going to readjust to build a familiar relationship beyond the interest for the sale itself.

In addition to the already mentioned… what tools would you recommend to the professionals who are getting close to the digital marketing?

I would invest in quality academic training. The practical and applicable knowledge is essential. The tools depend on the objective and the budget.

Many of our readers want to work professionally in the digital marketing area, or are thinking about it. What tips, based on your own experience, would you tell them?

Educate yourself, learn in a practical way and be focused. Do not get distracted with brilliant objects that promise quick and easy solutions. The distraction is a true risk for the marketing people, who have to stay up constantly, give the best server and protect its time.

I hope you enjoyed and learnt with this interview and take notice about its tips and advises. For us it has been a pleasure listening to Pau in our blog. We don’t want to finish without highlighting the most significant points that he makes. The first one: we shouldn’t focus on the tools, the media…  We must not forget that the marketing is focus in the consumer. The second one is the importance of training and studying.

 

References:

Acosta, C.P. (April 5, 2018). Cómo hacer una entrevista periodística. Entreperiodistas. https://www.entreperiodistas.com/como-hacer-una-entrevista-periodistica/

Díaz, C. (November 2, 2021) Preguntas para hacer una entrevista periodística, ejemplos. Social Media Pymes.  https://www.socialmediapymes.com/preguntas-para-una-entrevista-periodistica-ejemplos/#Que_hacer_antes_de_una_entrevista

Santesmases, M. (2007) Marketing Conceptos y estrategias (5º edition). Pirámide Ediciones.