This past week, I was able to have a virtual sit down with Juan Quintero, Director of Digital Marketing at Mia Aesthetics. Mia Aesthetics is a plastic surgery clinic with locations in Miami, Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, and Vegas. The brand’s vision is based on the idea that being beautiful and saving money are two realities that can exist simultaneously. Juan has been with Mia Aesthetics for 2 years but has been in the marketing realm for 14 years, and is adept at CRM & Demand Generation marketing programs, strategic planning, KPI goals, budget management, launch execution, ROI tracking, and market research. In this interview, we discussed Juan’s path in the Digital Marketing world, some of the strategic decision making his team does, advice for the next generation of digital marketers, and of course, any emerging trends that are of interest to him!
Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your path to becoming a Digital Marketing Director at Mia Aesthetics?
I started doing marketing about 14 years ago but it was more on the creative side, doing more of the web design, alot of graphic design. That was the marketing back then and eventually it turned out to be more data driven, it turned out to be more technology driven. When I got to Mia Aesthetics I was hired as a digital marketing manager and everything has been about implementing new technology and being upfront to new techniques of marketing.
How are you or your team measured? What kind of data do you use to measure your team’s performance?
So there are two main measures, one is acquisition and what I mean by acquisition is on the side of lead generation. How many leads the marketing ideas and marketing efforts are pulling into the company. The second one is retention. Retention has to do with how many of those leads you are actually retaining to eventually become customers. The third one is conversion, how many of those leads that you are acquiring are actually converting into a sale. Those are the three main KPI’s that my team is being measured with. Acquisition, retention and conversion.
How important is your relationship with the Sales Team?
I have direct connection with the sales manager because they are the ones basically playing around with the pricing. They have the one on one interactions with the patients/ customers. We try to have weekly meetings and my door is open every time they come up with new ideas so we can execute them. The marketing and the sales team has to be one on one always. It cannot be a siloed department, it has to be working on the same ideas.
When making strategic marketing decisions, what processes or methods do you use?
One of the initial strategies is based on data. We use a lot of google analytics, a lot of data to eventually come up with new strategies, what market we go into and how, if it’s worth spending money going into that market based on the amount of persons we are going to capture on that market. Everything goes by data, we use google analytics, we use SEM Rush for SEO and since we do a lot of PPC, we use a lot of the Facebook analytics that they provide.
Where do you turn for learning new skills or concepts?
Marketing is evolving a lot so for myself to keep on top of those things, when I come up with an obstacle and I see that I need more learning, I go into Youtube to learn more about it. Basically, Youtube provides you with everything.
What do you think is the biggest challenge in digital marketing, and how are you addressing it?
Keeping up with technology. Technology is evolving way too fast to keep up with it. Especially for students, people that are just coming out from college getting their bachelor’s in marketing. Marketing is evolving faster than even the curriculum so what you’re actually learning in school, you step out into the field and that was two years ago and marketing has evolved since then but you just learned that last semester. That’s how fast it’s evolving. That’s why, the experience, getting hands on, and being able to learn by yourself is important in digital marketing and anything that has technology involved in it.
Can you describe your greatest success in digital marketing?
I think there is success depending on the type of the company. I have been lucky enough to work and have different types of success. I think success can be measured by having a company that’s growing and all the company’s I have been lucky enough to work with have been in the growth stage. So, my efforts within the department and the company you can see them in sales. At the end of the day it’s the revenue the marketing is bringing in.
Can you discuss your worst digital marketing failure? How did you resolve it, and what did you learn?
I think failure is not a bad thing. Failure is actually good. I use personally a strategy called agile marketing. Agile marketing is basically testing campaigns and testing environment for you to be able to pivot on those failures. You usually start with a hypothesis thinking about the success of a campaign. So you basically say you think the ROI on this campaign is going to be 50% but you launch the campaign, wait two weeks and the ROI is only at 10%, that’s a failed campaign. The good thing about having those failed campaigns is being able to track down what was missing. So having failed campaigns is really important in marketing, it’s more important to have failed campaigns than successful campaigns because with failed campaigns you can pivot and eventually have those successful campaigns.
How has social media (etc.) changed marketing in your industry over the past five years?
Social Media is one of those ice breakers in the industry because before social media everything was about Google, everything was about search and search engine optimization and about having the websites look good, having a good SEO and that’s it. Right now, when social media came in, it’s not only about SEO, it’s about all the content you post. You’re giving the power to the public for them to change your brand in minutes. Before social media, it took time for you to be able to understand okay I need to make these changes, there’s an issue with XY customer, with social media it’s real time analytics basically that you can base off. I think social media changed the whole industry.
What opportunities or threats have arisen because of this?
One of the opportunities that has come up is the power of the customer to be in contact with the company real-time. I think before that wasn’t happening, before customers didn’t have a voice, now they have a voice. Now, one single mention could affect the whole reputation of the company, in minutes, in seconds, it’s incredible!
What can marketers do to prepare for these opportunities and threats?
I think there is no preparedness you could do for the issues that may arise with social media. The company has to understand that if you are on social media, you have to be as clear as possible and you have to be honest as a company and as a brand because now the customer has the power, they have a voice and they can use it to do whatever they want with the brand. On the marketing side, be honest, be clear, it is really important for the brand or the company to understand that.
What digital trends are you most excited about?
The one trend that I am looking at is data and the relationship with data and marketing and the cloud. Everything going to and being managed in the cloud. I think the trend of how technology is making marketing evolve is very interesting.
People are talking a lot about personal branding. How has this concept changed with the introduction of social media and digital publishing?
Personal branding has been around for a very long time. As I said before, personal branding was only available with you actually making a website with your name as the URL. Now, personal branding with social media is becoming more powerful because with social media you just create social media platforms and you can be out there in minutes, there are no Adwords or PPC Campaigns that you need to do to improve it. It’s very powerful. There are a lot of influencers that don’t even pay Google a dime for them to be out there and they have millions of followers, even more than any other company. Social media made personal branding possible.
What would you recommend to people who are trying to change careers and enter the marketing world?
I think they have to be passionate about technology. They have to be people who can’t stop learning, one topic isn’t enough. A good marketer in today’s world is someone that knows a little bit bout everything, not only one concept, not only social media, not only how a website works. A digital marketer today needs to understand the back-end, the technology, everything that is driving the marketing. They need to understand SEO, they need to understand PPC, email marketing, social media. Everything. A digital marketer has to be well rounded if they want to have a chance in this industry.
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