The Transformation of Marketing: New Challenges and Opportunities

- The other part of the big digital trend we're seeing,
housing all the data in one place
and using predictive analytics.
Like, what I mean by that is you get all this data
and insights from all these advertising,
what do you do with that?
(upbeat music)
- How has been the trip for speeches
and in the contract with our company here in Brazil,
now you have a branch in Brazil, so how been that?
- So event's been good, this has been fun.
I speak quite a bit in Brazil.
(computer chimes)
This is probably my 15th time in Brazil.
- Whoa.
- I've been everywhere, Florianopolis, Belo,
Sao Paulo, Goiania, Porto Alegre,
I've literally been everywhere, Brazilia, and--
- What's your favorite place here?
- I like Sao Paulo.
I know most people say Rio, but I like Sao Paulo.
- And like Caipirinhna.
- Yeah, Caipirinhna, I've had that many times.
I had a lot in Florianopolis.
- You better drink from the Americans.
- Nice beaches, yeah, beautiful place.
- And business here is good,
I know the economy is a little bit tougher,
it's slowing down,
but I think we have around 160 people now in Brazil
focus on the Brazilian market.
- Nice, that's nice.
So you are one of the couple influencers,
if I can say that,
and that it's one of the most influencers right now.
And you started from nothing from zero ground.
And what caused my attention is that
what you sell is exactly what you do
with yourself in person.
How is that, can you please briefly tell your history
for our audience
and say a little bit of how tough is that
to be present in the all platforms
and try to please yourself as an influencer
for marketing industry?
- It's a lot of work.
It's being on majority of the platforms,
participating, caring, trying to help people out.
It's a lot of work, but if you love what you do, it's fun.
- Good.
- And I always tell people nothing worthwhile is easy.
If you really want something and you love it,
it's going to take a lot of effort.
But if you are really passionate about it,
you'll put in the time and energy that's needed
to accomplish your dreams and your goals,
it just takes time.
- How many time you start you're in internet?
- I am 37, I started when I was 15 1/2,
so roughly 22 years.
- Wow, and what's the difference there for nowadays
and the way you have to move yourself in the internet?
- So, when I first started, it was very easy.
No competition, not too many platforms.
You don't have to do much,
you can get results within a month,
two months, three months.
Now, lot of platforms, lot of competition,
and the algorithms are much harder.
So it takes a lot longer and a lot more work
to get the results.
- Wow, nice.
And how do you see the environment
of digital marketing changing?
How do you see the industry,
how does it's becoming the solution
and how companies are interacting
with the new way to do marketing?
- Yeah, so we see digital as a future.
If you look at Google or Facebook,
they're bigger than any of the traditional media companies
by a lot, and it just shows is because it works.
The future of digital is omnichannel
and using predictive analytics to figure out what's next.
So here's what I mean by that.
Right now people do multi-channel in Brazil at least.
Multi-channel it is, you're on Twitter,
you're on Facebook, you're on Instagram,
you're on Google, you're everywhere.
Omnichannel is, you're everywhere, you're on Google,
you're on LinkedIn, Twitter, et cetera,
but the difference between omnichannel and multichannel
is omnichannel, the channels work together.
So you take what you learn from Facebook
and you apply it to Instagram,
you take what you learn from Instagram,
you apply it to Twitter,
you take what you learn from Twitter,
you apply it to Google.
In omnichannel, you're taking your learnings
and making all the channels better.
In multi-channel, which is what we mainly see in Brazil,
everyone does all the channels, but they do them separately.
They don't have a cohesive strategy
and they're not using data to make them work together.
If you use the data to make them work together,
you get more results,
you spend less money and you make more.
- You think that it's important
put here offline channels like stars and et cetera--
- Yes.
- Or I have one strategic for online channels?
- No, no, you should have one.
You should have a strategy for digital,
you should have a strategy for offline,
but they should also work together.
You can do both, look at TOTVS,
they do really well digital, we work with them,
they're amazing customer.
We've helped them grow their traffic on digital by a lot.
And they also do offline.
You go through airport in GIU Airport,
you can see TOTVS advertising,
you can do offline and online.
You just got to make them work together.
- And TOTVS is more B2B company.
So we normally, we are used to see B2C solutions--
- [Neil] Correct.
- Companies using the solutions more properly, so B2B--
- It works too.
- Yeah.
- But if it works for B2B, it should easily work for B2C,
which it does work for B2C as well, we see both.
There's a lot of potential with both.
You just got to make the channels work together.
Marketing is not about offline or online,
everything is going digital.
Even in the United States with television advertising,
a lot of it is now transforming into digital,
Hulu, Netflix, Roku,
it's all starting to become digital, right?
- Yeah.
- In which you can use digital platforms
to buy television ads now too.
And you can even start tracking
the television ads too through digital.
- It's the similar approach,
Facebook ads or Google ads inside the television.
These small companies can acquire views in television.
That's the idea.
- Exactly, and think of it this way, even with offline,
if I do add in the airport and I'm TOTVS,
I can end up using a QR code so people can scan
with their phone and you can know which ad they came from,
because you can track it, right?
You can tie it all in together, and that's what I mean.
The other part of the big digital trend we're seeing
that Brazil is going to adapt soon is,
(computer chimes)
housing all the data in one place
and using predictive analytics.
Like what I mean by that is you get all this data
and insights from all these advertising,
what do you do with that?
And people need to take action,
but it's about putting it in one place
so you can better understand the data and then take action.
- Well, that's interesting.
And how about the algorithms of those platforms?
They keep changing, they have to adapt
and we have to test and switch, what's your advice for that?
- Yes, but I'm going to give you one thing
for most of the platforms, okay?
For YouTube it's how well does a video do in the first day.
So when you put a video on YouTube,
in the first day, send out emails, text messages,
tell everyone to watch it.
If you get a lot of views in the first 24 hours,
the video keeps doing well later on.
- Oh, that's nice.
- With TikTok, it's comments,
how can you get engaging comments,
and the more engaging comments on your video,
the more viral your content goes.
Even if the comments come two, three days later.
LinkedIn though it's comments ideally
in the first four hours of the post going live
and the comments need to be at least 12 words
and they need to be engaging as well.
Facebook, we see a massive increase in views
if your videos are over five minutes long.
Videos that are shorter than five minutes long
get much less reach,
so with Facebook have five minute plus long videos
with, what is it called?
Instagram, they say live videos according to Earth Web
is more valuable than blog content.
And in live video is supposed to grow by 5X,
I think it's 5X, five or 15X is by a law within five years.
And Instagram is lacking live videos.
They want users to go live more, so if you go live more,
it'll help you get bigger audiences,
go live with other influencers like you
and then you'll get more followers.
So then when you post more of your content,
other people will see it.
Google, it's about brands.
If you release free tools on your website,
your brand will grow faster,
which will make all your Google rankings go higher.
- That's really nice. - It makes sense.
- Is there any chance to change these rules right now?
Because they are, there's a lot of competition across those.
- We have a big war between social media, Twitter, TikTok.
- But these tactics that I just gave you
will work for the next year plus.
This is what's working really, really well right now.
- That's nice, that's nice.
And well, early my career I was procurement executive.
And I was hiring agencies for Procter and Gamble,
Unilever, PepsiCo.
So big companies here in Latin America.
And it's always a challenge to bring traditional agencies
going deep into the digital.
So that's why there are new companies like NP
raising in this market and it's totally new.
So how do you see the traditional agencies
adapting themselves versus the new ones with more,
your site to this business?
- Yeah, so we know a lot of the traditional agency owners,
the way they're trying to adapt is to buy the digital ones.
So then that way they can have a arm
that focuses on digital.
That is what most of them are doing.
They're struggling to adapt themselves,
but that's why they're doing a lot of acquisitions.
So then that way they can have that capability.
So like at my agency, NP Digital,
we've already gotten hit up
by a lot of the traditional agencies
like the WPPs, et cetera, saying,
hey, how do we work together?
Are you interested for selling?
I just got a message on LinkedIn yesterday saying,
"Hey, are you interested in selling to Havas Media?"
I responded with no, right?
But you get a lot of messages.
A lot of the traditional ones are buying the digital ones.
- Nice, we talk about content,
we are content creators as well.
- [Neil] Yeah.
- So how do you see these environment right now?
Influencers, content creators
and brands poison their brains in those spaces right now?
- It's the future.
People love content.
Content creators are going to control more of the web.
And what you're going to end up seeing is,
brands are going to want to associate with influencers
because it's driving a lot of sales and brand visibility.
What you guys are doing is a future.
- And many CEOs start to do content
in many social medias like LinkedIn.
- Yes.
- We have CEOs and people
that work inside the corporate market doing the content.
When you think about this,
that that's the future, it's correct?
- It is the future, I think it's correct.
And you also see a lot of employees.
If I was an employee starting at a company low level
or even mid-level,
I would create a lot of content on my social media
for the company and myself,
because it increases my brand,
it makes it easier for me to get better jobs in the future
and get more promotions.
- Nice, in the past we talked
about a lot of campaign tropicalization.
Like we have big companies and use the same campaign
and we have to tropicalize in Brazil,
we are a tropical country so it shouldn't be that hard.
But this is a word for adapting the campaign
for those countries.
Do you see some game change on that with the digital?
So using local influencers or more global campaigns.
- And how we can plan this.
- Yeah, so you got to plan it.
You got to create your content calendar,
your marketing or promotional calendar.
And you ideally want to use the local influencers.
So for Brazil you can use someone big like Neymar,
but Neymar is better for Brazil than for United States
because more people in Brazil love Neymar
because he's a soccer god in Brazil, right?
- Yeah. - Exactly.
- So you want to localize it.
You can use big influencers,
but ideally you want to use influencers
that are well known within that region.
So, like you can use Michael Jordan,
he's better for United States
versus Neymar would be better for Brazil.
Even though everyone knows Michael Jordan in Brazil,
they still prefer football, right?
So they're going to prefer Neymar.
So you want to adapt to the local regions.
- I like both, so.
- Yeah, they're both-- - Whatever.
If you put both together so that we will be--
- Even better.
- Yeah, even better, even better, but more expensive.
- More expensive.
- As a procurement guy executive
I would say, no, no, no.
- No, no, yeah, one, only pick one.
- Or maybe someone that's growing their career.
- Or you say pick one and if it works
then you can have the other one.
- Yeah, or wait until the end of the World cup.
Let's see who's the champion,
so maybe we can use some other.
But of course Brazil is going to win
and so we will have to stick with Neymar, probably.
- But these two guys have millions of followers
in your Instagram or TikTok.
And when you talk about the nano creators--
- Yeah, the micro ones.
- Exactly.
- What do you think about this is a good strategy
using many nano creators that have many followers?
- It's better.
- But it's more a specifically.
- Yes, what you're saying,
the nano influencers that have specific audience,
it's better to have 100 of those than one big one
because sometimes a big one doesn't work.
But when you have a lot of the nano ones, it's more cheaper.
You can see which ones work
and then keep using the ones at work
and then stop using the ones that don't work.
That's a better strategy.
That's what we use.
For really big corporations that we work with,
we do the nano ones and the big ones.
But we typically like starting with the nano ones
show results, and then you go after the bigger ones
that cost more money.
- Imagine that you need to start your company now,
you don't have nothing, the digital content--
- No site, no.
- You don't have nothing,
what channel will you start in your strategy?
Google search, Instagram?
- For Brazil-- - For Brazil.
- I would start with Google search and do SEO
because it's one of the least
competitive channels in Brazil.
And it has so many, just so they did, MIT did a study,
people found that search was five times more valuable
for people than email and more than 50 times valuable
than social media.
- Whoa.
- So search is super powerful
even though it's not sexy, it's powerful.
And it's not that competitive here in Brazil
for the SEO side.
Look, anytime you do a search on Google,
do you click on the paid listings at the top
or the free ones?
Which one do you click on most of the time?
- Yeah, you're right.
- You're going to click on the free ones most of the time.
Not the ads.
The ads, they're selling you something.
The free listings
is where you're getting a lot of the traffic.
- Got it.
- And after the search,
what are the second stage that you do?
- The second channel is, I would build up an email list
and create a big email list in Brazil.
The third channel is,
I would start with paid advertising, Google and Facebook.
Fourth, I would do all the social media channels
and do like organic social.
- That's cool.
And then how do you see the future of digital?
What's changing in this industry
that we have to keep our attention
and try to combine our efforts?
- The future of digital
is going to be much larger than traditional.
It's just going to take more time in Brazil.
But the future of digital is massive.
And what we're seeing is companies in Brazil
are starting to learn omnichannel marketing
where they're on all the channels
and they're learning to use it together
to actually help improve the overall campaigns.
And in Brazil we're also seeing the future
involving a lot of data and analytics.
Most marketing in Brazil is, I spent the money,
I'm creative, it looks good, okay.
But what are the results?
How much revenue did it drive?
This is super important because every company has budgets.
Did you waste your money or did you get better results?
See, if your budget is 10 million rays a year
and you can show that the 10 million
made you 100 million rays in revenue.
Then you can get approval for 20, 30, 40 million rays.
And then you can grow much more by using data.
- That's cool.
And when we talk about content,
as we said like podcasts, et cetera.
And we have seen that there are brands
or companies that want, generate leads,
create leads instantly if possible, of course,
we saw some case here in Brazil that the announcers
and they were having the ROI while the live was happening.
- Yeah.
- And that's not live commerce.
And on the other hand we saw companies
that are investing more on brand building,
they want to be present in a strategic conversations
or deep subjects, and that's matter to them.
What's the balance of brand building?
- You need to do both.
It's not one or the other, you need both.
- Nice.
- If you look at shoes, everyone in Brazil wears Nike shoes.
It's because it's a brand, everyone knows Nike.
Just like you may end up using Newbank as a credit card
because they have the brand, right?
- Yep.
- But at the same time,
you need also do digital advertising that drives revenue.
You need a combination of both.
I say you should spend majority of the efforts on digital,
but 10, 20% should be on branding.
(computer charming)
And also the digital.
- Even that time start top in--
- A small business, yeah.
- A small business.
- Small business.
- We need to do them both.
- You need to do both.
But what you'll find is even the performance,
like the digital, it helps with branding as well.
because if people keep seeing the ads,
even if it makes you money,
they're still seeing it and it's still branding.
They all help with branding.
If you're really, really small
and you have very little money,
start off with the performance.
Make sure that the digital, for every dollar,
every ray you spend, you make two, three, four, five rays,
so it's profitable.
And then as you have more money,
you can start getting into more branding,
if you're really small and you don't have much money.
- That's interesting and fun
because we've seen in Brazil
now are trains of companies launching products.
- [Neil] Yeah, product launch.
- And you have to keep--
- Yeah, like the Eric Rohoshe model where they--
- Exactly. - Yeah.
- They do a lot of product launch.
- Jeff Volker. - Yeah.
- Versus having a platform
that you can sign for a service, et cetera.
Those are different--
- What do you think about these?
These both strategies.
- They're both good, there's nothing wrong.
Apple does product launches.
- Yeah.
- But there's a lot of companies
that don't do product launches like Salesforce
and it works out well.
There's no right or wrong way, they both work.
It's preference, what do you prefer is what you do,
but there's no right or wrong.
- And the way to operate in the digital marketing
is different, right?
- For product launch, yes.
Because you got to build up a lot of demand and--
- With the space.
- Buzz and then you launch,
with the other one you spend as you see results.
- That's cool.
And how do you see the changes in Twitter?
- Exactly.
- For Elon Musk and--
- Elon Musk has done very well as entrepreneur,
I never bet against him.
I think he's going to have a lot of work cut ahead of him
and I think he's trying to build this amazing
all in one platform.
He's talked about it a little bit
but time will tell with Twitter,
I think it's a little too early.
I think he's dealing with a lot of governments
and regulations and people with privacy
and all this kind of stuff.
So, it'll take a long time
before we see good change from Twitter.
I think it'll take six months to a year.
- Wow, wow, yeah, it's a turnaround
and they were bleeding and now they have to figure out.
- He cut a lot.
Yeah, he's going to have to clean up a lot of stuff.
It's a lot of work,
but I believe he can do it, he's smart.
- And have money.
- Yeah, he has a lot of money.
- He's rich.
- Yeah.
- He's the richest person in the world.
- Exactly. - Yeah, exactly.
And what's your managerial style?
How do you see yourself early in your career as a worker
and now as an executive entrepreneur?
- There's not much of a difference.
The big thing that I learned over the years
being a business owner
is you need to help other people succeed.
And I wish I knew this when I was working,
when I was much younger.
Because even if you're working in a company,
your goal isn't to just succeed yourself,
your goal is to also help other people succeed,
because if you can help your whole team succeed,
you'll do better as well.
You need to be a team player and look out for the company,
not yourself, that's how you win.
If you say, forget Neil, my name is Neil,
forget Neil, let me focus on making the company the star,
making sure they do best, that is how I do better.
You need to put other people first and help others succeed.
- What are the challenges they're facing now
in your company?
What are your objectives right now?
What are you seeking?
- Always hiring good people is hard.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Yeah, because there's so many people you got to interview,
find the right people, it's just a challenge.
In Brazil we have around 160, but when we hire,
a lot of times we have to train them in our methodology
because a lot of times
they're using the traditional strategies
which don't work too well for digital.
So we got to get them up to speed and get them right,
which takes time.
And it's also helping a lot of large corporations
understand the power of digital.
Once they start working with us,
then they're like, oh wow, these results are amazing.
Let me spend more and more and more,
but it takes a little bit of time and more convincing.
- And what are the type of people you're trying to hire?
Is there any particular knowledge or abilities, skills?
- Anything in digital marketing, email marketing,
conversion optimization, paid media, SEO,
all the channels, good at social media marketing,
we're looking for everyone,
we hiring a lot of people right now.
- If I'm starting my career now,
why do you think that the best time in learning
to work in digital market?
- The best way to learn is to start your own website
and test and experiment.
- Test and switch, is that working?
Keeps on-- - Exactly.
- Nice, as you did in the past, right?
- Yes. - Nice, that's nice.
- And now we see a big opportunity starting in United States
about the micro SaaS.
- Yes, small like the banana.
- Small, software as a service
to create a lifestyle of entrepreneur.
- You can even do that in Brazil.
- What do you think about this?
Do you think that is a good strategy?
- If you like the idea, you should go for it.
But I'd rather create a bigger company
because it's just as hard to create a nano or micro SaaS
as it is to create a big one.
So might as well create a big one.
It's almost the same effort, there's not much difference.
So might as well go for the big one.
- If you could turn back on time,
what would you do differently?
- Focus, I did too many businesses.
I wish I did my ad agency,
Neil Patel or NP Digital
and we have NP Digital Brazil as well.
But I wish I focused more on that
and not did as many other businesses.
- What was right or wrong in the past?
So you are building yourself, you are now--
- Yeah, no, but before I try to do two, three businesses
at the same time instead of one
and just focus and just put all the effort into one.
- And having the right people with you on that one.
- Yeah. - Yes.
- Makes a big difference.
- Yeah, and what do you recommend to our audience
in terms of lecture and reading books that inspires you,
to learning about this?
- I love or my blog neilpatel.com.
It's in Portuguese.
We have a Portuguese blog that teaches you about marketing.
- Have many, many content to like.
- Yes. - I follow that.
- I'm very fun about.
- And the other thing I would do
is watch a lot of YouTube videos
and go to a lot of conferences.
There's conferences like this
but there's a lot of YouTube videos in Portuguese
that teach you marketing.
- Yeah, that's great, that's great, anything?
- Excellent, well, about the DNVB,
the digital native brands,
what do you think about it?
It's still until time to create one DNVB
or now I need do offline star and digital stars?
- You can do offline end digital at the same time.
But look, with digital, the big thing with it is this,
how do you go out there
and just generate a ROI as quick as possible?
See with digital is trackable,
you can end up in the first day with your digital brand.
Why can't you spend money and see if it's working?
If it is, you put more, if it's not,
you go and you retest and you tweak and you edit.
- Yeah, and we see a big digital nature starting
and do a strongly growth like the Prime Drink.
- Yes.
- From KSI and--
- And then they go traditional,
but they do, a lot people do digital first.
And we think it's a smart approach
because it's less expensive.
You can penetrate markets quicker with digital.
- That's nice.
And being present in this kind of event
is good for networking.
Of course, there's an exhibition of NP here
and what kind of businesses can you,
or deals can you make here?
- Yeah, we're talking to quite a few large corporations.
We'll probably work with some big brands that are,
everyone here knows about in Brazil will share later on.
But yeah, events are good,
everyone should go to more events
just like how you guys are here, it's fun.
- And what's the plans for expansion
of the agency worldwide?
- Yeah, we just did Germany,
so we're now in Germany
and then we're going to soon launch France and Italy
and Portugal and Spain, so we're continually adding more.
- What is the strategies?
Franchisee or is the--
- No, no, no, we own it.
- You own it, wow.
- We own it in Brazil, we own it in Australia,
we own it in Canada, U.K, Germany, et cetera.
We own it everywhere, India, we own it.
- How many employees do you have?
- Around 800 total now.
- Oh wow.
- A little bit less than 800.
- And how to preserve or keep the quality level,
while you are expanding,
that sounds quite challenging, right?
- Yes, you just make sure that people are cultural fit
and have good experience.
Those two things.
We look for people who have already done it before
so they have the experience
and we look for people who are very like-minded
and culturally are a fit, believe in the same values.
- About the learning of your employers,
you have one strategy to do this when--
- We have instructors that help train and teach and educate.
- Inside the NP?
- Yes.
- Using your methodology and your culture.
- As we often say,
the culture is crucial for business, right?
- Yes, very important.
- Yeah, and can we have a quick spoiler
of what you'll share with the audience in the HSM+.
- Here's a quick spoiler.
15% of searches on Google have never been searched before.
- Whoa. - Whoa.
- And I'm going to show you how to figure out
what those searches are
so you can do your marking campaigns after those searches
because it's not competitive
and there's a lot of revenue to be made.
- That's amazing.
- Good hack.
- Yeah, good hack, good hack, good hack.
That's why I follow Neil on YouTube and other platforms,
guys, it's always a pleasure to hear those tips,
but it's not only to get those,
if we are not applying there's no effects.
- You need to execute.
Execute, execute, execute.
- Yeah, and that's--
- If you won't learn if you execute.
- Yep.
- And final question, some advice to our audience
and the people that works with us in our podcast hub.
- Yeah, the advice for your audience,
people working on the podcast hub is,
whatever you're trying to do in life,
be patient and keep doing it.
It takes a lot of time to get the results you want.
Life is long, be patient.
Don't give it six months, don't give it one year,
give it five, 10 years,
you'll accomplish what you're trying to do,
you just have to be patient.
- That's cool, thanks for being here,
that was a pleasure.
And enjoy your staying in Brazil.
- [Neil] Thank you.
- And our doors are always open.
- Thank you, and thank you for having me.
- Thanks for sharing your time with us.
- Yes, my honor,
I really appreciate it. - It's a big honor.