Digital Marketing
Based on an episode with Melissa Rodriguez 🇩🇴🇵🇷
Welcome to Latinx in Power, a podcast aiming to help to demystify tech, the way we do that is by interviewing Latinx and Caribbean leaders all over the world to hear their perspective and insights.
We talked with Melissa Rodriguez (she/her), the Founder & Digital Marketing Director at Social Media Relations and the President at Mel Rodriguez, an advertising agency based in LA. She has a bachelor of Science in Corporate Finance and Accounting & Global Perspectives.
In this episode, the focus will be on Melissa’s personal journey in digital marketing, as well as her insights and expertise in the field. We’ll learn how Melissa helps businesses identify key performance indicators and generate targeted traffic using digital marketing tactics.
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What does it mean to be a Latina for you?
I love this question so much because I know that being a Latina has changed my world’s perspective in so many ways. For me, it’s the foundation of growing up in a household that speaks Spanish first. It’s the food, it’s the bachata, it’s dancing in the living room. It’s the family that always gets together and is yelling at each other because they can’t hear each other. It’s the essence of who I am, and sometimes it’s really strong and dominant, and sometimes it’s really quiet and submissive in how I show up.
I used to think that everybody was this close to their family until I have other friends with different backgrounds, and family is not in their top values. It’s not one of the key factors in their lives. And I couldn’t believe that because I was like, “This is all I know.” Now I understand, it’s just that some people are raised differently. A family is just a function, it’s not really full of attachment and love. It can be good and it can also be detrimental. If I go two days without talking to my mom, she thinks that I fell off the face of the earth. I’m the worst daughter in the world, and how could I even think of it? It’s so bad.
Can you tell us how everything started?
Well, how everything started for my business is a little bit different because I worked in corporate finance and accounting. I worked in public accounting, Ernst & Young after college. My background is actually in corporate business. I went to business school, although I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I just didn’t know how because I didn’t have any examples of that in my life. And so, starting in corporate was the right path for me. I moved to LA, I think after five or six years of working in a corporation.
When I came to L.A. I had a lot more space for my family. They live in Boston and I am now 3000 miles away. I was able to start to think and think about what I want to do with my life. Is this what I’m happy with? And that’s when I really started to unlock my creativity in a way which I believe is the path to everybody’s destiny is creativity. And so, the more I unlocked that, I started a blog, and that blog led me to see the opportunities in social media and led me to see what trends are happening in the world and how the world with technology is shifting. And I got a couple of clients.
My first client was 100% free and I had no idea what I was doing, so it was a total disaster. That allowed me to learn a lot too from that level of failure and that level of failure is a great lesson because you never want to repeat that feeling again. And so from there, I felt confident to get more clients and I quit my job and I went all into my business. I started first with just all markets, and then I got a great coach who gave me good guidance. Then I went into Hispanic marketing, which is now really my bread and butter is Hispanic marketing, helping brands connect with the Hispanic consumer. And that’s what I do now.
Do you always have this entrepreneur sparkle or has someone inspired you? How was this process?
I now know that I’m a very courageous person and I believe that courage is a really important element in our psyche, in who we are, human nature. For me, it’s not that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, it was that I always allowed myself to listen. And so, when I was in my career, I was committed to going all the way. But I knew that if for some reason it didn’t feel right at any point that I would have the courage to walk away. When it started to feel like a drag, when work really started to feel like it was sucking the life out of me, which, by the way, for the record, I had an incredible career. For five years, I loved my career because I felt lucky to be there. I knew that I was fortunate. But then in the last year, I realized I felt more passionate about my blog than I did it with my career. While I had a few clients that made me feel like, “Okay, it’s not as much money as I make, but I think I can figure this out.”
For me, it’s more about feeling good with myself and my life and the choices I make and not letting my present identity control that too much. Like allowing myself to shift identities. And if it’s an entrepreneur today, great. If it’s an artist tomorrow, even better, I’m not attached. Well, we all are to a certain degree, but I’m not so attached that I’m afraid to let it go. And that entrepreneurship kind of came out more as a result of where I was in my life and knowing that something had to change.
What was this blog about?
I love my blog. It was called Adventure Self. And then it had all these categories like adventure, mind, adventure, body, adventure, heart, adventure, soul of yourself. And it was a project of love with my best friends in Boston, because I missed them when I moved to California, and I wanted to stay connected to them and so we started this blog where we would all write articles around these different buckets. The blog forced me to learn SEO. It forced me to learn how to drive traffic to a website, how to build a social media page to promote the blogs. And so, that labor of love really was what opened my eyes to digital marketing.
Personal projects are so telling of a person’s character. At the end of the day, what I’m seeing and realizing is that a lot of people waste a lot of time. We allow TV to distract us. We allow going out to distract us. It is admirable when somebody chooses to sacrifice something like TV or watching social media all day to actually create something, to me, that is the most beautiful gift that you can give the world to sacrifice your own short-term pleasure for a long-term contribution to the world that they can benefit from. Unfortunately, that’s only like 1% of the world. Unfortunately, 99% of the world is really comfortable watching TV, social media, and consuming social media all day because they don’t want to create. They just want to stay in their comfort zone. And that’s okay if they’re happy. And so, ones that are unhappy that have to shift something.
If someone really wants to get into digital marketing, what do you think they should start doing? What would you say to this person?
As far as digital marketing goes, I would probably ask why first. Why do you want to go into digital marketing? What is your objective and what is the desired end result? Too many people go into something without knowing what they want to get out of it. I can give you the 10 different ways you can start digital marketing. And that all 10 will be correct depending on your why and what you want to get out of it. So, it’s just for me, it’s senseless to do too much. I think it’s important to be intentional and just focus on the activities that drive the result you want. That might include one element of digital marketing. It might include one element of organic marketing and traditional marketing. I think that’s the results you’re going to get, they’re indicators of the recipe you should use.
For example, an element for a blog is search engine optimization. If I were you, I would spend a lot of time understanding search engine optimization. How do I rank my blog so that it shows up on search engines? That’s what that means, by the way. And it’s shorthand for SEO. And then another element I would ask myself is, “If I want to drive traffic, if I want to get new readers, how do I increase my collaborations with other traffic sites that have high traffic?”
I would make a list of all of the sites that I think would be interesting collaborations that I could add value to, that they could add value to me, and I would reach out to them, and I would connect with that community. Again, depending on what you want. If you want brand partnership deals, then I would make a list of the brand partnerships you want to work with, and I would get their contact, and I would reach out to them and I would pitch it. So, those are three different ways that you can leverage digital marketing to accomplish similar results, but as you can see, it’s going to be a different end result.
I think intention is what I feel is the most powerful in anything. Ask yourself, “What is my intention with this project? Why and what do I want to get out of it? Whether it’s me just releasing and word vomiting myself and just getting my diary out there, that’s one intention. But if my intention is to reach a million humans, that’s a completely different intention. So, intention will dictate your outcome most of the time.
What motivates you to continue working every day?
I’m not motivated every day. I’m just not. It’s the truth. I literally love having days where I do nothing, and then I have one day when I can’t stop working. For me, it’s understanding the way I work. What motivates the days that I do work is I just feel like a creator. I don’t even feel like it’s work anymore. I just want to create. I want to create more than I consume. So, some days I consume a lot, and I feel heavy, and I feel dragged. But the days that I create, I light up. I feel light, I feel inspired, I feel fulfilled. So, what motivates me is that feeling that I get when I’m creating. And that took me a long time to learn because I used to put everybody else before me, and that’s a very Latinx symptom of ours. Is this martyr concept where we have to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good, of what? I don’t know because at the end of the day, if we sacrifice ourselves, then we have nothing else to give and so, I had to shift that in a major way and say, “If I don’t put myself first, I can’t contribute, I can’t give, I can’t work.” And that allowed me to feel okay with resting a little bit more and I still struggle with that sometimes too. We got to fill our cup first.
How is your process when you are developing a marketing strategy for a new client? How does it work, usually?
We start with the goals, right. We start with what we are trying to accomplish here. What are our key performance indicators? What are we going to use for measurement? Is it sales? I’ll give you an example of a client that I worked with. They made construction materials, like construction bags, tote bags, and lasers, and they sold them at Lowe’s, and their goal was to drive more foot traffic to that store.
For that, we had to think about who’s their target audience, who do we want to be purchasing these products. And we had to dive really freaking deep into their target audience. We had to really understand what their likes, what their dislikes, what drives them to buy these products, and what drives them to go into the store. And so, from there, once we understand who we’re targeting, that’s number two after you understand number one, which is your goals. So, number one is goals, number two is target audience.
Once you know that, then you’re going to create the messaging, “How do I speak or write words in a way that captures the attention of this audience and inspires them to try our products or to go to a store and buy our products.” And then number four is a campaign. “What kind of campaign can I create that will bring all this together in a way that is fun?” So, with this client, we did a truck giveaway and so we did a huge sweepstake and we knew that our target audience drives trucks because they’re in the construction site all the time.
And so, for us, what we were able to do is create a sweepstake that said, “Hey, if you buy a product from the store, you submit your receipt, you can enter for a chance to win a truck.” And so that was really fun and it allowed us to be loud, it allowed us to get our brand out there and it allowed us to collect tens of thousands of emails from this one simple entry. And it was really fun to get the footage as well. You should have seen it, it was like a guy in his family in the Midwest and he won the truck. We got a whole filming of it. It makes it real. He drives around with that truck now every day of his life. And I’m sure he feels so much support and loyalty for the brand as a result.
Do you have anything you want to share with us in terms of resources?
There’s so many resources that are free. I believe that YouTube is such a great platform that’s still underutilized to watch content and to learn any topic you really want. I think that it depends on what you want to learn. If you want to start a business, watch more YouTube videos. I would probably say focusing on a high-income skill is key in life and so I would say think about what kind of problem you like to solve because life is full of problems, so we might as well pick the one we want to focus on. And what kind of skill is required to solve that problem. And look up everything you can, any resource, any teacher.
I love people like Alex Hormozi, I love people like Gary Vee in the marketing world. I love consuming the professionals that I feel like have accomplished something. Codie Sanchez does a really great Boring Business YouTube channel as well, in terms of how to start a boring business and make money, meaning like laundry mats or vending machines. It’s just a matter of what problem do you want to solve in the world. As a result, what skill do you need to acquire to solve it?
For anyone that’s listening to this, that is stuck and doesn’t know what their next move is in their business, or if they feel like they need to get a career change, or they just feel like they know they want to start a business but they don’t know how and they don’t know where to begin. I do offer one-on-one VIP sessions and I also offer them in group sessions. And so, if there’s any entrepreneurs here that feel called for that and want guidance from someone who’s already built a seven-figure company herself, who knows a couple of things in terms of the startup world, I would love to connect with you.
I hope you enjoyed the podcast. We will have more interviews with amazing Latinx leaders the first Tuesday of every month. Check out our website Latinx In Power to hear more. Don’t forget to share comments and feedback, always with kindness. See you soon.
Additional Reading Mentioned in the Interview
https://www.melrodriguezandco.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/melrodriguezandco/
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