Today we're bringing back an old regular blog spot, and highlighting one of our fantastic marketing colleagues, Mitchell Baptista with Catmo Media. We'll let his words speak for themselves!
1. Who are you and what do you do?
Mitchell Baptista, I'm an online advertising specialist. I use advanced advertising technology to help my clients reach their ideal audience. I go beyond Google and social media platforms, with Catmo Media clients have access to enterprise level experience and technology, for a boutique price point.
2. Tell us more about your background, related to this business (where did your passion came from), when and why you started this business and how rewarding is it for you to be doing what you're doing?
After Media Studies in Amsterdam I got sidetracked and had an exciting career in coffee. I worked as an event barista for a company in London and traveled lots, providing espresso bars on tradeshows and conferences. That's how I met my Canadian partner on a conference in Argentina. After moving to Calgary I realized that I missed marketing and media. So I got a marketing diploma through the Dutch institute for Marketing. After working as an email marketer for Talpa eCommerce in Amsterdam, I found my way to an advertising agency tin Calgary that specializes in location based targeting. There I learned how powerful the internet actually is. As I learned more about the media landscape and the industry, I had a desire to do things slightly differently, so I started freelancing. It's very rewarding to be in full control of my clients' advertising campaigns, to offer them a transparent pricing model, and to have the flexibility to be a dedicated dad.
5. Who are your main customers? Who are your best customers?
I've been focusing on companies that struggle with advertising because of the platforms' rules and regulations. That means health, wellness, and Cannabis. And I have had great success with a few eCommerce client. At the moment I'm aiming to connect with marketing directors or marketing managers, to explore how my services can compliment the efforts of in-house marketing teams.
6. What pain point do you solve for your customers?
Spending money on advertising can be risky if the campaigns aren't set up correctly, and if you're not tracking the right actions and conversions. On top of that, if you don't feed quality information back into the advertising platform's algorithm, your campaigns won't out-compete your competitor that does. So my job is to make sure the campaign structure and conversion tracking are on-point, so we can leverage the budget more effectively. Where social media platforms and search engines restrict targeting and measurement, my access to enterprise-level advertising platforms allows me to overcome those hurdles for clients. What that means is that I can target with laser precision when it comes to geographic location (e.g. competitors' locations, or certain postal codes), psychographics (attitudes, activities, values), demographics (income, ethnicity, family composition), or contextual elements (ads on websites or next t articles about specific topics). These elements can be stacked or layered to design audiences that perfectly align with my client's ideal customer.
7. What benefit do you provide in solving those pain points?
Enterprise-level knowledge, experience, and technology for a freelance price.
8. What are you struggling with right now?
Online advertising is very complex and can be expensive. My skill set really shines when I have the opportunity to work on large cross-channel campaigns with comfortable budgets. Programmatic advertising can be daunting, but most media professionals understand what it is. It is very hard to sell enterprise-level solutions like that to small business owners. My main struggle at the moment is finding connections to other marketing professionals running in-house teams that can benefit from my skills and expertise.
9. How can people help you at this point in your work?
It would be great if people can connect me with in-house marketing teams at large enterprises, or to business owners that struggle with getting their message to the right audience.
10. How can people best reach you?