During last week’s class, we received a visit from digital marketer Alex Rodriguez. Alex owns the digital marketing agency YMMY Marketing and through it, shares his passion of digital marketing by helping others achieve their goals. Alex was born in New York and grew up in the Dominica Republic where he began working at agencies and brands on the island before moving to Florida in 2000. His best-selling book, Digital Bacon, goes in depth on making your online presence work to the best of your ability. He also had the opportunity to do work in New York, which further helped him cultivate his profession.

In 2013, Alex was able to found his firm, YMMY Marketing, with an office in Downtown Tampa; It was nominated by Best of the Bay for the best marketing firm the same year. YMMY provides a wide range of services, all based around assisting clients in reaching their target and creating leads. They have a specific ‘recipe’ to ensure their clients become prime choices in the market, which consists of the following:

1. Based on reality: discovery phase
2. Aimed towards results: strategy phase
3. Creatively developed: production phase
4. Organized in propaganda: distribution phase
5. Numerically measured: analysis phase 

Their tactics don’t end here; YMMY’s about page shares more about what they can do to help grow your brand, as well as the option for a free online analysis. 

Through Alex’s presentation I took away a lot of valuable information, but something that stood out to me the most was the ‘6 phases’ ideal, which Alex explained was key to understand before the launch of an online idea/presence. The recipe begins with awareness, which I believe is the most important step. Without making your desired audience aware of your presence, it is impossible to move forward. Next is interest – getting your audience interested can be done in various ways, so it’s important to play around with this aspect and see what works best. Next is engagement; having your audience be aware isn’t enough – having them engage and interact with the brand heightens chances of more interest down the road. Moving on, we have expectation. What is it that you are looking to gain from this presence? Our final steps are action and referral; action moves the gears into motion and launches what you have been planning. Referrals are key to keep attention on your brand! This article shares a similar 6 stage process of marketing which is very valuable for beginners to follow along.

Overall, Alex Rodriguez gave quite an insightful presentation and allowed us to see how he slowly worked his way up to owning his own marketing firm, as well as a bit of what takes place within it.