Now we'll talk to Eric Santos, RD's CEO.
Eric, what days we had, right? It's always
exciting and inspiring. We are in the second half of event.
There's still a lot to come.
But, we've already seen lots of things.
Yesterday, we had your lecture,
we announced RD as a platform.
Could you tell us about that experience
of creating this community that is RD Summit.
How have these days been for you?
And how important is this to RD and to the market?
All right... Over the last days
I've been giving some interviews. Many people wanted to know
why to organize an event, why to invest in such an event.
And I told them it had to do
with my own learning and development process.
Because I am a voracious content consumer.
But, I also attend various events.
Because they offer experiences and knowledge
which are not explicit, or written or recorded by anyone.
But, mainly, they have an inspirational aspect.
Many times, you attend an event and we talked about this in another event.
You attend an event where you don't learn anything new,
but you were touched in such a way
that you are willing to create and implement things.
So, I think the role RD Summit had to us from the very beginning, was...
a double role:
To inspire the people who were already involved with this community
that we create online somehow throughout the year.
So, it is a virtuous circle.
We work with the community the whole year
on content. Then, that community makes
the event grow. The event grows, the community strengthens.
And again, we work on it the whole year, and so on.
That explains a little...
the fact that we went from 250 to 1,300, 3,300, 5,500 and now
8,000 people in an event.
That was the first role. The second role...
is an inspirational and engagement role.
And it's also a role for us in RD
to have an eye to eye relationship
with the client, with a partner with whom we talk
many times throughout the year.
But due to the business nature, we end up never meeting.
It's good for that.
And I think that community process is a result of that.
What may have come as a non natural consequence
I think it's to be well represented here in this business fair.
And these are companies
weren't necessarily in our radar in the beginning,
but they got interested in the community we are creating.
And today they are adding lots of value,
making the event be more powerful, with more content
because they are bringing here things we don't bring.
Things related to digital marketing, content, etc.
-Great -And that...
not counting the event's size, we moved from 300 to 8,000 people,
number of speakers, etc.
RD Summit reflects a lot what occured in the market somehow.
What do you think? What has changed
from 2013, when we started, up until now
in Brazil's digital marketing?
What are the next steps we expect?
Many things have changed.
And we certainly have some responsibility in that as well.
What has changed is that back in 2013
we had to explain why digital marketing was important
and how to start doing digital marketing.
And today the levels of maturity and demand,
even coming from the audience, is quite different.
So...
That is reflected in the lectures we have in this event.
And there are people entering such a deep and detailed level
that would be unthinkable in the past.
And we have this difficult mission,
but we must accept the challenge of doing both things at the same time
and continue introducing the digital marketing concept
for a gret number of new people coming
and who need to learn in the same way people in the past did.
But, with the guarantee that who is growing with us
is accessing new and differentiated things.
And sometimes, as I was saying in an interview with Ricotta back there,
bringing topics that are not related to digital marketing
Now we have Customer Success tracks,
sales tracks, management tracks, leadership.
So, I think part of our role is how to
help those companies to keep on growing.
and how we can help
not only with digital marketing, but with other things.
Things that every growing business must go through
and they will need that.
And if they don't solve these issues, there's no use for digital marketing.
Your lecture talked quite a bit about your vision for RD in the next years.
Not only what Digital Marketing will be
but also what RD is going to be.
What can people expect from us in the next years?
In what we are really going to invest?
And how is that going to help clients and people
who are in this ecosystem or community?
I think the lecture's central point,
and it applies to RD, but also to everyone else,
is that the major transformations only happen on the long run.
And they require a long-term vision, as well as
an inclination towards execution, to do things in day-to-day life.
Lots of learning and resilience
because we will face problems along the way.
So...
I tried to better elaborate the concept, and show what we did before
that allowed us to gather the results now.
And now we complete a 5-year cycle since
RD Station was launched in 2012.
Now we are plating seeds in order to
eventually be harvesting in the future.
There are five things that we consider essential
and we will be massively investing on them.
I'm not sure where we are going to be or how things will be in five years.
But, these are five clear directions for RD and RDoers,
partners, clients, and community as a whole.
Among them, we have some pillars, such as
talent development, which we are going to continue.
We'll invest even more aggressively in bringing top talents to the company.
But we will continue providing a differentiated experience
for their development.
We will continue investing a lot in Customer Success, in its different aspects,
not only in the Customer Success structure,
but all aspects related to customer experience
in order to deliver a top customer experience here.
And the other three pillars
that eventually had more expressive announcements.
One is related to the partner program.
We had officially announced a new partner program.
It was an almost 1-year project
which ended up being launched in the second half of the year.
It's been showing many developments. Many things are happening now.
And the most important thing is
this program grew in an almost organic manner over time.
Now, we require a better integration of the operation
and differentiated conditions so that partners grow together
and deliver Customer Success.
So, it's an important pillar.
The second pillar, which ands up representing a partners bottleneck
is the education and development work.
RD has always worked a lot of on education,
different contents and events.
But, now we're in a path to the structured development of people.
How can we train people in scale
and in an accredited manner?
In such a way that we can stamp a seal on that person
to ensure that all our players here
RD clients, partners who work with digital economy
have the staff to work in this business, and to continue growing.
So, information and digital marketing, plus
sales, customer success, management, product
and whatever comes over the next years
so that we can ensure that this doesn't become a bottleneck
to companies that are growing.
This was something we had to do in-house in order to continue growing.
And now that we hire 40 people a month,
if we weren't structured and didn't have a process,
RD would have stopped growing.
Finally, I think that the most important launching in this event
is that platform vision we brought to RD Station.
A vision in which we embraced another partner's ecosystem
which was created organically as well
but, so far, we hadn't paid due attention to them.
They are technology, integration partners,
who by their own decision or requested by clients,
started to plug their solutions to RD Station.
Then, we realized there was a very strong demand
to strengthen that ecosystem and embrace these guys,
bringing technical and commercial integration;
a real ecosystem and technology vision.
And many of the companies are part of the expo here in the Summit.
I am very happy to say that these companies
were just starting 3 or 4 years ago.
And today they are growing quite fast as happened
to us three or four years ago.
They are benefiting from that, right?
Eric, today our main product
is a marketing tool, RD Station Marketing.
And you are a guy who likes to look forward, to what is to come,
and this is also an important aspect of your role in the company.
What is to come in marketing in the next years
especially regarding RD Station Marketing?
What are the expected transformations
with that change of scenario we'll see in the next years?
I think we must pay attention to all that is changing,
whatever new things arriving, new aspects of consumer behavior,
and in people's behavior in general.
But, I prefer Jeff Bazos' position regarding...
people are very concerned about what is new,
changes that are coming,
but there is not enough concern
about what will remain the same in 10 years.
And then, to invest in things that will remain the same in 10 years.
Because our client will not wake up in ten years and say:
"God, I need a more complex solution",
or "God, I need a more expensive solution",
or "God, I need a less smart solution".
I think these are the main RD Station Marketing directions.
So, we are moving towards "how can I....
make the job of my clients and the professionals working with them
become simpler day-by-day, less repetitive,
more intuitive. So, simplicity is an important issue.
Integration, to have an integrated vision
of the clients' journey, which goes through different channels.
How to know that the guy talking to me by e-mail or social media,
is the same appearing in my site,
or contacting me through Google, for example,
or if he is the same guy I reach when I post a Facebook Ad?
So, having that integrated vision of a client won't change.
On the contrary, it will be increasingly more important.
Intelligence, how to provide intelligence to the client?
So, I am generating more and more data.
But how to transform that data into intelligence or sites?
And, eventually, into more automation over time?
Into more things that a machine can do alone
and help the client to have more results?
So, these are the things I see that won't change.
And finally, I talked about this in the conference,
we have to assume our role
of having world-class applications in every pillar.
We must have the best e-mail marketing software,
the best learning page software, the best social media software,
These are the directions we have in marketing.
Yes, embrace changes, embrace Whatsapp as a marketing channel,
embrace chats.
We must embrace them, and look at them.
But the trends change quite fast.
So, we must have more focus on things that won't change,
which will ensure that in ten years we'll be there, we'll be relevant.
Eric, a last question before we finish.
I have been here with you every day
and I know RD grew a lot. and it was not by chance.
We have a lot of work,
a lot of resilience, but also there are techniques.
There are many things behind it, a lot of concepts.
Besides working hard and going after things
someone opening a business or someone stuck
with a business for a long time that has shrinked or is moving sideways,
What are the steps or the things a CEO must pay attention to
in order to generate real growth in a business?
What should be put forth, what should be structured
so that the company grows again and generates good results?
I think that it varies depending on the stage.
The role of a CEO, especially in stagnation or initial periods
is much more related to building a growth machine,
building structures for marketing and sales, customer success,
as well as for the product, which is the business strategy.
With time, all these start moving to other people's hands.
and the CEO looks more at people, talents, the organization's design,
capital funding, among others.
What I think it's fundamental
as an approach, as a process
for any person, any CEO, any leader is
to be learing all the time, to be a freak for knowledge.
Because there is a lot of knowledge on the streets
and if you get exposed to it, you will get some necessary shocks
to create stress inside the organization.
That's important. I often bring things to the company that...
I won't say people were in a comfort level,
but we were OK with that.
And then we say: No, it's not OK.
We have to move to the next level,
because some people are doing these things there.
So, to be exposed to other realities and better practices
I think is important.
And to have an approach... You mentioned resilience.
An approach of improving every day.
10% every month will be 30 times in three years,
but how to avoid having to give giant steps every day?
But how can I do something a little better every day,
that in a long run compound result, can have a exponential behavior.
And a great way to be exposed to that is attending events such as RD Summit.
As I said in the beginning of my lecture,
this is where I invested the most money from my own pocket,
personal money for qualification I spent in events in Brazil and abroad.
This is my MBA.
I think it's a great and productive way to have both things
to have knowledge and be exposed to companies or people who are reference.
Great, Eric. Congratulations for your lecture
and for the long path until here.
I hope you enjoy the rest of the event.
-Thanks, guys. See you next time. -Thank you.
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