David Pailin Jr. – How Quick Solutions, Primary Data and Social Media is Helping Businesses in 2021 and Beyond

Planning ahead of time has always proven to be a success for businesses globally, and data plays a crucial role in planning accordingly. This week's interview is quite interesting as we have one of the marketing leaders, David Pailin Jr., talking about how he and his exceptional team overcame all the pandemic-related challenges in their business by improvising themselves.
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David is the Principal at the TPC, i.e., The Plutocrats Club, since November 2020, in LA, California. He shares with us an interesting fact about the TPC. He says that TPC was started as a magazine as they looked for more creative ways to reach out to people.
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David says that he and his team realized that with time and experience, it would be great if they expanded from just a magazine and started into the advertising space, as that was what they were doing – especially with the interviews that they were hosting.
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The journey into the advertising field began in 2013 as a boutique creative agency, where they focused on digital marketing, website design, and individual branding.
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In today's Rediscover Marketing, we will probe into the importance of data being super-important in various ways and how improvising helped David and his team stay strong even during the pandemic blues.

‍Know David Pailin:

‍David Pailin Jr. is currently leading TPC as its Principal, where he worked as its Marketing Director for over seven years. He is also pursuing his MBA at UCLA Anderson, in the field of marketing.
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As a Marketing Director, David primarily worked with small businesses, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits. At Anderson, he’s got the chance to stretch his cross-functional team abilities, and is learning just how important strategic leadership is.
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David expresses that the processes of established companies and brands and his experience with many startups have given him a vast and comprehensive view of marketing and significantly pivoting in these uncertain times.
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He also shared that he is based in LA and recently moved here from Dallas. He says that he has many passions and is excited to explore all of them. He is also very optimistic for the future and looking forward to seeing how the vaccine brings the changes in the landscape.

‍Learnings from 2020: Team Work, Improvising, & Being Flexible:

David says that the established strategic plans they spent much time developing were gone out of the window. He shared the proud moment(s) he had when his team was not scared to take up challenges and always provided new solutions to new problems. He says that he has a flexible team that helps identify the new problems of our customers and clients.
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He emphasizes that at the end of the day, they are here for the customer and client satisfaction. The clients are definitely in a more uncomfortable situation than they are. He says that there are clients that were super excited about their business, but have decided that they can't move forward with this.
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David and his team were compassionate by letting their clients take the time they needed to be healthy. He believes that being compassionate in that space has led to their company's growth as they don't work with them, not forcing business, not forcing things so that everyone can be in a good place moving forward, as they knew things would get better.
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He thinks that many people were looking to see the humanity in companies, especially with so much going on. His team was always flexible and are critical thinkers who focus on the real goal and execute on that.

‍How is Data Helping Steer the Marketing Efforts in 2021?

We asked David if he has an effective process of regular review with his team? David shares that COVID helped them to be over communicators as everyone is working remotely. Their practice has always been creating primary data, and they always look at consumer trends and market research from Harvard business review.
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David says that his company's sales funnels are the best indicator as it helps look at what people are saying in terms of them being interested. He shared that he looks forward to this 'price point' that will help him start a service or start a business and leverage his company's social media. The data that is being looked at is: What type of content has been getting engagement? Where do we see a massive drop-off on our website? Clicks on a website or web pages and returning users, or the areas that were very popular beforehand but aren't getting any engagement here.
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He says that these data sets have been really important to him and his team. David communicates and responds as quickly as possible with the team, and they now have bi-weekly meetings and communicate on Slack.
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When we asked him how the data help his company steer the marketing efforts, here is what David said:
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'One of the ways that we use data is specifically narrowing the audience. So as a marketer and as one that teaches marketing, we have to genuinely be sure of the audience we have in mind. So who all are coming to our website and who's actually sitting in front of our faces once we are sitting down for a consultation. So when we look at the data, and we look at the demographics of those people who are coming to our website, and we look at the demographics of those who are engaging with our social media.'
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David shed light on how the free marketing and branding course, i.e., Free Game, was an intensive session geared for entrepreneurs, and small businesses had seen many participants that weren't aligned with their target audience. He shared that his company uses the data to not only create their target markets and target audiences but to go back and audit the results of any campaign that they've done to ensure that their strategy works.

‍Social Media v/s SEO – What is More Important?

We asked David for his opinion on what is more important – SEO or Social Media. And an ecstatic David says that both play a crucial role. He thinks that SEO strategy includes social media and believes that social media is a great way to enhance one's web presence. He says that there are some things that one needs to do with their website in terms of pictures and things in indexing that can enhance the overall search engine optimization.
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He shared that he prefers Social Media as it has become a trend these days. David says that with the ability to sell on Instagram or engage with the younger generations, like Tick-Tock, making one's social media an entire search engine focus is an art in and of itself. He believes that if he is asked to pick which to focus on, he will go with social media because it's just today's landscape. He also believes that one is dead in the water if they don't have a presence on at least one social media platform.
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David also shares that he could choose one to start his business, then he would start with social media and have a good SEO strategy with it. He shared that his company creates websites as one of its services and one of the things that they have to get inside a customer's mind is that the clients need to start with the end goal before they start building their website or social media. It is so because there's nothing worse than putting all the content and all the information out there on the web and then having to change it because the client doesn't like the handle.
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David suggests that one should start with social media because people usually already have their accounts, but should think of an SEO strategy to connect everything, especially when one wants to build the website.

‍Approach for Marketing Leaders in 2021 and beyond:

David has a few words of wisdom for all the marketing leaders out there for the year 2021 and beyond. He recommended that one moves forward with work with the changing landscape. He says that one should patiently listen to the front lines, who often have some of the best ideas, the best contributions, the best questions because they are right there in a transit trench and understand from a different perspective than you are. He believes that being able to listen to them and support them honestly to the best of one's abilities is going to be one of the best plans and best ways of being successful moving forward.
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He also says that to keep up in 2021 and beyond, where it's only going to get faster with the advent of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI), one has to have dedicated teams looking at that data and not only looking at the data but coming up with solutions as soon as possible.
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At the end of the interview, David says that sometimes one gets overloaded in the information age, but there's still a lack of knowledge. He says that sometimes people end up just stagnant and paralyzed in a certain state because they are the people around them who just hold the information or are just not aware.