Meet the Member: Gabriela Park, Marketing Director, btwn

Meet Gabriela Park, a full-stack marketer with over three years of experience working with tech startups. She has helped grow over +5 tech startups through multiple growth channels and end to end marketing strategies.

About a decade ago, when social media came to be an essential part of everyone's lives and platform monetization formed, Gabriela decided that Digital Marketing would be the focus of her career - aiming to help companies grow through various digital marketing channels. In her current role at btwn, she leads Marketing Operations for a cutting edge technology that automates word of mouth marketing and provides a new marketing channel for companies to approach younger audiences.

Keep reading to discover Digital Marketing tools Gabriela recommends for smaller to mid-sized businesses, her view on highly coveted skills in today's marketing industry, and her perspectives on how her industry will evolve in 2021...

FACC-NY: What are some go-to Digital Marketing tools that you would recommend to smaller to mid-sized businesses in the FACC-NY community looking to vamp up their marketing?

Ever since I started working with small businesses and having been a small business owner myself, I swear by these tools:

• Mailchimp: Being that email marketing is so important, more than 80% of B2C and B2B companies use it. It is free for up to 2000 subscribers, and the starter plan is only $9.99/month. Email marketing is essential when trying to nurture those leads to become paid customers.
• Google Analytics: This free tool can help small business owners so much with all kinds of valuable data. Take, for example, an e-commerce store that has growing web traffic but only a 1% conversion rate. They can use Google Analytics to see if maybe the problem is in their checkout process page.
• Later: A social media scheduling tool that will help small-sized businesses stay organized by scheduling monthly content using this tool. They have a free plan that lets you schedule content for all your social media channels.
• btwn: The automated referral marketing solution developed by my team. A helpful tool for small businesses that want to leverage customer referrals to bring in more customers. We offer a free of charge tool that B2C companies can use to help them increase their sales through word of mouth. Small business owners try to focus on paid ads and sometimes aren't thinking of using something like referrals from current customers to grow their business.

FACC-NY: What skills make an effective digital marketing manager in today’s unique day and age?

I think a digital marketer in today’s unique day and age must be knowledgeable about SEO because it is one of the most effective ways to boost organic traffic. The ability to tell compelling stories and create campaigns that resonate with the target audience is also a valuable skill. It enables a marketer to connect with the target audience on a deeper level and use the right strategies to cater to their specific needs and preferences. Finally, data analytics and reporting are indispensable in the digital age as they allow a marketer to evaluate and understand the wide-ranging behaviors of today’s smarter consumers.

FACC-NY: How has 2020 changed your outlook on your profession? What does the future of marketing look like as we make our way into 2021?

I think 2020 has been a challenging year for all of us in business and personal life. I was one of the lucky ones that kept their job through the pandemic. I think for all the marketers, 2020 was a drastic change of pace that they needed to adapt relatively quickly. Marketing strategies are planned in advance for the upcoming year, so everyone had different campaigns in mind for March 2020. Marketing is very adaptive, and we can see that through all the COVID campaigns running at the beginning of lockdown.

Looking forward to 2021, I think marketers will focus more on making a personalized customer experience by using segmentation to divide their campaigns and target market. Because of job loss and consumers wanting to become more educated before committing to a brand, personalization, and word of mouth will play a huge role in growth.

FACC-NY: What made you choose such an offbeat, unconventional, and cool career?

I’ve always wanted to choose something that allows me to keep learning and growing, and marketing is such a fast-paced and exciting industry that is evolving and changing all the time. If you look at what marketing was like 15-20 years ago, before Facebook decided to monetize their audience, and what it is now, you can see how much it can evolve in a short time.

Marketing is about being able to relate to almost everyone around you so that is another exciting part that attracted me to the field.

FACC-NY: What recent marketing campaigns have inspired you?

I have always been a fan of Coca-Cola and its campaigns during the holidays. This year they did another one to revolutionize marketing. The campaign is not just about selling the product but bringing emotions and feelings that anyone can relate to in 2020, like missing someone during the holiday that cannot travel due to the new normal. I always say whenever I see one of their ads that they are doing great marketing.

Interested in connecting with Gabriela? Log into the FACC Member Directory to send her a message.