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In March 2024 I turned 81 years old and I asked myself the question:

Would it be fair not to share my professional marketing experience of more than half a century (57 years) with other specialists in Banking marketing and Dental Marketing?

The only answer I found was that:

It would be unfair to the new generations and to the professionals with whom I share my profession of marketing, advertising, selling or whatever you prefer to call it.

So, let’s have a peek in my professional life:

Letting myself be guided by intuition and assuming them in each case.

It hasn’t been easy!

But it has been very revealing and what has followed made me improve my ability to respond to life’s challenges based on:

Learning, learning and learning;

This strengthened my self-confidence.

When I was sent to secondary school in Barbados, as a result of my parents’ vision that:

As an only child, 14 years old, it was quite traumatic for the family and upon returning, with an age of 19 years old, I had to revalidate my secondary education degree in Venezuela, to enter university.

Like every high school graduate, I had no idea what to study,

So, I entered in university to study psychology.

Thanks to my hobbies with mechanics and electronics,

I had a good job and that’s how I paid for my studies and was able to support a family; working as an industrial technician in a pharmacological laboratory.

As recent graduate I got a job as a “door-to-door” seller of “Savings passbooks” in a non-profit Credit Union that financed housing.

And selling led me to enroll in the “School of Advertising and Marketing”, founded in Venezuela by a group of the best experts in the field; to learn marketing, advertising and selling.

There I was, 11 years of my life in the Credit Union and I would dare to say that I was one of the precursors of banking marketing in the world; since at that time the banking institutions, with few exceptions acted based in a tradition that came from their creation in 1157, in Venice, based on:

“Banks do not need to promote their self, since people will always come to request loans or save their money”: There are still many banking institutions who continue to think the same way today.

The Credit Union confided sending me to two universities in the USA, to take 2 postgraduate degrees from the “Institute of Financial Education”, on savings marketing, one in each university and in different dates.

And the CEO of the Credit Union authorized me to travel occasionally supporting the Credit Unions affiliated to the

“Inter-American Union of Credit Unions for Housing” (UNIAPRAVI), of which I was also its honorary Marketing advisor for a several years.

I already had a salary in the Credit Union and those who requested my presence assumed only the travel and accommodation expenses.

That promoted me even more and for free!

Can you imagine,

a financial psychologist?

Wow!

In those years, I discovered the importance of focusing totally on customers or clients:

Where, When and What to buy.

During those years, several innovators in the marketing, advertising and sales sector influenced my way of creating and adapting my marketing, advertising and sales strategies, among others:

  • E. St. Elmo Lewis (1896). The visionary who proposed the A.I.D.A. methodology. (Acronym for: Attention, Interest, Demonstration and Action) to be applied to sales and marketing.
  • Edward Louis Bernays (1928): Influenced by his uncle Sigmund Freud, who contributed the idea that many needs are there but: But unconsciously.
  • Rosser Reeves (1960): With the “Unique Selling Proposition”: That is, focus on the main advantage of the product or service offered.
  • David Ogilvy (1963): Stating: “When I write an ad, I don’t want to be told it’s ‘creative’. I want it to be so interesting that it compels you to buy the product,” reminding us that the purpose of marketing is to motivate the purchase, not to make “beautiful or creative advertising.”

This led me to focus on market research to fully understand the needs, attitudes, profiles and motivations of potential buyers.
In my case, for banking services and from 2008 also dental treatments.
The result in the Credit Union was to take it from the 6th position it had when I was contracted to the 1st position in 24 similar institutions, both in deposits and loans, in just 3 years.
In my Banking Blog, on this same site I will publish the experiences of those years.

I resigned from the Credit Union, which happened to be my first client, to dedicate myself to my own venture in Venezuela:

Conducting market research, consulting and marketing training.

I taught classes at my old “School of Advertising and Marketing”, converted into the brand new “University Institute of Marketing” (ISUM) and at several universities.
I will publish in my Banking Blog not only about banking marketing, but also marketing experiences in other sectors; since several Advertising Agencies hired me at that time to do specific and complex market research for their clients.

It had already happened during my tenure at the Credit Union, to support similar institutions in Latin America through the UNIAPRAVI, but:

Thanks to being bilingual, almost native…….

My parents who were visionaries:

And: They were right!

There came a time when news of my expertise spread and in 1982, I began to be called by the International Cooperation private providers to collaborate in projects paid by countries.

With a first client in Honduras, then it was Costa Rica, El Salvador and…….

Little by little and with time, I had more clients in 27 countries:

In Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Therefore, I also had close my business and suspend teaching in universities due to frequent travelling.

In summary, carry out a series of activities of Banking Marketing among which I remember:

  • Having been as by invitation professor in 5 universities in different countries,
  • Trained 2038 salespeople,
  • Taught 50 face-to-face courses in several countries and 30 real-time courses on the Internet,
  • Carried out 103 international marketing consulting projects,
  • Acted as a collaborative speaker in 33 congresses, conventions, seminars, discussions and other international events in person and on the Internet and
  • Made 30 publications in Spanish and English on marketing, advertising, sales, savings, credits and collections topics.

A lot of work, a lot of experimentation and a lot of satisfactions.

It all started when my international activities began while I was in the Credit Union and I required maintaining permanent contact

With the local responsible people of the projects in which I collaborated.

This led me to get me involved in the Internet and the takeoff of the beginning of the digital era.

I needed to have a delayed communication similar to the actual emails (But this service was born first in Microsoft Outlook in 1993, followed by Hotmail and Yahoo Mail in 1996 and Gmail in 2004) but needed to avoid the time differences from country to country, when reading messages when it was most convenient for the recipient.

It was a software installed on a PC turned on 24 hours a day/365 days in my house that automatically connected with a modem to the telephone line.

The Billboard only accepted ASCII text (Basic Text) and messages could be downloaded and uploaded as text files.

My clients connected with my house daily at any hour, and uploaded their messages and downloading mine.

I have been a fan of the “WordStar” word processor (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V) and the “Visicalc” spreadsheets; both from 1978,

You won’t believe me, I cried with joy when I started using them, it was a huge and wonderful qualitative leap to work, faster, effectively and efficiently

Today I use a more modern software and I dictate instead of writing.

From that moment until now, I have not stopped keeping myself updated with “Information and Communications Technology” (ICT),

It originated in my family environment:

My son-in-law is a dentist and decided to set up his Dental Clinic, he asked me to help him and that’s what I did.

This experience showed me the passiveness of the dental industry towards patients, claiming that their health career is a social and not a commercial activity,

Although reality, has shown that any graduate of a dental school, sooner or later, Will have to start setting up their own dental practice and therefore,

By basing Dental Clinics on a social issue and the self-perception of devaluing their brand, many dentist owners rejected the use of Dental Marketing.

Not only did I provide training and advice to Dental Clinics in Spain and Portugal, usually to owner dentists, it also included:

  • Being a speaker in several dental professional events in the sector,
  • Publishing in UdemyTM 2 courses: “Introduction to the commercial activity of Dental Clinics” and “Professional selling of Dental Implant Treatments”,
  • Giving talks at the university to final year students,
  • Researching the dental patient market,
  • Publishing for free the monthly the “Dental Marketing Letter” between 2009 and 2010 reaching more than 1,995 independent dental practices in Spain and Portugal with dental marketing information,
  • Emailing for free the “Tips” on several issues related to the dental marketing and management of Dental Clinics.

Incredible, but true!

Finally, now I am giving the:

8º turn of the rudder (2024)

For now, I am learning, practicing and working in inbound Marketing and Content Strategy in the Internet so that:

In addition to my experience in classic marketing, in the real world, to also develop myself in digital marketing, in the virtual world in the Internet,

Maybe, It may seem to you excessively optimistic on my part, but experience has taught me:

By adopting new technologies, marketing, advertising, sales and customer service in different economic activity environments and languages,  

Something that I already have been adapting before and improving it along the way and will surely happen now again.

For now, I am personally working on:

  • My website in WordPress.
  • Learning Inbound marketing, having taken a content strategy course at Davis University in California, USA.
  • Creating content (This Blog will be an example of my content creation).
  • Battling with the “keywords”.
  • Learning SEO (Search Engine Optimization – Search Engine Optimization) and.
  • “Fighting” with Artificial Intelligence (AI), to really see what it is about and its reach: All I know at the moment is that it’s a big business for the developers.