Digital marketing strategy: channels, data, and influencers in 2023

Executive overview

Most companies run multiple channels in isolation. Omni-channel marketing closes that gap by feeding learnings from each channel back into the others, reducing spend and increasing return.

Digital now outscales traditional media. The shift is accelerating — television itself is migrating to trackable digital platforms.

The core insight: using data to make channels work together produces more results for less money than running them in parallel.

Omni-channel vs. multi-channel

• Multi-channel: active on all platforms but each runs independently, no shared learnings
• Omni-channel: learnings from Facebook improve Instagram; Instagram improves Twitter; Twitter improves Google
• Offline and online should also be integrated — QR codes on physical ads enable full attribution
• Television advertising is becoming digital-first (Hulu, Netflix, Roku), making it trackable like any digital channel
• Brazil is still largely multi-channel; the shift to omni-channel is coming

Platform algorithm tactics

• YouTube: maximise views in the first 24 hours — send emails and texts at launch; early traction drives long-term reach
• TikTok: comments drive virality, even if they arrive two or three days after posting
• LinkedIn: comments within the first four hours matter most; comments must be at least 12 words
• Facebook: videos over five minutes get significantly more reach than shorter ones
• Instagram: go live frequently and co-stream with other influencers to grow audience before posting regular content
• Google/SEO: publish free tools to grow brand authority, which lifts all organic rankings

Channel priority for a new business

1. SEO — least competitive in Brazil; MIT research found search is 5x more valuable than email and 50x more valuable than social
2. Email list — build it early and consistently
3. Paid advertising — Google and Facebook
4. Organic social — all channels, once the above are established

Influencer strategy

• 100 nano-influencers outperform one macro-influencer: cheaper, testable, scalable
• Run nano-influencers first to prove ROI; add macro-influencers once results justify the cost
• Localise campaigns — a Brazilian audience responds more to Neymar than to a global celebrity
• Create a content calendar that maps influencers to local market moments

Data and predictive analytics

• The next major trend in Brazil: consolidating all advertising data into one place
• Predictive analytics turns fragmented channel data into actionable decisions
• Showing revenue-per-real-spent unlocks bigger budgets — a 10M Reais spend that returns 100M earns approval for 20–40M
• Most Brazilian marketing is still evaluated on creative quality, not measurable ROI

Brand building vs. performance

• Both are necessary; neither works without the other
• For small or early-stage businesses: start with performance marketing until every Reais spent returns more than one
• Once profitable, allocate 10–20% toward branding
• Performance advertising also builds brand passively — repeated ad exposure creates awareness regardless of click-through

Agency landscape and digital adoption

• Traditional agencies are acquiring digital agencies rather than building the capability internally
• Large corporations take time to trust digital; results convert sceptics into bigger spenders
• Digital-native brands (DNVBs) benefit from starting online — faster market penetration, lower cost, trackable from day one
• Hiring is the hardest operational challenge: finding culturally aligned people with proven digital experience

Building a career in digital marketing

• Start a personal website and run real experiments — the fastest way to learn is to test and iterate
• Create content on social channels even as an employee — it builds personal brand and accelerates career progression
• Be patient: meaningful results take five to ten years, not six months
• Focus on one business rather than multiple; the effort required is nearly the same, the returns are not