Meet Gustavo Geraldes, the Serial Entrepreneur Using Performance Marketing to Take Brands Skyward

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With the seemingly endless amount of new, online advertising platforms popping up every couple of years, it has never been easier to get distracted in the world of digital marketing. No matter if you’re an entrepreneur, working professional or marketer, the sheer volume of options at your disposal can quickly become overwhelming—from social media networks to advertising platforms to online publications. On top of that, because they are constantly in flux, these platforms often produce diminishing returns that vary widely based on one’s industry, audience and other factors.

One individual who has been able to cut through the noise and provide a solution to this problem is serial entrepreneur Gustavo Geraldes, founder and CEO of Milkit and many other ventures. Of Portuguese descent and now a U.S. resident, Geraldes’ online marketing expertise has given him the ability to help brands meet and exceed their goals. Milkit is a renowned marketing firm that uses performance marketing campaigns and tactics to drive real results for clients in a wide variety of industries—from e-commerce to the financial sector to insurance, healthcare, sweepstakes and real estate. By utilizing well-targeted, persistent direct response campaigns on Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Google, his own proprietary SMS marketing platform Sendii.io, and more, Geraldes has been able to drive millions of dollars worth of sales, countless website visits, email signups and other down-funnel results for his clients.

Over his career, Gustavo has won a number of different awards based on his performance marketing campaigns—including breaking a network record at Max Bounty (out of 20,000+ other affiliates) by earning the most money of any affiliate during their first year, generating over $1.1 million of revenue in 30 days on a lead generation campaign owned by Fluent—one of the U.S.’s largest advertisers, and more. In a landscape as riddled with phonies as digital marketing, it’s important to provide visual, tangible proof of your caliber as a marketer, which is why Gustavo chooses to display his many trophies and plaques on his Instagram account as he receives them. 

Applying The Same Principles To His Other Companies

One distinct advantage Geraldes has over other marketers when it comes to driving results for clients is that he’s not only the owner of Milkit, which drives high volume profitable traffic to advertisers, but he also uses the same skill sets to scale his other endeavors. In fact, the other companies he’s built from the ground up have all used the direct response and conversion rate optimization skills Geraldes has built up over time to get them to where they are today. This gives Geraldes firsthand experience and a venue for reliable experimentation, which he can then apply to his own projects to rapidly scale them far ahead of the competition. 

“I own several high growth companies, all built via leveraging my company, Milkit, for performance marketing. Under the Milkit umbrella, there is an SMS marketing platform that allows for mass direct to consumer marketing (Sendii.io) and a private affiliate network consisting of some of the strongest publishers in the industry, where Sendii provides the highest deliverability in the industry. Both private and public companies have leveraged this technology to acquire millions of new users,” says Geraldes. 

High-volume, direct response marketing is a branch of marketing where experience alone is the only true thing that will equip practitioners with the tools they need to succeed. By using Milkit’s direct response tactics and technologies to continually build up his own companies, Gustavo is able to constantly iterate and improve the processes and tactics he brings to his clients.

What is performance marketing, and why does it work?

Defined, performance marketing is centered around the principle of paying publishers only when a specific action (a click, an online sale, etc.) is completed rather than through an upfront charge or a rate based on impressions driven. This is wildly different from more traditional forms of marketing and advertising, where companies pay a flat rate for content created, a retainer fee on a recurring basis or a different form of an upfront cost. While the concept of performance marketing certainly isn’t new, the tactic has been gaining momentum and immense popularity over the past few years. Here are three of the biggest reasons why. 

#1. Guaranteed ROI

Unlike other forms of marketing and advertising, performance marketing guarantees results because if none are driven, you don’t pay. Publishers like Gustavo only get compensated when they are able to drive a real action based on your particular needs as an organization. Whether you’re looking to increase webinar signups, drive online sales or traffic to your podcast, your company will only pay publishers for actual results. This differs from traditional vendors that typically charge hourly fees or flat rates, which may or may not drive results for your business.

#2. Pinpoint What’s Working

Many entrepreneurs and marketers will often use the excuse that performance-based campaigns are limiting when it comes to creativity. The idea behind the hesitation is that if a brand or individual is focused solely on metrics, how will they be open to introducing unique, story-driven campaigns and angles? Yet, performance marketing can take care of this quite easily. With it, you will be able to identify which particular channels are working well for your brand and which aren’t based on hard data. From there, you can choose to get as creative as you want to within the confines of those high-performing channels as opposed to blindly publishing content across underperforming platforms. 

For instance, if your campaigns reveal that customers convert three times as much on Instagram as they do on Facebook, then you naturally would allocate more resources to Instagram. Then, you can begin to experiment with different types of Instagram content and pump the brakes a bit on Facebook—this way, your bottom line doesn’t take a hit and your team’s full creativity can be unleashed. 

#3. Not Being Dependent on an Algorithm

From steadily declining Facebook reach to increasing costs of Amazon ads to decreasing organic reach on Instagram, one thing can be certain in the ever-changing online marketing landscape: algorithms will never stay the same. If your company is too reliant on any one platform to meet your sales goals, your brand will be extremely vulnerable to algorithmic changes. 

Sales and profit margins cannot rely on Mark Zuckerberg to change his mind on any given algorithm change, you have overhead costs that must be met. By investing in performance marketing rather than unpredictable, turbulent forms of advertising, you will keep your bottom line tight and avoid being susceptible to inevitable algorithm changes.

Through his performance marketing knowledge and strategy, Gustavo Geraldes has found a way to stand out in a crowded space and take brands skyward. Whether with his own companies or clients across a variety of industries, Milkit has helped companies reach their business goals both online and offline. If you would like to connect with Gustavo, you can follow him on Instagram. If you’re interested in potentially working with Milkit, you can visit his company’s website to learn more here.

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