Adam Torres and Frank Zepeda discuss Mega Mix Expo.
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Show Notes:
Listen to Mega Mix Expo coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Frank Zepeda, Marketing Director of El Clasificado, explore the upcoming Megamix expo.
About Frank Zepeda
Frank Zepeda is a seasoned Marketing Director with extensive experience in digital marketing and social media strategy. He thrives on driving growth, increasing engagement, and leading high-performing teams to success.
Passionate about empowering small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), he specializes in developing data-driven marketing strategies and leveraging multicultural market opportunities to drive digital transformation. Throughout his career, he has consistently delivered outstanding results while building lasting relationships.
About El Clasificado
ElClasificado.com is a free classified ads website that was originally launched in 1996 to provide services to the Spanish-speaking community in California and who already read the print publication of El Clasificado, which was created in 1988 by Martha de la Torre and Joe Badame.
As the Hispanic population grew in the US and began to adopt quickly the digital technology with the arrival of mobile devices, ElClasificado.com expanded its free advertising services to achieve presence throughout this country, where there are Latino communities.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today I have on the show, Frank Zepeda, and he is the over at El Clasificado.
He’s the marketing director. Frank, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, Adam. Thanks for the opportunity. Look forward to a great interview. All right, man. So I’m getting pumped. We’re getting closer and closer to Megamix Expo. For those that have been listening to this show for a long time, you know that this is a big expo.
I’ve been telling everybody they need to come out to. It’s at MegamixExpo. com. It’s gonna be March 12th and 13th at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California. Frank, I know you’re participating. Have you been to one of these before or is this your first year? Yeah, actually, I’ve been to the last two.
They’re amazing events. The organization puts them really well together. Well rounded information for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and consumers alike. So, lots of things you can do with your time, lots of different events and expos. What keeps drawing you back? To be honest with you, I think it’s the collection of different vendors and organizations that they bring together.
And the workshops are very informative. And I think just overall, the community feel. I think you know, in this day and age where we’re so digitally driven or it’s email, text, that face to face connection is, , the energy is really contagious there and you meet so many people and there’s nothing like that face to face contact.
Yeah, I gotta agree with that one. And well, let’s, switch it up a bit. I want to learn more about El Clasificado. tell us a little bit more about the company. Yeah, definitely. So we’ve been around since 1988. Started off as a traditional magazine. Right now we’re currently the largest Spanish magazine in the country distributing about 265, 000 copies.
The difference between ours and other magazines is we’re more of a shopper where we have like 80 percent ads, you know, small business ads and whatnot, but there’s some content in there. but the early nineties, mid nineties are owner. Paid at a website. We’re actually one of the first 100, 000 websites on the internet and we’ve Wow.
So now you think of it like the Spanish, right? Isn’t that something to think about? Like that’s forward thinking back then, right? Yeah, absolutely. And you know now it’s kind of converted itself into one of the the top actually Spanish marketplace. So you can actually go and post a free ad. If you have a business that you’re a DJ or you’re a catering service, you can post an ad online and you can reach up to, we reach about 4 million people on a monthly basis.
So it’s a great, and it’s free ads. So it’s got to go. com free advertising for all businesses, man. What do you think? Some of the secrets to success of that are, cause it’s a competitive space, but man, it sounds like it’s super interesting what you’re doing. What do you think?
Some of the, like the success is for. You know, to be honest with you, I attribute the success to just, you know, being out in the community gaining the community’s trust, making sure you give it on quality content. And that you’re there for them when they need you for both the advertiser and the consumer.
Yeah, and speaking of that like, I’m curious with now, obviously, there’s a history here, you said it was on top, I think one of the first websites out there, obviously, as you mentioned now with AI and like technology and everything else, like, how, does this website and how does this play a role in your vision for what this looks like going forward?
I envision kind of like, when most of the time now people usually ask AI questions, right? Like, what are the top platforms I can advertise myself on? We’re hoping that we position ourselves in the marketplace to where StatGPT and all these other platforms tell them. Classified there at the top, you know, Hispanic website, so we open and then we also want to include AI on our platform itself.
So now, when you’re posting an ad online, for instance, if you’re not well versed in Spanish, we have an AI tool on there that can help you create your own ad. Oh, that’s a level. Yeah. You mentioned content, like what kind of content is being produced and like I know you mentioned 80 percent ads, but I’m just curious about the other side of it.
Obviously, you’re going to events, you’re creating other things, you’re participating in a podcast like this, which is great. Like what kind of content are you guys creating? Well, it’s a twofold, like number one, we do a lot of content for consumers. We cater to mostly Hispanic, Spanish speakers. So we create a lot of content where.
We show people how, how to renew their driver’s license, how to, you know, how to do, how to do different things online, because there is a large, I wouldn’t say large, but a substantial amount of people that are Spanish speakers that don’t know how to do a lot of that stuff. You know, we give them information, organizations that exist that can help them grow their business and whatnot.
And, you know, speaking of that, so I said, you know, we got the consumer side, we create content for, and then we have the business owner side. Where we give them tips like Megamix. We tell them, hey, if you’re an entrepreneur, come out to this Megamix event. Here’s some tips on how you can grow on social media.
And some of the tactics that we use to grow our brands, we share that with the small business owners. And it’s all for free. Like we’ve been doing this for, like I said, since 1988, all of our information is free. Everything can post free on the website. Our events are free. And we’d like to go out and support events like Megamix and invite the community to come out as well.
Tell me a little bit more about your role. So in terms of as working in the marketing side of things as a marketing director, what’s your vision what’s your role? Like, what do you look to accomplish? So, I think the main priority is to make sure that we’re running campaigns that keep us top of mind with the consumers.
And obviously the advertisers and that involves everything from like sending traffic to the website, getting people to sign up for our events and getting people to buy our products. But I think the main thing my goal is to provide people where we talked about a few minutes ago. It’s just quality content, make sure that they’re getting that information and from a trusted resource because with social media, there’s so many different outlets out there.
So you kind of have to stand out and 1 of the leverages that we have is. Brand recognition. A lot of people recognize the brand. So we want to use that brand recognition and give them content, connecting with people like yourself, Tony from Megamix and other organizations and just letting them know, Hey, this platform exists too.
It’s not just us. It’s all these other people that can help you grow your business. And you can do something like what Adam was doing with his podcast and showing people different ways to do it. that are relatable, you know, so then doing that kind of information for business owners and consumers alike can be very helpful for the Hispanic audience.
Talk to me about the advertising side of things. Like what are typical advertised, a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to this, , like when it comes to advertising with the company, what does that look like? Yeah. So for number one, for our bread and butter, small business owners.
So if you’re a small business owner. if you’re starting out and you want to reach the Hispanic market or just a general market, we have advertising packages, everything from that includes free online ads to paid ads. We can help you. We’re partners with Facebook, Google, and Tick Tock. We can help you run ads on those platforms.
We create websites for you. 1 thing that we want to do is 1 online. Your goals with our campaign. So if you came to me and said, Hey, Frank, I need to run a campaign. I have a plumbing business. I want to get more leads. So we sit down and talk with the consumer and talk about how they can accomplish those leads and accomplish those goals and get those leads into their system, how they can go ahead and process those leads and give, you know, give them a good experience from the beginning to the end.
And, you know another thing, too, is the other side of that is you have a bit the larger consumers. You have the you know, the bigger corporations of the world, the horizons and the, bigger brands that want to connect with the Hispanic market. And a lot of the times, it’s not as easy as just, you know, flipping a switch and saying, Hey, you know what, let me just translate this to Spanish and let me get this out there.
You need an authentic vehicle. So that’s where we come in. So we have the small business owners that we cater to. Then we have the larger corporations that. Have messages that they want to get out to the Hispanic market and a lot of times they don’t know how or they want to do it authentically and we provide that vehicle for them to accomplish that.
Yeah, fantastic. well, Frank first off, appreciate you coming on the show and doing all you do in the community and definitely looking forward to meeting you at Megamix Expo. I’ll be there in person for everybody listening. I’ll be there in person. Frank, are you going? I I know that your company is going, but are you going by the way?
Oh, absolutely, man. I wouldn’t miss it. Tony and the guys over there, they do a great job every time I’ve been out there and for everybody listening. This is an opportunity to network, your network is your net worth, right? I think this has what the saying is. So like, oh, you go out there and network, you meet people and you’ll be surprised.
You know, the last time I went to the one they did in Ontario, I met some really good people and then when I went, I went to the one, they did another one last and they did two last year. They did the one at the race park and that one was amazing. Got to connect with a lot of different people. So yeah, it’s definitely something that you don’t want to miss.
It’s in our backyard here in la. You know, we got, we got to go out there and represent. Perfect. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links to Megamix Expo. So megamixexpo. com into the show notes so that you can click on it, head right on over, pick up a ticket, come visit us again, March 12th and 13th.
I’ll be there both days and we’ll be doing some live podcast interviews and, and looking forward to seeing people stop by the booth. Frank, if somebody’s listening or watching this and they want to learn more or connect about El Clasificado, how do they do that? can just visit the website.
Go to blessedgod. com, you know, there’s links right there, you can place a free advertisement, and at the bottom there’s a contact us page, and there’s a phone number or an email you can contact directly, tell them you heard Frank on the Adam Torres podcast, and I’ll be happy to help you with anything that you may need.
Amazing. And for everybody listening, of course, we’ll put the link in the show notes. And speaking to the audience if you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Frank, man, looking forward to seeing you at mega mix expo. Appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you, Adam.