Marketing expert Elena Solera on entrepreneurial mindset

Shaheen Samavati recently sat down with Elena Solera to speak about her unique approach to marketing and innovation in the fields of finance and insurance. Elena is the communication and marketing director at Finnovista, a community facilitator that works with fintech companies in Latin America and Spain. In this interview Elena offers plenty of valuable tips for communications professionals, and explains the value of applying an entrepreneurial mindset to marketing.

You can watch the full conversation in the video above or on YouTube, listen to the podcast on Apple and Spotify, and read our recap below.

Key takeaways

The process of creating a campaign should begin with asking, “What’s the story that I want to tell to my community?” Once this basic question is answered, it’s easier to create a variety of content for different channels.

If you work for a big company, you might be assigned to a single project that could last for a year or longer. At a smaller company like Finnovista, you can work on four to five projects at a time while collaborating with different people and gaining valuable experience.

Working closely with a certain market allows you to learn about its culture and problems. Elena doesn’t feel like a tourist when she visits Mexico, because working with the Mexican market has given her an understanding of people’s pain points.

An entrepreneurial mindset can be beneficial for anyone working in the communications industry. Each decision needs to be based on two questions: what is the problem and what can I do to solve it?

One way to ensure consistent quality content is to cultivate a love for the language it’s written in. Constantly improving your language skills is the key to creating high-quality multilingual material.

One thing marketing and journalism have in common is that they’re both about telling people’s stories—and that’s what drew me to these industries.

Rapid-fire recs

A marketing influencer who you follow?

One influencer I like is Vilma Núñez. I love her blog and really relate to the way she views marketing and communications. I would love the opportunity to see her speak in person.

She also provides great templates (in Spanish) that you can use for social media and other channels, which can save you a ton of time.

A publication or book you recommend?

It’s slightly old, but “Web Analytics 2.0” by Avinash Kaushik is an essential book for communications that talks about looking at marketing through data and numbers. Another good one is “#Socialholic,” a Spanish book about social media community building.

Your favorite app at the moment?

I’m not a yogi, but I really like this yoga app called Down Dog. If I ever end up doing yoga on a daily basis, it will be because of this app. You can choose the type of yoga you want to practice, the intensity, the length of the relaxation period at the end, the music… it’s perfect.

Connect with Elena and Shaheen on LinkedIn.

This post was edited by Rishabh Agrawal, a freelance content creator based in Madrid.