Scale a businesses – Iñaki Tovar

How was Iñaki Tovar 15 years ago and how is he now?

Fifteen years ago, I was just getting started in digital marketing, although I had already been working in traditional marketing for about a decade with my own advertising agency. I was a creative director, covering everything from advertising manuals to advertising pieces, radio spots, television commercials and all the more analogue aspects of marketing.

Back then, I was more analogue, probably much more optimistic and more impatient for immediate results.

Now, with the perspective of the years and the conversion of that creative streak to the digital realm, I have become a 100% digital professional. I maintain my enthusiasm, creativity and optimism, but in terms of results, I have become more patient and aware of the importance of sowing, setting up long-term strategies and having patience, which I consider one of the ‘four Ps’ of my digital marketing. It is crucial to be patient in order to allow digital strategies to yield results and to develop a greater tolerance for error: try things out, see if they work, and if not, eliminate them or pivot; if they work, enhance them.

That is the main difference on a professional level between the Iñaki Tovar of 15 years ago and the one I am now. My mindset has evolved from being a traditional creative to being a digital growth hacker who enjoys every new invention in this sector that I am so passionate about.

Would you consider yourself a restless mind?

Absolutely. I’ve always been a restless mind and I literally love experimenting with everything. I consider myself a geek, a freak and an early adopter; I enjoy anything that involves trying out new technologies and tools, and this is an intrinsic part of my job.

As a manager at Webpositer, one of my roles is precisely to test new artificial intelligence tools, trying to integrate them first into our internal workflow and then extrapolate them to clients. On a personal level, I have been immersed in home automation for years, surrounded by Google speakers and other devices. I really enjoy creating and testing.

This is also why I created the podcast: I am a born communicator, I love telling stories and making others feel emotions. I firmly believe in the power of communication and I am still amazed at what can be built with a couple of voices, the right music and sound effects; the atmosphere one is able to create is fascinating.

Of course, as a restless mind, I constantly read and listen to books, audiobooks and podcasts, and I consume a lot of films and series. It’s something that nourishes me, both professionally and for simple entertainment or escapism.

What is the first thing you look at in a business to determine whether it needs a branding strategy?

Logically, when talking about a digital branding strategy, the first impression is always made when visiting the website, which is the sanctuary or home of the brand. I look for what the business conveys to me, beyond SEO or CRO optimisations.

What I try to find is whether it has its own voice. In today’s digital universe, saturated with companies and brands competing for the same niches, it is impossible to stand out without a clear identity. Therefore, the first thing I analyse is whether that business has its own voice, both visually (its visual brand identity) and in terms of communication. This includes not only the written text, but also the images it uses, its YouTube content (if it has any) and its activity on social media (which platforms it posts on and with what tone). This is the pillar and foundation on which everything else is built.

As expected, most brands that come to me for an initial consultation barely have that voice of their own. In this sense, there is a lot of work to be done with many companies in the UK that, although they have a presence and a corporate brand, lack that distinctive digital identity that is so crucial today to stand out in their niche.

What types of clients do you not accept?

Rather than talking about ‘not accepting’, I prefer to focus on carefully choosing the type of client we can best help. Our main objective is to attract projects where we are confident that we can contribute to their digital growth, as that is our speciality. Therefore, if a company or online shop does not reach a minimum monthly turnover, it is obvious that it cannot afford to invest in our services.

But the economic factor is only part of the equation. We also have some red lines in terms of subject matter:

• Dubious investments.
• Particularly sensitive adult topics.
• Projects with which we literally cannot identify and in which we cannot get involved.

To lead a digital company to success, the first thing is to believe in it, and we get fully involved in getting to know the client so we can convey that brand voice I mentioned earlier.

In short, if a project doesn’t have a certain amount of traction, it’s very difficult to help it. It’s harder for us to help a shop that’s just starting out and hasn’t created anything yet than one that already has a certain amount of traction and turnover. In the latter cases, our job is to fine-tune and activate new levers, draw up a digital brand strategy that allows them to reach new acquisition channels, strengthen existing ones, discard others and, above all, work on the areas of conversion, recurrence and progression. All these areas are what allow our clients’ online projects to really scale up.

How do you approach meetings with potential clients from large business groups?

I approach them with 100% naturalness. I believe that, at the end of the day, we are all people. It doesn’t matter if you’re facing a mega-executive from a company with 50,000 employees on the IBEX 35, or the CEO of a small online upholstery business.

Communication flows much more easily if it is approached from a position of equality, understanding that we all share similar routines. We are professionals looking for support in a company, or we are looking for companies to help.

That’s why I approach it naturally and always with empathy. The key is to think, ‘How can we really help this company grow and scale digitally with the digital strategy tools and services we offer?’. When you find that match or connection, the path forward is easy for both parties and allows you to build a solid relationship.

What’s the strangest project you’ve come across?

I once came across a website, an online shop, that sold ceramic smurfs. I remember the owner telling me, puzzled: ‘I have a very good product, a very good price, very good quality. I have no competition, and yet the online shop isn’t taking off. I don’t know what’s wrong.’ He wasn’t aware that there was no particular interest among the world’s population in finding ceramic smurfs.

This shows that the strangest niches have always had the ability to amaze me. You may think you have something super special, but sometimes it’s only special to you. These niches, however, often harbour real treasures from the point of view of curiosities.

What types of tasks do you recommend your clients automate in order to scale faster?

One of the major automation failures I see today in online shops is email marketing or funnel marketing. Apart from the typical transactional email (‘your order is on its way’) or welcome email, very little work is done. With luck, some implement strategies for abandoned carts or checkouts, but in general, recurrence is not worked on and newsletters are not well managed, beyond the usual spam or one-off campaigns (Black Friday, Father’s Day). There is a lack of a real strategy that can be automated.

Much more detailed and complex welcome sequences could be created to contribute to good onboarding and customer loyalty. Likewise, recurrence can and should be automated by identifying and segmenting users based on their interests, past purchases or lack of purchases, creating highly personalised sequences for them.

In fact, systems can be automated to run on autopilot once they have been strategically well defined and aligned with the brand and what we want. These systems can work constantly on three pillars:

• Converting new customers.
• Building loyalty among those who have just made a purchase.
• Encouraging repeat purchases.

This is one of the areas we focus on most in our clients’ projects, especially in online shops.

Do you think we are losing our minds with AI?

I think that, in general, we are evolving at the same pace as AI tools. We have gone from an initial phase of surprise and seeing it as a ‘new toy’ to a more ‘circus’ phase where everything was tried out without finding it very productive.

In recent months, most serious companies that take their growth seriously have already identified that some AI tools are significantly increasing team productivity and enhancing the innate creativity of their employees. In this sense, I don’t think we’re ‘losing our minds.’ I think we may have lost our minds a little in the past, due to FOMO (fear of missing out), but the situation has stabilised.

We are currently focusing on the big players in the sector, the four or five master tools that are fighting to be all-in-one solutions. Obviously, there are OpenAI, Gemini and Claude, which I consider to be the top three, and then Perplexity as a parallel tool that I subscribe to. I really believe that each one offers something different and I keep them in my ecosystem.

Personally, a year ago I felt a bit overwhelmed by AI, but today I have ‘put down roots’ in the tools I like best, I am specialising and getting the most out of them, without being constantly distracted by Shiny Object Syndrome.