Alex Membrillo, CEO of Cardinal Digital Marketing, based in Atlanta, Georgia, talks about how companies that want to grow have found that marketing comes first to "plant the seed" the sales force harvests. Alex started his agency as an SEO company in 2009, when he got out of Georgia State on the tail of the Great Recession of 2008. Today, his company provides search, paid social, and programmatic display services. The primary client focus is on restaurants (Cardinal excels in balancing the challenges of national brand awareness vs. the needs of local franchisees) and healthcare (Cardinal increases leads and conversions, cuts lead costs, and ameliorates reputation management issues related to Healthgrades ratings).

To track campaign value, Cardinal Digital Marketing develops powerful client tools:

• The imminently-to-be-launched software platform, "Gimoto," allows SMB franchise restaurants to target campaigns to discrete geographic markets and track lead vs. spend at a local level.
• "Ladybug," a visualization tool, enables multi-location companies to log on and see how each location is performing with spend and lead volume.
• A tool, currently under development, will enable medical practice and health systems to track the number of leads being driven into their systems, the number of patients from those leads, and the value of those patients—by linking CRM with Facebook or search campaigns.

Alex's recently published book, The Anatomy of Medical Marketing: How to Increase Your Patient Volume by 5x, (available on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Medical-Marketing-Alex-Membrillo/dp/1543907482) covers the unique challenges of marketing medical services. He can be reached through his website: cardinaldigitalmarketing.com.