Ewan Maalerud’s Post

If you were friends with the founders of these companies, how would you respond if they said to you: 😀 "Hey, I'm thinking about starting a computer company." "Cool. Do you have a name yet?" 😀"Yes, I have the perfect name. What do you think about... Apple?" Or... 😀"Hey, I'm thinking about starting a shoe company." "Cool. Do you have a name yet?" 😀"Yes, I have the perfect name. What do you think about... Reebok?" Or... 😀"Hey, I'm thinking about starting a search engine company." "Cool. Do you have a name yet?" 😀"Yes, I have the perfect name. What do you think about... Google?" So what's in a name? I believe it really doesn't matter what you call your company. There are a million questionable names that could have been easily rejected, and for good reason. What's more important is your branding, your product, and your customer experience. #marketing #branding #customerexperience

Sometimes marketing gets a bad rap, often criticized for being manipulative or spreading half-truths. But these are usually the result of a few bad actors, not a reflection of the industry as a whole. Marketing is really just about connecting people with products, services, and ideas that genuinely enhance their lives. It's about understanding needs, solving problems, and building relationships based on trust and authenticity. Good marketing is rooted in: 👉 Empathy 👉 Transparency 👉 Creativity 👉 Community 👉 Trust #marketing #branding

I went to the #Vancouver Khatsahlano Street Party today and came across some strong banners / branding. I like the simplicity and the extreme close ups. #graphicdesign #branding #marketing

A lesson on why being cheap isn't always better. We bought a couch from Rove Concepts and they have two delivery options. 👉 The Standard - $159, they drop it off in your lobby. 👉 The White Glove - $309, they bring all the boxes into your home, install, and take away the boxes. Me, thinking I'm clever, chose the Standard and upon delivery, I greased the guy $20 and a Gatorade to deliver it into my home. How hard could assembly be? Oh my gosh! You need an engineering degree to put these couches together. 5 hours later, 1 blister, 1 sore back, sweaty and exhausted, boxes and packaging foam everywhere... I'm finally done and ready to pass out. Lesson learned. Don't be cheap. My time is way more valuable than the money I saved on going with the cheaper option.

Thinking about building your personal brand? 👉 You don't need to post everyday - you can come up with posts in batches and then schedule them 👉 Don't worry about engagement - even if people are not engaging, they are seeing. I call them the silent majority 👉 Content is not king - video content is king. Say it on camera (assume your first 100 videos are going to suck - that's okay) 👉 Who cares what people think. People are not thinking about you, they're thinking about themselves. Just post! 👉 Everyone has something to say or share. We want to hear from you 👉 To teach is to learn twice. You'll find your skills become stronger when you have to teach it to others 👉 You have time. Nobody is too busy to post 👉 A personal brand can insulate you with shifting job markets and layoffs 👉 You don't have to post on LinkedIn. Maybe you're a VP of Sales by day and an expert carpenter / wood worker by night. Great! Start a wood working channel, start a wood working podcast... Reach out if you'd like to discuss further. #business #personalbrand

You can have the world's best execution... ...but if you don't have the right strategy, it won't matter. You need both. Imagine having the world's best racecar, but when you show up on race day, you discover the race is across the desert. Best vehicle, wrong environment. This can happen in business as well. Right execution, wrong strategy. I've heard, "Strategy is easy, it's all about execution." Ha! Strategy is not easy. There are plenty of examples of bad ideas, misinformed or misguided assumptions, out-of-touch executives... Strategy is hard, execution is hard. You need both. #marketing #digitalstrategy

Too often I see brands selling features, ingredients, flavours... While these can be important considerations in a consumers' purchase decision, they may not help build loyalty. I call this the '6 minute Abs' approach. All a competitor would need to do is to create '5 Minute Abs' and you're finished. Brands looking to connect with their audience need to sell them on the experience, give them a reason to buy (or RTB), tell a story. We don't spend an hour getting ready, driving, looking for parking, spend $12 per beer... because we like the taste of beer. If that were the case, we would drink beer at home. We do it because we want to share a laugh and catch up with some friends or a romantic interest. Sell the experience, not the taste. #branding #marketing

Do you have an internal Growth-Hacking Committee? I assembled one for a client recently to solve for our 'growth-limiting steps' within the customer journey. After we identified these road blockers, the committee got to work brainstorming possible solutions that we can experiment. Those unfamiliar with growth hacking, it's the idea of running rapid experimentation to find and optimize the most promising areas of opportunity throughout the customer experience funnel from: 👉 Acquisition 👉 Retention 👉 Revenue Try this Growth Hacking Framework and let me know how it goes! #growthhacking #b2bmarketing #saasmarketing

Imagine this... You spend all day doing hard labour that your competitors are doing for profit. Instead, you're doing it for free, and making a lot more money. How? SB Mowing mows people's lawns for free. He spends hours cutting thick grass, edging the walkways, weed wacking, trimming hedges, etc. He does this for people who may otherwise not be able to afford to hire him. Again, this is not easy work. Had he charged for this work, maybe he would get a few hundred dollars per job. But, by doing it for free and posting on TikTok, he amasses millions of views, likely netting him several thousands of dollars per job. Not only is this a great example of storytelling marketing, a showcase of the power of social media marketing, it's an outside-the-box business model. Giving something away for free doesn't seem like a good business model, but by filming and posting the videos on social media, suddenly it becomes a highly successful business model. It becomes more valuable than had he charged for the thing. Something worth considering for your business. Why this works 👉 People love feelgood stories - doing something for the less fortunate warms our hearts. 👉 The videos are filmed in time-lapse so they have a 3-act story structure - we want to see how it turns out and the owners' reactions. 👉 There is something oddly satisfying about watching something go from messy to clean. #socialmediamarketing #tiktok #digitalmarketing

This is SOOO next level!! Say what you will about Jake Paul, but the man knows how to market. How cool is this? If you're not disrupting, you're standing still. #marketing #branding