Erik Modig – Stop making these marketing mistakes

This post is based on our podcast episode with Erik Modig. You can watch the entire conversation here.

Erik is an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and assistant professor at the Department of Marketing and Strategy at Stockholm School of Economics.

1. Watch out for programmatic and “cheap” impressions

Ad impressions are not created equal, and the difference in quality is gigantic.

Based on eye-tracking data, Erik says that low-cost programmatic banner ads will typically have a fixation rate of 2-5%. This means that only 2-5% of the impressions that you pay for are actually seen by potential customers.

If you run ads on a high-quality news site you may have a fixation rate of 40%, and these people will also view the ad for longer. High-quality impressions are more expensive, but in the end, you often get much more value.

Never optimize for cheap impressions when you’re choosing digital media. And always make sure to get a full list of which sites and devices your ads are being shown.

2. Data doesn’t solve your problems

Erik sees two main risks with being too “data-driven” in your marketing.

First, studies have shown that companies that rely too much on data become reactive instead of proactive. They assume that customers always know best and that their goal is to just react to their needs and preferences.

But great marketing also needs to educate customers and change perceptions. There is no data on the future, and marketing is as much about creating the future as it is about adapting to the present.

“You think that staring at the data will solve the problem, but it won’t.”

Second, there is a risk that companies start focusing on collecting and analyzing data in the hopes that it will reveal the “secret sauce”. It won’t.

We can use data to improve the efficiency of our marketing programs, and Erik shared an example from Starbucks’ loyalty program. But no amount of data will replace the need for consistent effort and hard work.

At the end of the day, it’s about sending those emails, writing those blog posts, or creating those ads.

3. Think bigger

“In smaller markets we are not used to the budget that’s needed to capture a new market.”

In Erik’s experience, Nordic companies (and perhaps especially Finnish companies) are not aggressive enough when it comes to expansion and investing in marketing. They invest too little and therefore get too little in return.

As a counter-example, Klarna spent around 400 million euros on their global brand campaign with Snoop Dogg. The campaign helped add billions to the valuation of the company.

The Nordic market is relatively small. And many Nordic companies do not realize how expensive it is to expand to a new and foreign market. For example, succeeding in Germany is more likely to cost 100 million than 10 million euros.

By investing too little in marketing the risk of failure will increase.

Watch video: Erik Modig – Stop making these marketing mistakes

Erik Modig: Stop making these marketing mistakes – Youtube transcript

today’s guest is Erik Modig professor at the department of marketing and strategy at Stockholm School of Economics Erik is also an entrepreneur and the founder of an e-learning platform called marketing levels he’s also written four books on Advertising communication and art welcome to show Erik thank you so much uh I think we’ll just start with kind of consumer psychology something that you’ve been spending a lot of your career and time thinking about so I think just in general are there any misconceptions you see among marketers and how they think about how customers think about their messaging and their products are there any kind of big mistakes there yeah like first of all uh marketers tend to think that customers really care about them like of course everybody that’s like a human human mistake we think that everybody’s so interested about us but but generally people are not interested and and they don’t pay that much attention and they do not actually care that much about our product or our our our marketing or especially not our Market communication so I would say that uh customers do not care that much and and and that also makes an implication on how do we sell to them well we sort of nudge them towards a purchase with with small small steps it’s not like ah yeah now I develop this brand I love it now I’m going to purchase yes we have those kind of customers but not the majority the majority of customers are low involved and we then give them small small pieces of information and eventually they know about us eventually they start to get a little bit interested eventually they’ve been reminded so many times so that they purchase and I think that’s that and that’s how marketing works it’s not this aha moment we offer our customers it’s more like small small bits and pieces of of influence and persuasion so do you think then it is a mistake for many companies or it’s a mistake that companies make when they think we’re just going to do this one campaign we’ll put it on the front page of whatever the national newspaper and then we’re going to see huge increase in sales and when they don’t see that they get disappointed and they think marketing doesn’t work because I have a completely different yeah mindset yeah it it’s it’s a long-term game so so you start and then you start continue and you continue and continue and continue and you’ll probably see no effect for a couple of months uh very little effect at least if you want to to impact that a broader audience because it’s about reminder and frequency and reaching a lot of customers especially depending on which industry you’re in for example if you’re selling refrigerators how many customers are are actually looking for a refrigerator right now it’s not like I see an ad for a refrigerator and I’m like yeah I’m gonna remove my existing refrigerator and buy a new one because this ad was so cold cool that that’s that has never happened it’s more like yeah when my refrigerator break and I’m going to buy a new one then you will actually be one that I will look into that’s how marketing Works to a high extent and that’s actually true for a lot of categories uh so it’s more a long term Marathon than a short term if you want to be successful what would you say to you know imagine there’s a a CEO or a CFO who’s a marketing skeptic and say okay so you’re asking us to spend that month after month after month before we see any results are there any metrics you can look on in the short term to justify say okay we’re going to see we we believe based on these metrics that this is working and the sales will follow in the next months or quarters or years well first of all uh you can see what is actually happening to to traffic either to your website or your store of course going to a store is usually then you need to be interested but visiting to a website uh if you if you spend a lot on Advertising you should see a direct increase in traffic or else the ads don’t work however if you get 1 000 people to go to to your to your website it’s very unlikely that one thousand like 100 of them are ready to purchase your product it’s more likely that they will go in look at it and say like yeah and then they may be going when they see a new ad two weeks later and then three months later their refrigerator breaks down or whatever it is and then they go in purchase so so of course you should see like what would people do if they saw this ad and usually then uh visit the home page or or read something Etc and that will then depending on the industry results in safe what do you think about using things like brand awareness surveys um and and tools like that to figure out if you’re making an impact in just awareness or consideration for your brand I I think it’s great to to measure brand awareness uh however uh for small brands or for new brands it take a while because when you do these sort of brand trackers you you ask uh like 1 000 people and then you see how many actually uh know your brand and you need to you need to have like a market penetration for 5 10 or 15 percent to be able to see brand awareness uh uh and and if you’re a small brand maybe your brand penetration is 0.1 percent you will never see that in a brand tracker uh of course if you’re focusing on on one very small Market um that you have targeted then you can see that so of course that is a good way to do it uh because we know that one of the strongest predictor of sales is brand awareness so so it’s great however for small brands or new brands it doesn’t make much sense until you actually start to get some traction and what do you think about just um how important is just that brand awareness just getting let’s say just as something as simple as getting your logo out there and getting people to remember your logo versus actually delivering a rational message on why your product is better like what is just creating familiarity versus actually trying to persuade through marketing and advertising it it is much harder to persuade people so so even though you have a rational message uh it depends how fast can you can you say that because it and depending of course on the on the media channel let’s say for example now we know that Brands usually spend 70 80 90 on digital marketing we know that the majority of exposures in all digital channels for example all banners everything in Social the average exposure time or that the actual like the average fixation time how how long people actually look at that that’s like one and a half two seconds that’s three to five words so if you have a rational benefits that you can communicate in three to five words well then good then then try to show your logo and then explain the benefit in three to five words but if you say like yeah we have to we have to use 20 words and then you fill a banner ad with 20 words nobody will look at it and then you make your logo so small so they don’t even see that then it’s totally wasted then you have Zero Effect then I would say just uh make the logo much bigger so you at least get some sort of familiarity effect and then probably you have to buy longer media exposures got it would you say that it’s a common mistake that companies try to say too much in one message and also that they switch up the messages too often you know they’ve been they’re saying this one thing for two quarters and think ah you know everyone’s heard this they’re tired of it let’s add something new do you see that as a mistake yeah yeah definitely and at the same time they are saying like yeah we want to be like Coca-Cola and we want to be like apple and we want to be elected yeah you know those brands have been saying the same things for 20 30 40 50 60 years if you look at the successful Brands they have saying the same thing more or less forever so you say one thing and you do it for 10 years and and and and that’s how you succeed in marketing so uh so it’s definitely a a sickness in the marketing world that we want to communicate too much it’s not how marketing and not how advertising work especially if we’re not if if we’re buying uh short media exposures of course if we are having a uh an event or or have some sort of of native news article in in a magazine then of course we will have longer exposure time and people will read it if we have a full page ad or something like that uh then we can say more but today a lot of Brands invest in very short media exposures and try to say too much in those can you talk about a little bit about the the media so you mentioned that you know now digital advertising is huge um and everyone is spending a lot of money there but there’s also this argument at least some people say or feel that spending for instance on TV advertising that the format the media actually carries a lot more credibility and weight so even though let’s say the cpms are diff or are not the same but do you do you think that is there an argument is there valid validity to that argument that you should think about your media mix not just where you can get the cheapest impressions yeah an impression this is the most important message of this talk an impression is not an impression really think about you cannot compare cpms with cpns because the quality of an impression it’s not a small difference it’s gigantic difference with different kinds of of Impressions I can I look at attention data meaning that I get in this case data from Toby who has passive eye tracking panels so passive eye tracking panels meaning that we are recording everything people see is in screen and match that with their uh how they are actually looking at the screen so we actually know what people look at and if you go in and buy sort of programmatic Banner display and and you’re just optimizing on CPM you will first of all they will throw it in desktop instead of mobile because in desktop uh and then they will buy super cheap uh uh ads on clickbait sites where they show your ad for to the right or really really low in the bottom uh the fixation rate of those ads are around two to five percent meaning that for every you buy only two to five percent of the impressions are actually seen and they are seen for approximately one and a half second 1.2 Maybe so you buy for one one thousand ads then for for CPM you you get like 20 people or 50 that are actually seen by real people but then you can buy uh the same Impressions at the high quality news site still desktop but then you maybe have fixation rates of 40 and they look at your ad 2.5 seconds so not only is it not 20 to 50 people working right it’s 400 people and they’re looking twice as long can you imagine how much better that purchase on CPM is it should actually have been two three thousand percent more expensive but it’s not so the ones who are selling really really bad Impressions earn a lot of money if advertisers do not control what they are purchasing and this is especially true uh for for banners where you buy programmatic because um so so that’s the like air all all intelligent ad buyers uh have a real will definitely want to have a complete list of where their ads are placed or they are being fooled I promise you yeah that’s a really good point and like you said I mean often that data is available but so many agencies and clients alike don’t know or don’t care they just see Impressions that’s fine we’ve got impression Target for Brandon campaign whatever but and if you see like yeah we get the yeah we’re getting so much low Impressions uh so so cheap Impressions we get really really cheap Impressions we are so effective no no you’re being like you’re being screwed I promise you uh uh you have to have a control on your own person if you don’t get the site on where your banners have been showed on desktop uh you’re not knowing how to do digital marketing uh for sure that because uh there are so many sites uh where your ads is seen um nobody’s watching them uh and I think also this is really harmful for unknown Brands you know unknown Brands if I’m going to tell about if I’m going to introduce a brand I need longer exposures so if of course if if McDonald’s is going to remind me buy a cheeseburger they can do that in 1.5 seconds it’s just show a picture of a cheeseburger and a nice price and people are like yeah maybe cheeseburger that’s nice but if I’m an unknown brand I’m going to talk about my new source service you cannot do that below five seconds and then if you’re a small company there’s that we we at least need reach let’s buy reach with low CPM then you get those 1.2 1.5 uh Impressions sort of very very short time uh one one and a half seconds and you cannot tell about your brand in one and a half seconds so it’s completely wasted then it’s much much better to say like no we’re going to buy non-skippable in-stream uh there we have at least five to six seconds it’s non-skippable so we know that we have at least some time and it’s at least five to seven six seconds it will be more costly but it will be I promise you definitely worth it in the long run the the really cheap cpms with with very short times it will be completely wasted if you’re a new brand yeah okay I think the takeaway is very clear if you’re a small brand avoid those like the plague do you see any other ways that small brands are kind of trying to copy what big brands are doing and it fails because you need to be a big brand in order to do that in terms of like whether it’s media mix or messaging or yeah definitely uh and I think the advantages of Brands is that they don’t have to reach that many people to grow if we’re a small brand and we need 1 000 customers we don’t need to reach Millions the big runs they have the advantage of being a really well-known brand so they don’t have to talk about their brand but they need to reach hundreds of millions of of customers uh small Brands don’t have to have really high uh reach but they need to have quality reach to be able to to educate their customers or just say what who they are so uh I wouldn’t worry that much if a small brand doesn’t have that much reach of course it has to be at least some uh but it doesn’t have to be similar to big Brands but it has to be quality to Quality exposures got it going back to a couple of things that we kind of mentioned uh one being the message um especially if you’re a small brand you need to get your message down to your very succinct kind of Punchy message now let’s say you’re a company who’s you don’t really have that nail down how would you suggest that they go about finding that message is it about a b testing do you need some kind of data can you just rely on judgment from like the the management team and the founders that like this is what we are this is what customers want how do you go about that finding that message um I think I think first of all we have to realize that there are two different kinds of messages uh one message that will get the attention and one message that will secure the sales and and I usually meet two startups I meet a little starter through my through my e-learning platform and and sometimes they’re only using one message and sometimes they are using the attention metrics a message that would be for example we are AI driven company and they said you know everybody clicks on our home page more and read our ads when we say that we are using AI but nobody buys our product why not because people do not go around and say yeah I’m in need of a little bit of AI people don’t think like that they need refrigerators they need uh that they feel more efficient more professional uh getting things done like they have real needs and AI is not a real need it’s a help that can help us with another need so if we only talk about AI maybe that will be really highly ranked on on SEO and we get message uh attention but it’s not what sales actually uh sell our product so so we need to have two different kinds of machine one that gets the attention and one that really secures the sale and if we only focusing on what securosic sales we do not get that much attention so first of all we need to focus on two messages and I would suggest that if the founders have a discussion with some core customers or the first customers they will figure that out and then in the second step they can start a b testing that and and then they will they will find what works and probably you you will you will after a while find one or two or three messages that will work that’s really good advice what in addition to let’s say they follow this process and they find a message that they feel really confident in um what are some other ingredients kind of needed for creating successful advertising are there any um any kind of best practices that you would always include when you’re thinking about crafting an ad campaign [Music] uh so unknown Brands always your logo always all no matter what anyone sells your logo should be in the start of the ad and be visible throughout the ad all the time uh if somebody is arguing against that then you know that you actually they don’t know digital advertising so you should quit working with them directly they will just harm you in the long term you should show the Ada directly one argument would then be from them their side they would say like yeah but will not people look away if they see that this is an ad from this brand and and you’re you’re then you say well do a better ad do a better ad do a cooler picture do something that people say like ah this is an ad from this brand but I still want to look at this what what are they trying to tell me so advertising digital answer has to be really really great so it has to be so great so you can have your logo in it all the time really big and people still want to watch it and you do not fix the problem by removing the logo because then you’re destroying the simple reason why you’re doing ads then you’re solving it that you have to do better taglines better um better messaging and again going back to where we started this discussion advertising doesn’t work in the way that people look at our ad we grab their attention we increase interest they read about us and then they come to a purchase you do that on a home page ad works like yeah I know that’s a brand yeah I’ve seen that ad I’ve seen that brand I don’t know what they’re doing but I’ve seen it yeah I think this was their name and then they go into the home page and then you sell ads are there just to build awareness build familiarity connect an emotion to that brand like are we premium are we bought yet are we cool are we nerdy uh are we for families are we for singles like that’s what advertising are doing and then maybe we also tell category membership category membership is uh sort of Market membership is where do we buy our products so markets are a way to structure how trans sections are done queries are what are we actually selling from the customer perspective when should they think about our brand so what you do is you you write category membership like this is what we are selling and then you show uh your brand and then the sign should be so easily uh recognizable so that you will build familiarity uh awareness and if you’re good at it also evoke an emotion and that’s it that’s how advertising works and when you do that with a lot of of reach and and repetition eventually they will come to your homepage beautiful um and obviously building familiarity that requires that frequency and and I guess also consistency in messaging and all of that so you talk about those two ingredients are there any kind of best practices that you recommend with regard to frequency and how do you think about consistency you can test a lot of things or what things need to remain the same if any in their messaging uh course the same the same the same the same logo the same the same the same never change colors and and logos I would say in the beginning of course if you’re a really established brand maybe you can have two three colors but you know if you look at Coca-Cola they have the same filter the same colors and they’re really successful so it’s not like yeah we need five colors to be great no you will need one color or two colors and never change that and you want your logo to be visible at the same in the same way all the time then you can change the message uh but don’t change what I saw then category membership do not talk about different things uh you can change it but it’s still the same thing because you need to to get a hold of of customers being able to think when should they use you uh so for example even even if I’m launching a new product and maybe you can you can eat that for breakfast you can eat it for for for lunch you can eat it for dinner I have to start with one instead of saying but the great thing with our product is you can re-eat it anytime yeah but you don’t want customers to think of it anytime because people do not go around thinking about what can I eat at any time that’s not a category it’s a benefit but it’s not a category category is breakfast snacks lunch dinner uh so you have to say like yeah start with dinner and then we say for dinner think about this for dinner think about this 30 and then maybe some internals about but you can have however why are we only talking about dinner uh we should talk the great thing with our product is you can eat eat it all the time well it’s not the category people do not buy things they can eat all the time so we have to start with dinner and we do that for a year and then the next year we then start to talk about lunch and then we start about talking about breakfast and then we are have established ourselves in more and more categories I think that’s really interesting would you say that in order to be successful we have to figure out how customers actually think in terms of categories like you said if customers always think I’m planning something for dinner I don’t care about something that it’s not that yeah I have predefined categories and any new product that comes in I’m gonna put in one of these existing categories because I don’t have time to make up a new category in my mind for you so would you say that you actually absolutely have to understand how customers think about a product like yours and then adapt your message into that you can’t just go in and say we’re going to change how a million swedes think about you know dinner of course it depends on your funding if you’re if you’re a new brand uh if if you for example say like yeah we are we are transforming this Market first of all I would be really scared if any brand said that to me if any Founders are like we are going to transform this Market we’re going to tell something completely new I was like yeah I’m gonna run you will never get my investment because this will building a new category that’s like a whole lot of money but of course if they say like yeah we have like 50 million euros to build this category and I would say okay what happens when you succeeded with building the category you know like the MP3 players there are so many Brands building the MP3 player and apple were just sitting waiting until they have succeeded really built the category and then they swooped in and took the whole category so it’s also not about we can build this category yes you can build this category but what happens when you succeeded are there any other brands that have could take the category with deeper Pockets than later uh if you’re Spotify you can build the category but then you have to make sure that you have Investments to protect your position in the category Tesla building the electric car category uh if they wouldn’t have been really really Deep Pockets uh other car brands would have taken that category but they succeeded to keeping it but the majority of new brands building a new category they build it and then somebody else goes in and just take it I have so many brands have built a sustainability category in their Niche and then the bigger Brands you say like yeah we also have that and then they die so first of all do not try to build a new category if you’re going to build a new carry you have to have really deep pockets and not only to build the category but to protect your position within that category when it becomes attractive because there will be larger Brands sitting there just waiting for you spending money to build the category and then when they will take it uh look on the evaluation of Zoom building digital video and and before they succeeded building the the category people wanted to invest but then eventually they built the category and what happens then Google meets teams swooped swoop the category and now they’re sitting there yeah we succeed that that our Dream have everybody’s using V UE talks but there are the players taking it because together becomes so important so try to find existing categories and find a niche within that existing category that’s always the good thing and if you’re a B2B product it’s about finding a budget within the company you cannot sell something in into company if there are no budget post there the last year it will take you a year until they find a new do a new budget and then it’s hard so so you have to understand which budget are we actually selling to and then you can find I’ve meet so many B2B startups trying to sell their products and they never succeed why there’s they cannot explain who is going to pay for this and then it will not happen I think that’s so true and I there’s this uh quote about like in in start a context about first-time Founders care about product and second time Founders care about distribution because if you don’t understand how to get it sold it just it won’t happen exactly one thing that goes or at least is perceived to go hand in hand with digital marketing is being data driven um what are your thoughts on on data driven marketing um of course you should be data driven but do not do not think that data is the truth there’s so much data out there that is uh not not that good and and we try to focus on on like single Source data from one specific perspective one measurement and that’s you have to be really critical about data and I think so many people are not critical when they handle data they think like any data is the truth no you can look at data but but really think about what it is and there’s also one there are like two things that could that is um the risks with using data one is that you get reactive instead of proactive and that is actually seen in a lot of studies companies that are more data driven try to react to What customers say instead of proacting educating customers so you get the view on that the customer is always right and we just have to react to them but that’s not how great marketing is done marketing is about changing customers perception that’s how you succeed not adapting to customer wants you should do both and if you’re too much data driven you tend to get reactive because we do not have data for the future so you have to say like yeah we are looking at the data we’re really skeptical about what they’re saying us and we still want to become proactive and then one more risk it’s that you think that staring at the data will will solve the problem but it’s not uh it’s a real hard work that solves the problem there’s no sometimes when we look at data we think that the data will tell us the magic source and we will find a way through this but it’s not it’s about sending those emails sending more emails but if you look at data we can get more effect out of our minerals well if you look at data you can probably increase the efficiency or or the effect of your emails with 20 10 20 30 percent I know I I heard uh when Starbucks added the data like AI um analytics to their Customer Loyalty program they increase the efficiency of the program with eight percent and that they’ve invested how much money they’re like millions of Euros to to increase that that eight percent but what you need to do is to send those emails so if I’m sitting as a founder or a salesperson at a startup and I’m I I need to get in contact with 1 000 clients it’s not about sending 10 emails uh and and then focus on the data or 100 emails and focus on the data it’s just like you have to send 200 emails a day for six months then you will succeed no matter what you’re looking it’s it’s numbers game marketing and of course you should look at the data to increase efficiency but you also have to think about doing the work and sometimes I feel that staring at the data will not actually change the date of the future and I think that’s what we need to think about yeah I think it’s so true and I feel like I’ve seen that and data can become a crutch and also this idea of a b testing which I think is good but you know we don’t really know what to do we don’t have any strong convictions we don’t want to make in tough decisions so let’s just test it and that becomes a standard response um and I don’t think it it can be substituted you can substitute judgment and creativity and Direction and vision with with data like you said it’s not gonna the magic sauce the secret the the Silver Bullet is not going to emerge from from data no we we have to look at we have to be data driven but we also need to to stay creative the curious and and test our Visions like there’s so much data saying that this would work this wouldn’t work well go out try and then we create new data and then we’ll see so uh I think that is important and one thing uh that is important to to to talk internally is the difference between efficiency and effectiveness efficiency is doing things uh efficient meaning that we do not waste that many resources so we want to be as efficient as possible in a lot of different channels so I’m investing in banners on at Miata to be efficient I want to optimize how how I do that in the best way and we are looking at data to that usually helps us with efficiency data usually tells us how efficient is this but it’s not that often we get good data to see how effective is it like are we doing the right thing should we actually do ads here or should we send emails or should we do live webinars that’s kind of data we need to look at what’s effect and Effectiveness not efficiency and sometimes I meet so many saying like yeah we are so data driven we are we are really really analyzing data and then I ask okay so how much money do I need to spend to increase your revenues with one percent and they’re like what do you mean and uh you’re really good at efficiency data but you do not have a clue about Effectiveness data meaning that where should we spend our money to grow one percent and that’s also the questions we need to to use data for hmm yeah I think I think you really hit on something really important it feels like the people who are experts at specific channels like meta or Google they can be really good at the efficiency part but to be Effectiveness you need to understand the whole business it’s a completely different you know um knowledge yeah and that kind of data is usually so complex and costs so money to collect so you cannot do it if you’re a startup then you need experience uh and you’ve been doing that for for have done that and advice and things like that like what should we do [Music] um but I also think just one one tip here about channels when we’re talking about I met 500 startups and and the first question is are we in the right Channel and I would say out of those 500 companies 99 is in the right Channel so so really you are in you are in the right channels that’s never the issue the issue is that you’re not good enough in that channel and you’re not continuing pushing in that channel or maybe you’re into many channels but you are in the right channel but you have to realize that it’s really hard to be good at one channel and and that is almost always the case and and then I say like okay let’s look into how good you are at this Channel and then you can find okay there are so many things you find where people do are just showing that they are not putting the effort into the channel you know are you good at LinkedIn yeah we’re doing LinkedIn yeah but you’re also doing the same post on on uh on on Instagram and Facebook that means that you’re pretty bad at all three platforms choose one and be really good at that platform uh and you can just get the tips on on how things work and we’re looking at our data but don’t look at your data like LinkedIn Instagram they have they know how to succeed just follow the rules uh stop why why that marketing is not a secret Source it’s just like hours and hours and following the aggregated data analysis that the platforms the Publishers the scientists have done and just continue continue continue continue continue then you will succeed I I think that’s really true and I it feels like um it’s because companies are afraid to focus like we’re afraid to say no we’re going to do LinkedIn for the next 12 months and just focus on that it feels like we’re better off by diversifying and doing everything a little bit of everything because we we saw the second month and then we say we’re probably in the wrong Channel no you’re probably not you’re probably right if if you’re selling B2B and it’s some sort of of service LinkedIn is probably the right you just have to do it for for six seven months and be really consistent and just follow the guides that LinkedIn or any other expert on LinkedIn notes publishing every minute on LinkedIn so there’s no like your data will not give you a secret so that we cannot your data will not only you know it there it’s there it’s just follow it and continue then you will succeed yeah that’s good good can reality check for a lot of companies um kind of final question I was talking with someone a couple days ago about well this was in the finished context about the fact that Finland has a lot of great Brands they’re not known outside of Finland like fatzer for instance the chocolate and candy uh make chocolate and candies among other things uh great great products um should be pretty much all over the world but isn’t do you see any kind of mistakes that Nordic companies make that limit their success outside their domestic markets or should they approach marketing differently in a way um to to have kind of like to have that success that they maybe find domestically also internationally or globally uh uh so actually there was a study like 10 years ago showing what you just told and I started to work with hanken so I actually worked with fatsara and so I worked with a lot of Finnish Brands and I would say finish finish brands or brand owners they’re a little bit too humble they’re like no we’re finished why should we do this and and they are not that aggressive when it comes to marketing so definitely uh that’s one in our personality we are not that aggressive and I also think that uh in smaller markets uh we are unused to the budget that are needed to capture a new market uh when I talked with clarna uh that are sort of succeeded in in their Global expansion uh they were were like evaluate evaluated to like what was it uh yeah the valuation would could be in like uh at least 50 I think billion yeah yeah yeah 50 but I think that’s now before that they were evaluated to 1020 or something like that how much do they they then spend on on their on the global launch when they want today when did the Snoop Dogg campaign and smooth and everything like that that was like 400 million euros that’s a lot of money and I don’t think some of the biggest brands in Finland spend 400 million euros under not fatser I don’t know maybe but a lot of Brands don’t realize how big Global budgets are and I think I sometimes see that in successful Swedish Brands and I like like are you are you are your budget in total 10 million euros and you want to succeed in the nordics and then go into to Germany we are talking about 100 million euros maybe so I think uh and then when they when the marketing managers goes to the board uh that are have been successful in a local market they don’t realize that um a market that is five times as big or 100 times as big you need not only you you need really really big budgets and you also it’s it’s an exist and a foreign country you need even bigger budgets and I think that is uh they do not go that big uh and I think that’s a problem I think that’s a really great reality check and it feels like maybe the rule of thumb for Finnish companies trying to go abroad is to 10x the amount that you think you think you need yeah and look at clona they’re the relation doubled more or less and then of course this guy gone down but it was definitely worth it and look at the I think they should look they say if we want to do a chlorina a Spotify and ulti yeah look at their budgets and and and realize that you’re not even close uh so like you just have to invest more and I think I think that’s that’s a reality check for sure uh Erik it’s been a real pleasure having you on what’s the best way for people to connect with you and to follow your work and uh right yeah the best thing is to connect on LinkedIn I’m always happy if you connect on LinkedIn so you will find me there and then the last two years uh I’ve been sort of trying to summarize all my knowledge into e-learning platform called now marketing levels that I launched this June uh so I like taken everything I’ve done the last 15 years and put into videos in uh where you can find sort of anything so so right now we have over 6 70 courses uh and different uh like we have live q a sessions with me if you have any questions also going to marketinglevels.com and I bet you can find any help you need and and if you if we don’t have it there just send it to me and I will fix it I promise you but uh either just follow me on LinkedIn or follow marketing levels on LinkedIn and we post a lot of material there perfect if you found this conversation interesting definitely go check it out uh we’ll also include a link in the show notes um yeah thank you so much Erik and um I wish you all the best in the future thank you so much for for letting me speak about this favorite topic of mine thank you for listening you can find all episodes of the growth pod on Spotify YouTube and apple podcasts [Music]