Marketing, Motivation & Mind

Today it is time for the next Interview of my project 101 OM-Experts. And this time you can read the first (and not last) interview in in a different language, in english. I know Max from my time at the Visual Meta GmbH some time ago. Max worked at this time in the SEA – Team for the swedish market and i managed the affiliate, display and also mobile marketing for our portals LadenZeile and ShopAlike. When i think about Max i have a very motivated and talented guy in my mind and i am sure we will read in the future a lot about him. Now it is your Time Max. We are excited to learn more about you and your online marketing history and future.

• Who are you and why do you love Online-Marketing?
My name is Max Andersson and I’m the founder of the digital marketing agency Simba Digital in Geneva, Switzerland. We focus on improving the generation of traffic, leads and sales for entrepreneurs and SMEs through various digital marketing strategies on the Swiss market.

I love online marketing because of the way it helps both companies and users to get what they want. Associating company offers with customer needs has never been more efficient than it is today. Online marketing isn’t only about selling products; it’s about selling the right products to the right people, helping users to solve their problems.

The evolution of the industry keeps us all constantly on our heels to stay on top of the latest technology. It’s very interesting to follow this evolution and I enjoy learning new things every day. The online marketing world regroups many bright minds and I’ve met many amazing people and friends through this passion.

• What did you before you started in OM?
I studied at HEC Lausanne and had a first job experience in an investment banking firm in Stockholm.

• Why did you started in Online Marketing and pls share your Vita with us.
When I realized that finance wasn’t my piece of cake, I moved to Berlin to start my first experience within online marketing. My first job was in SEO for the real-estate platform Lamudi in early 2015. I then moved on to work as the French SEO Country Manager for Wimdu in late-2015, a flat-sharing company, before changing things up and starting as the Swedish SEA Manager for Visual Meta, an online store aggregator. When I moved to Australia late-2016, I continued to work remotely as a consultant for Visual Meta while signing for King Kong, a digital marketing agency based in Melbourne, as a Content Marketing Specialist.

I have also worked as freelancer for companies such as Poker Stars and Supple, and touched on other online marketing fields such as Affiliation, Social Media, Facebook Advertising and CRO. With my experience, I decided to move back to Switzerland and found my own agency, where I work today.

• Which is your current project?
Simba Digital is a digital marketing agency aiming to help entrepreneurs and SMEs to generate more leads, clients and sales via digital marketing strategies. We analyse companies’ current situation and pinpoint where the biggest opportunity lies for them within marketing. Whether they should focus on SEO, Adwords, Facebook Ads, CRO or website development, we accompany our clients to succeed in the digitalization of their brand.

• What is your favourite Expo or Conference?
I haven’t had a chance to participate in many. Recently, I went to the eComm expo in Geneva, which was a great experience.

• Which is your favorite Marketing Book or Blog?
I will stay relatively classic here with blogs such as SEJ, SEL, SER, Moz, PPC Hero, Neil Patel, OKDork, Content Marketing Institute, …

• What are the Trends in the next 12 month?
Switzerland is an interesting market as it’s quite far behind other European countries in the online marketing field. In the next 12 months, the digitalization of Swiss companies will be growing very fast, with people starting to realize how important it is for their business.

On a larger scale, voice search will continue to grow and Google will keep improving their algorithm to provide the most relevant results to searches. Privacy issues in the social media world will be a crucial part of what happens on SM advertising platforms in the next few months.

• Our Marketing-World in 10 Years?
Slowly, text search and smartphones will disappear getting replaced by VR and AR. As humans, we will be much more immersed in technology as opposed to being have a clear separation between biology and technology. AI and virtual assistance will allow us to communicate with

• Please share with us your most exciting Learning and News in the last months?
Lately I’ve met many people online with whom I’ve learned and developed new Facebook Advertisement strategies. This experience has been awesome and the best thing I’ve learned in the last months.

Regarding news, I was interested to see that a recent study shows that 87% of SMEs in Switzerland are not using digital marketing as part of their strategy.

• What is your favorite quote?
Difficult to only say one ! But I’ll go with this one from David Ogilvy:

“In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.”

Thanks a lot for your time and your interesting insights Max.