Saif Cheval, Marketing Lead of NameShouts tells us about this extensive name pronunciation tool.
First of all, how are you and your family doing?
Saif Cheval: Good! It’s been a tough couple of years, but we’re lucky to all be in good health and getting by!
Tell us about you, your career, and how you joined NameShouts.
Saif Cheval: A long time ago, I was a lost university student who had no idea what I was doing. I stumbled upon an opportunity at NameShouts, and the rest is history: I got to learn about the real world while wrapping up my English degree, and together we created a brand, vision, and identity for this company.
How does NameShouts market its product/services online?
Saif Cheval: NameShouts has been focused on organic growth for the last few years: we’ve built a robust strategy around content, community, and product-led growth. A majority of our users come to us through Google and find great value when they come upon our product.
How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how did you get through it?
Saif Cheval: Covid had both positive and negative effects, and we’ve been lucky to say that the negatives have only been minor issues that we overcame. Of course, we were already working partially remotely, but Covid forced us to go 100%, which was definitely a bit disorienting at first.
Additionally, the initial panic in 2020 meant we were a bit uncertain about the company’s financial future, as many companies and people were.
Luckily, the crisis allowed us to refocus our priorities and learn about new funding opportunities, as well as come closer together as a team.
Through a commonly-held optimism, we pulled through and are now comfortable operating as a fully-remote company.
Covid also meant that other companies that hadn’t worked remotely before, as well as schools and organizations, needed tools to connect with their fellow colleagues and students. NameShouts is uniquely suited for doing just that.
By shifting focus from sheer survival to upholding our internal community and spreading that value to others, we managed to kick off a great run that has yet to stop!
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to manage your online marketing?
Saif Cheval: We use Slack and Asana to keep track of each other and our tasks.
Google’s suite of products for businesses has been hugely impactful as we are often operating on a tight budget. Shoutout to Google Sheets, and who could forget GA!
We work with fellow Canadians on Hootsuite for our social scheduling and recently moved to the amazing Webflow for our landing pages and blog.
Early on, we adopted Agile workflows in our marketing strategy as well, and it was a game-changer: it allows us to focus on the big picture while still managing to execute the small parts that make up the whole of any marketing campaign.
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
Saif Cheval: We have a few competitors entering the space, but this is more exciting than worrying: competition only means this market is becoming more and more important to people. We welcome anyone who believes that something needs to be done to show people how important their names really are.
Your final thoughts?
Saif Cheval: It’s been hard to approach marketing through the last two years: in those initial days, it almost seemed as though nothing mattered, as the world was on its way to ending.
But this crisis taught me that what’s important when it comes to marketing is providing meaning and value to people. Because if you’re not doing that, you’re just adding to the noise.
It definitely helps that our product is inherently valuable because everyone has a name. It’s been a real pleasure assisting people to discover that those names matter.
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