About Justin
Justin Shimoon is the founder and CEO of AffinityClick Inc., the makers of Hushed, a top-five grossing iOS/Android app for over five years.
Justin’s love for technology and marketing started at an early age and followed him through his years at university. After graduating from Carleton University with a degree in electrical engineering, as well as a minor in telecommunications, Justin didn’t waste any time before jumping into the internet marketing industry. In 2000, he founded his first company, Sitebrand, a digital marketing company. Sitebrand helped companies personalize the online experience with relevant messaging. Behind Sitebrand was a team of seasoned personalization experts. At the time, Justin didn’t know it, but this company would help him develop as a leader and CEO, which would become invaluable later in life as he started additional companies.
During this tenure as CEO at Sitebrand, Justin developed his leadership style, fostered the development of close to 40 employees at the company’s peak, and became an expert on digital marketing and the ever-evolving industry. As Sitebrand quickly grew and established a major presence, Justin evolved into a prominent business leader in Ontario, Canada. Tasked with growing a team and developing a positive work culture at an early age, Justin embraced the challenge head on and ever since, he has been intentional about professional development and challenging himself to become a better leader each day.
Today, Justin uses the experiences and lessons learned from his first startup companies to shape his decision making skills at Hushed. Considered a leader in the VOIP telecommunication space, Justin and the team at Hushed have built a successful company with over seven million downloads, 500 million phone calls, 1 billion million text messages, and utilized in over 45 countries. Despite the large-scale adoption by Hushed users, Justin is most proud of the 4.5 star rating on the Apple App Store, with over 1,000 reviews.
Justin is quick to share that it was the culmination of hard work and the ability to predict which features users would want that allowed Hushed to grow to the level it has. For Justin and the team at Hushed, the excited lies in knowing they have only just scratched the surface. While Justin remains engaged in the VOIP industry and working to make Hushed the worldwide leader, he is also passionate about the technology startup scene in Canada. Justin enjoys learning about emerging technology like artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. His curiosity and drive to always learn is infectious to those around him
Justin has started this website to serve as an outlet to share his thoughts around leadership, marketing, and how startup founders can create a product and culture scales. Throughout his journey as a founder, Justin has learned valuable lessons that he hopes to share with his employees and others that are in similar stages in their career.
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Named to 40 Under 40 list
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Recipient of the Wes Nicol Award
How to Use Push Marketing in Your Strategy
When starting your business or figuring out your online marketing strategy, two techniques come into play which is push and pull marketing. There are significant differences between the two that any good marketer will understand before determining which is best for their current strategies. Pull marketing, in the simplest of terms, are tactics to get your customers to come to you. Push marketing is the complete opposite where companies take their products directly to the customers.
Push marketing works as a promotional tactic for companies to be able to push their products at their current and potential customers. Push marketing comes into play once your business has spent a fair amount of their budget on their online strategies, thankfully there are many different techniques to utilize.
One technique to use is Google in-market audiences. In-market audiences are defined as a specific audience of people researching for a particular product or service. These consumers are ones who are also comparing products across Google. Being able to target this audience through Google ads and search tactics can serve as a great way to reach your potential audience of customers interested in your particular goods and services.
Banner ads are another growth strategy for businesses to use for an affordable pay per click in getting their name out there. Companies can utilize banner ads on websites that are closely related to their products, buy ad space, and get their information out there. Similar audience campaigns can be a great tool to meet a larger goal to help expand your business. With the similar audience campaign, you can take a look at the similarities and differences between users you have converted from your site and see who’s behaviors align from the new list that you can reach out to.
Facebook is also a way to utilize a target audience which is labeled as behaviors and demographics. If you can target the correct audience, Facebook is able to work well for your strategy. The behaviors and demographics are defined by the audiences shopping preferences and credit card use, as well as what their needs are. There are many other aspects that you can tap into as well, which makes Facebook a reliable tool if used correctly. Twitter works the same way in creating Twitter ads, being able to target your audience based on demographics and behaviors.
With these strategies, businesses are able to reach out to new audiences rather than continuing to tire their existing customers with continuous information and new products. Each tactic can be utilized well to create that extra push in order to generate new sales and scale your business.
How Leadership Impacts Organizational Performance
Great leadership and leadership skills are not always something you are born with. Many times, to become a great leader you must be willing to learn and hone in on the skills that will make you the best you can be. Leadership profoundly impacts the performance of an organization whether it is positive or negative. The best way to create that positive performance impact is by learning what makes a great leader and how you can inspire and empower your employees.
One crucial aspect of leadership is the many different leadership styles that are out there. The style you choose is heavily dependent on the type of organization and employees you have in your business. A good leader understands the differences between being a boss or manager and being an inspiring leader. Instead of treating employees as if they were your subordinates, you give them the tools to create alongside you, encouraging each person to participate in a team effort and bring their specific skills to the table.
Communication is an essential part of being a good leader. This goes along with motivating that team mentality and effort. There are many different ways you can monitor the growth of your team and team members, but the best way is through communication. Understanding the personalities of your team and their different styles of work ethic is crucial to measuring their successes and how to make sure they aren’t falling behind. Learning how your team handles different situations and the overall mood depending on what is happening either within the organization or personally, can create that window of trust and openness.
Along with understanding leadership styles comes the utilization of those styles within your team. Sometimes, depending on the situation, you will need to adjust your leadership style to address what is going on with your team or within the organization. Being blunt about numbers or making time to converse with your team as a whole to start each day are two completely different styles of leadership that come into play to handle certain situations. The switch between styles will help to understand problems, motivate your team, and handle difficult issues as they arise.
To be a good leader, you must immerse yourself within the organization. Creating a team effort atmosphere helps to let your employees know that you are in this together and do not feel they are lesser than you.
Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy
Social media marketing is an important part of a comprehensive marketing strategy. Having a good understanding of how it works will help a business create more engagement with their brand and hopefully produce more sales. Unfortunately, a large number of business owners aren’t sure how to create a strategy that allows them to tackle this area of digital marketing.
Creating Goals For Social Media Marketing
The first step is to set some objectives and goals. Is a campaign going to be for purchases, leads, followers or retweets? For example, a pet grooming company might create a strategy like this: “For our Instagram account, we’ll share images that showcase the groomed dogs that our clients bring in. We’ll post five images each week. Our goal is to get at least 30 likes and 10 comments on each image.”
Conducting An Audit
If a business is already active on a few social media platforms, they should conduct an audit of the current activity. Is each network complete with a bio, images and URL? Is the presence of the business keeping up with competitors? Is activity sparse or updated on a regular basis? It’s best to maximize a presence on one channel and not try to show up on multiple networks if there isn’t time to keep them updated. An audit will indicate which accounts need to be kept and updated or deleted.
Narrowing Down Demographics
To be successful, demographics should be narrowed down to create an ideal customer, which would include, age, gender, location, interests, income, and pain points. A business should work to solve the pain points that are aggravating their target market and ideal customer.
Creating A Mission Statement
In the next step, a social media mission statement should be created. For example, a dog grooming company could write, “we’ll use Facebook to focus on connecting with other dog owners who would like to have their dogs pampered.”
Creating Engaging Content
Content marketing should be used to create a fantastic online social presence and build a brand. This may include images, videos, blog posts, and company updates. A posting schedule should be created and decisions made regarding the types of content that will be published. It helps to have a good mix of content that doesn’t just try to create sales. Adding educational material and how-tos will help build engagement.
Track And Optimize Each Account
The last step is to analyze progress by tracking each account and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Most social media platforms have their own analytical tools, but a business can also get a more comprehensive look at their analytics by using a paid tool like Hootsuite.