Daniel Maloney, Co-founder & CEO, Tailwind
World-Class Marketing for Everyone
by Dennis Spielman
While headquartered in Oklahoma City, Daniel Maloney was a transplant born in New York, who grew up in South Florida, went to school in Philly, and then made his career in either New York and Silicon Valley before moving to Oklahoma. When he came to the state about a decade ago, Maloney came with the perspective of needing to build a community, build a friend network, and figuring out how to build a company somewhere where you don’t necessarily have deep roots.
“I always found the community incredibly welcoming and was grateful for that,” said Daniel Maloney. “But that said, it’s been a really fun ride, fun journey so far, and I’m excited for what’s coming up.”
Maloney is one of the co-founders of Tailwind, whose mission is to make world-class marketing easy for everyone. That word, everyone, is essential to them. When Maloney initially looked at the digital marketing landscape, he saw that the vast majority of tools were geared at larger enterprise-tier businesses with complex needs and sophisticated marketing functions. The tools available at the time created an unlevel playing field as well.
“If you’re a small business, you have the advantages of speed and being able to be more nimble, perhaps, than a larger organization,” said Maloney. “But when it comes down to knowledge, experience, and learning from that experience, access to data, access to tools that unlock new strategies for you, you’re at a pretty fundamental disadvantage.”
With small businesses competing with large companies on the same platforms, Tailwind educates their members by teaching them about digital marketing and various strategies that are, or are not, beneficial. One part of Tailwind’s services is about tools and enablement, so providing people the software to promote their business more efficiently, more effectively, in more places, and ultimately maximize ROI. Another part is leveraging data at scale to guide those interactions through very pointed suggestions and recommendations.
“A tool that we launched in this past year is called Tailwind Create, and it’s all about helping people create visual content much faster and much more easily than with other modern design tools,” said Maloney. “We’re seeing, it takes about 90% less time, and the content being created through Create is performing 47% above average, right? So, leveraging data about what types of content works well and then building an intelligent system that designs with your brand in mind and your purpose in mind, it can be done in a cost-effective and time-effective way.”
From Maloney’s personal experience, he advises that businesses should be perpetually pivoting. As the world and markets evolve, customers’ needs evolve. What works today might not work in two or three years in any given part of your business Maloney explained.
“The more proactive side is continuously being out there with your customers and your target customers and doing research to understand what needs they have that you’re not serving today, which of those needs are growing or emerging over time, as opposed to declining or stagnating, and then leaning into those and leaning into the newer needs or the growing needs,” said Maloney. “If you align yourself with those, that’ll create some natural tailwinds, sorry for the pun, in terms of growing your business.”
Daniel Maloney will be speaking at the Oklahoma Venture Forum Power Lunch on Wednesday, March 10, 2021. Maloney said he is excited to see everyone at the event and connect with folks as it’s been harder to keep in touch with people in the community, friends, and acquaintances. Be sure to register for the online ZOOM event to learn more about turning around a business, asking your questions, and networking with entrepreneurs in Oklahoma.
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