Kamil Rextin’s guerrilla marketing for conferences

[00:00:00] Guerrilla Marketing Tactics for Conferences with Kamil Rextin of 42 Agency

[00:00:00] Ramli John: Attending and sponsoring conferences can be a hefty financial investment, often reaching up to 100 grand.
[00:00:06] Ramli John: But Camille Rexon and the 42 agency team chose a more creative and cost effective approach through guerrilla marketing tactics.
[00:00:13] Ramli John: Rather than spending on traditional conference boots at SaaSTR and HubSpot's inbound conference, they opted for a more unconventional and engaging method to capture attention and acquire new customers.
[00:00:24] Ramli John: One of the things they did, they rented limousine buses to shuttle attendees from their hotels to the conference and drove trucks with billboards, turning those vehicles into mobile advertisement.
[00:00:34] Ramli John: Today, Camille shares a few guerrilla marketing tactics for conferences.
[00:00:38] Ramli John: In episode 59 of the marketing pop show, you learn, first of all, why in person events shouldn't just be an opportunity to sell and pitch.
[00:00:45] Ramli John: Second, the results of 42 agencies limo shuttles at Saster 2023 3rd, Camille's take on the future of performance marketing and number four, power up that has accelerated Camille's career.
[00:00:56] Ramli John: Before we get started, I've created a free power ups cheat sheet that you can download and apply Camille's brilliant marketing tactics at conferences.
[00:01:02] Ramli John: You can get it now@marketingpowerups.com or find the link in the show notes and description.

[00:01:06]

[00:01:06] Ramli John: You ready?
[00:01:07] Ramli John: Let's go.
[00:01:08] Ramli John: Marketing power ups ready, go.
[00:01:16] Ramli John: Here's your host, Rambly John Camille, I'm so excited.
[00:01:22] Ramli John: It's been like a long time coming.
[00:01:24] Ramli John: I invited you very when this podcast started and then I'm not sure what happened, but I'm glad for you to come here.
[00:01:32] Ramli John: We're going to be talking about your team strategy around SaaSTR event, which is a very expensive, very fun event.
[00:01:40] Ramli John: And inbound, yeah, you did a bunch of stuff there.
[00:01:44] Ramli John: Your team wrote a whole piece about this.
[00:01:47] Ramli John: But I'd just love to hear why Saturn inbound.
[00:01:52] Ramli John: Was it like your customers was there or you saw as an opportunity to just put the word out with about 42 agencies and anything else.
[00:02:02] Kamil Rextin: So I went to SaaSTR last year by myself.
[00:02:08] Kamil Rextin: It's all the companies and all the people who want to sell to vp marketing, CMO, CRO and BITB SaaS companies.
[00:02:15] Kamil Rextin: So last year we did this thing that got some attention was we hired somebody off Craigslist and we said we're going to give you $42 bills.
[00:02:24] Kamil Rextin: And as people come in for registrations each morning of the event, just hand them out as many as you can.
[00:02:31] Kamil Rextin: And we got some like Emily Kramer got one and she texted me, she sent me a picture and she's like, hey, I just got handbooked this brilliant idea.
[00:02:39] Ramli John: It got some attention is a $42 bill.
[00:02:43] Kamil Rextin: Yes, I can send you a picture of that with my face on it.
[00:02:46] Kamil Rextin: It's designed as a dollar bill, but it's like $42.
[00:02:50] Kamil Rextin: So that was pretty fun.
[00:02:53] Kamil Rextin: So this year we were brainstorming, and this year I was like, okay, I'm not going to go solo.
[00:02:59] Kamil Rextin: I'm going to go take some people from my team.
[00:03:01] Kamil Rextin: So I went with Alejandra Betty, and then we were brainstorming ideas on, like, we can't get a booth for 100, balcony, 50,000, whatever.
[00:03:10] Kamil Rextin: Crazy.
[00:03:11] Kamil Rextin: Whatever the boot amount is.
[00:03:13] Kamil Rextin: So what's a more cost efficient way to just get attention, right?
[00:03:18] Kamil Rextin: Marketing is all about getting attention.
[00:03:21] Kamil Rextin: So Alejandro came up with the idea of a limo.
[00:03:25] Kamil Rextin: She's like, why don't we hire a limo and then we can run a 42 shuttle?
[00:03:29] Kamil Rextin: So we printed out some magnets, we put it on top of the limo, so it was like 42 branded, and we would literally just go to every hotel and say, hey, are you guys going to Sapster?
[00:03:39] Kamil Rextin: We're running a shuttle.
[00:03:41] Kamil Rextin: Would you like a ride?
[00:03:43] Kamil Rextin: And we managed to fill up.
[00:03:44] Kamil Rextin: We did, like four or five trips back and forth with the limo filled a couple of times.
[00:03:48] Kamil Rextin: We were so full that we couldn't fit in ourselves, so we had to wait for the limo to come back.
[00:03:53] Kamil Rextin: And while people were in the limo, it was a good opportunity to just talk to the mobile stuff, right?
[00:03:57] Kamil Rextin: Like, hey, what you do?
[00:03:58] Kamil Rextin: This is what we do.
[00:03:59] Kamil Rextin: Here's a $42 bill.
[00:04:01] Kamil Rextin: If you ever need demand and DevOps marketing help, go give us a call.
[00:04:06] Kamil Rextin: And somebody actually called it a moving booth.
[00:04:11] Kamil Rextin: I'm like, yeah, this is kind of what it is.
[00:04:15] Kamil Rextin: So that was pretty fun.
[00:04:17] Kamil Rextin: Initially, I wanted to.
[00:04:19] Kamil Rextin: When we were brainstorming ideas, I was like, maybe we can fly a plane overhead and just drop the flyers of the plane all over the event.
[00:04:29] Kamil Rextin: And that's where I was like, maybe get a billboard by SFO airport around the event venue when people are driving in.
[00:04:37] Kamil Rextin: But that was like 20k or something like that.
[00:04:40] Kamil Rextin: Crazy.
[00:04:40] Kamil Rextin: Yeah.
[00:04:41] Kamil Rextin: Seven k for the billboard and the billboard at the event.
[00:04:44] Kamil Rextin: So, like, in the parking lot, I don't want to drop seven k on two days.
[00:04:50] Kamil Rextin: So we did that.
[00:04:51] Kamil Rextin: We got the same girl from Craigslist to give out flyers, but she actually got chased by security, so you couldn't give out all the flyers.
[00:05:01] Kamil Rextin: And then the limo worked really well.
[00:05:04] Kamil Rextin: And then we had some custom design t shirts that got some attention.
[00:05:07] Kamil Rextin: People like, these are really cool t shirts.
[00:05:09] Kamil Rextin: And the amazing thing is a few people are like, oh, yeah, 42.
[00:05:12] Kamil Rextin: I've heard of you guys before.
[00:05:16] Kamil Rextin: And then at inbound, because Saastr and inbound were just the same kind.
[00:05:21] Kamil Rextin: So I found a company in Boston that does these mobile billboards, and it was like, alhanta did the design, and we got these mobile billboards at inbound whenever none of us from the team was at inbound.
[00:05:33] Kamil Rextin: But I wanted to have a presence because we're pretty big.
[00:05:36] Kamil Rextin: We work with a lot of cupspot customers.
[00:05:39] Kamil Rextin: So he just parked the billboard in front of the event venue, so when people coming in, they can see the billboard.
[00:05:45] Kamil Rextin: And then he drove around the event venue at the lunch spots, when people are leaving for lunch and all that stuff.
[00:05:53] Kamil Rextin: So to me, a lot of people treat events like sales activity, which I think is part of it.
[00:06:00] Kamil Rextin: Like, you go to the booth, you stand the badge itself.
[00:06:02] Kamil Rextin: But I also think it's an experiential marketing activity, and you just want to maximize brand impressions that you want people to remember you.
[00:06:09] Ramli John: Yeah.
[00:06:09] Kamil Rextin: And that was like, the whole driving idea behind it is like, how do we become memorable and get attention?
[00:06:15] Kamil Rextin: And we don't spend a lot of money because we can't focus, like event.
[00:06:22] Kamil Rextin: So we just did some scrappy stuff, I think, including travel tickets, everything.
[00:06:28] Kamil Rextin: And the inbound billboard, our total costumes are only like $10,000.
[00:06:32] Kamil Rextin: What?
[00:06:32] Kamil Rextin: For everything?
[00:06:34] Kamil Rextin: Including the limo, including tickets, including flights, including hotels.
[00:06:38] Ramli John: Interesting.
[00:06:38] Kamil Rextin: Including tickets to the event, including the billboard printing, the flyer printing, like, all in.
[00:06:45] Kamil Rextin: I think our cost was like ten k, which is pretty reasonable given ourselves.
[00:06:48] Ramli John: I mean, compared to 150 grand.
[00:06:52] Kamil Rextin: Right.
[00:06:53] Kamil Rextin: That's pretty impressive, right?
[00:06:55] Kamil Rextin: Yeah.
[00:06:55] Kamil Rextin: Thank you.
[00:06:56] Kamil Rextin: So we tried to be scrappy, we tried to be creative, and we're like, what's the low budget way?
[00:07:03] Kamil Rextin: And then we had some pens, we gave out to people, and we had a lot of conversations with people, but it was just like trying to stand up.

[00:07:10] Standing Out at Events: A Creative Approach by 42 Agency

[00:07:10] Ramli John: It's interesting that something you mentioned earlier, people come to events thinking it's just a sales event.
[00:07:17] Ramli John: Sure, people are looking to measure roi with number of demos done during that time, but it's interesting how you've kind of.
[00:07:27] Ramli John: It's not just on a sales event you mentioned, it's also about staying top of mind, and people are going to talk about the limo.
[00:07:34] Ramli John: It's like, I got a free ride.
[00:07:37] Ramli John: It's an experience.
[00:07:38] Ramli John: Compared to walking up to a booth where they've gone to maybe 50 booths, they've only gone.
[00:07:45] Ramli John: Was there anybody else doing the limo?
[00:07:46] Ramli John: I can't imagine.
[00:07:49] Ramli John: There's only one limo and it was 42 agency.
[00:07:52] Ramli John: You stood out compared to the booths out there.
[00:07:56] Kamil Rextin: And then also it's like how many people hear about 42?
[00:08:00] Kamil Rextin: How many people see 42?
[00:08:01] Kamil Rextin: How many people talk about.
[00:08:03] Kamil Rextin: That was our main KPI.
[00:08:05] Kamil Rextin: Yes, we had some good conversations and hopefully we closed some deals out of it.
[00:08:09] Kamil Rextin: But I wasn't strictly worried about how many sales leads we get.
[00:08:14] Kamil Rextin: It was just like can we stay top of mind for these people and can we just leave a positive impression?
[00:08:20] Ramli John: I love how you're thinking about this the long way, the long game versus the short game.
[00:08:25] Ramli John: Or like I'm curious, like the last time you went, you gave away those $42.
[00:08:32] Ramli John: You should call it something 42 Camille Bucks or something like that.
[00:08:41] Ramli John: Did you end up a customer or you talked about Emily Kramer who's like this amazing marketer who owns market one, but she got one of those.
[00:08:52] Ramli John: Was there anybody else who furthered down like oh, I remember getting one of your $42 from that event?
[00:08:59] Kamil Rextin: No, but I got some good introductions from the event.
[00:09:02] Kamil Rextin: So from people I met at the event I got some introductions.
[00:09:05] Kamil Rextin: So I'm not looking at it like we handed out these many dollars bills.
[00:09:08] Kamil Rextin: How many people, like some People came to the side, we got a sticky traffic.
[00:09:13] Kamil Rextin: I'm okay with not having a direct line to revenue.
[00:09:18] Kamil Rextin: It was something creative that I can offset about and talk to about a podcast and then putting you guys away creative.
[00:09:27] Kamil Rextin: It's also the third level effects, the fourth level effects of doing that exercise and then using that as a story to tell our story.
[00:09:38] Ramli John: That's so good.
[00:09:41] Ramli John: The Plane.
[00:09:42] Ramli John: Like you were going to hire a plane to drop flyers.
[00:09:45] Ramli John: Like wow, you're really thinking out there and really thinking about this, about grabbing attention because nobody else is necessarily doing that.
[00:09:54] Ramli John: People are going to come.
[00:09:55] Ramli John: People typically a company comes, they have their booth, they have their stands and their design their flyers.
[00:10:02] Ramli John: And then you're like I'm going to go bring a plane or a limo to this event.
[00:10:07] Ramli John: And people are like yeah, it's going to really stand out here, which is super interesting, basically.

[00:10:13] The Balance Between Short-Term and Long-Term Results in Marketing

[00:10:13] Ramli John: Can you talk a little bit more about that?
[00:10:15] Ramli John: Like the importance of attention, especially nowadays with economy, I think there's increased competition.
[00:10:21] Ramli John: There's things like that.
[00:10:23] Ramli John: How important is it for companies to think about?
[00:10:26] Ramli John: Not just direct, like okay, I did x, now I got Y in terms of sales calls.
[00:10:32] Ramli John: But you're thinking about, I love how you put it, the second, 3rd, 4th, even the fifth event effect of doing an activity and really thinking about it long term.
[00:10:43] Ramli John: How important is it now for companies to be thinking about that or is it even important?
[00:10:48] Kamil Rextin: So always about balancing both.
[00:10:50] Kamil Rextin: I think agency sales is very different than software sales.
[00:10:54] Kamil Rextin: I'm going to put a caveat there because in agency sales you're working with people and the relationship matters 100% time more than buying a piece of software.
[00:11:03] Kamil Rextin: So I think there's that difference.
[00:11:05] Kamil Rextin: I think agency sales are more about building trust and showcasing expertise.
[00:11:10] Kamil Rextin: WhIle a Product, you have just what the product actually works and how good does this thing actually work as an agency?
[00:11:21] Kamil Rextin: I think our strategies and stuff is very different.
[00:11:23] Kamil Rextin: But I think if you're a B two B Saastr brand, you have to always balance the short term and the long term.
[00:11:32] Kamil Rextin: If you are selling, I don't know, performance management software and it's a 30 day sales cycle, you have to invest in the immediate drug response stuff to pay the bills and then you invest in the longer term brand building.
[00:11:49] Kamil Rextin: Because brand over time makes performance marketing easier because more people are familiar with your brand.
[00:11:55] Kamil Rextin: So you get higher click through rates, lower CPC, higher conversion rate.
[00:11:59] Kamil Rextin: So you have already built that trust in the market.
[00:12:02] Kamil Rextin: But it's also a fool's errand to be like I'm an illicit startup, I have sub $1 million revenue.
[00:12:07] Kamil Rextin: I'm going to invest everything in my brand marketing.
[00:12:09] Kamil Rextin: You can't do that.
[00:12:11] Kamil Rextin: You're going to run out of money before that brand marketing starts to pay off.
[00:12:15] Ramli John: Yeah.
[00:12:16] Kamil Rextin: So I think you have to take it with a grain of salt to say that typically with our customers we do like a 60 30 model, 70 30 60.
[00:12:29] Kamil Rextin: We over index on performance, direct response because that is what's going to drive the short term results because that is ultimately important.
[00:12:36] Kamil Rextin: But that shouldn't come at the expense of the longer term brand building because you also want to be doing longer term brand building and performance ads.
[00:12:44] Kamil Rextin: And performance marketing can also build longer term brand.
[00:12:48] Kamil Rextin: It's not that Monday.com spends I don't know how many, 90% of their revenue on YouTube rank and stuff.
[00:12:54] Kamil Rextin: And they're all directly slots.
[00:12:55] Kamil Rextin: They're all like sign up for a trial, go try Monday.
[00:12:58] Kamil Rextin: But you see them so often, so much everywhere that you start to just become top of mind for you.
[00:13:04] Kamil Rextin: Right, but those are not brand campaigns, right?
[00:13:06] Kamil Rextin: Those are essentially performance campaigns.
[00:13:09] Kamil Rextin: But just by virtue of frequency and virtue of like you've seen them on YouTube, on search, on this, that you just think about Monday when you think of product or ClickUp or whatever, any of these things.
[00:13:20] Ramli John: Yeah.
[00:13:21] Kamil Rextin: So I think to say that performance campaign can only drive performance and a brand campaign can only drive brand is a false argument.
[00:13:30] Kamil Rextin: I think performance can be a brand and brand can drive false.
[00:13:35] Kamil Rextin: It's just how you approach it and the time frames you're looking at.

[00:13:39] Balancing Brand Experience and Direct Sales at Events

[00:13:39] Ramli John: How do you see that applied to events where most people see events as like, okay, this is like direct performance.
[00:13:47] Ramli John: Bring salespeople in, do as many demos as possible, versus, you can also see it as a split between brand experience.
[00:13:55] Ramli John: Like the limo, man, that's such a great experience on its own, but it's also a little bit of like, you call it a moving booth where there's a balance there.
[00:14:05] Kamil Rextin: It's both.
[00:14:06] Kamil Rextin: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:14:07] Kamil Rextin: But with the limo, our main goal wasn't to direct sales, drive leads.
[00:14:14] Kamil Rextin: Our main goal was to drive brand impression and more people to know about the limo and talk about 42 agency, as an agency that wrote the limo, that was our main goal.
[00:14:24] Kamil Rextin: The secondary effect was like we had to work conversations with people writing the limo, and that was like, oh, yeah, okay, this is what you tell.
[00:14:30] Kamil Rextin: Yeah, let's talk after we write that stuff.
[00:14:32] Kamil Rextin: For sure.
[00:14:34] Kamil Rextin: I think events are expensive, so it's normal to be like, I'm putting fifty k on a booth.
[00:14:40] Kamil Rextin: What am I going to get out of it?
[00:14:42] Kamil Rextin: For us it was different because we didn't buy a booth for 50k.
[00:14:45] Kamil Rextin: We put like $10,000 and for us it was like, if we close one customer out of it, we'll get the return.
[00:14:52] Ramli John: Right, exactly.
[00:14:55] Ramli John: That makes sense.

[00:14:56] Creating Memorable Event Experiences: Lessons from 42 Agency

[00:14:56] Ramli John: Do you have any advice for, I mean, this might be different for agencies versus companies, but I just love the scrappiness of this.
[00:15:03] Ramli John: And I feel like more companies can approach the same, whether they're a software business or agency business, in terms of events, rather than like, traditional, let's just get a booth.
[00:15:14] Ramli John: Do you have any advice or tips for companies?
[00:15:17] Kamil Rextin: I just think you should look at it as, here's a bunch of people who are from our ICP.
[00:15:23] Kamil Rextin: They're going to be all at the same place at the same time.
[00:15:25] Kamil Rextin: How do we make ourselves memorable?
[00:15:28] Kamil Rextin: It could be a limo, it could be a dinner you host, it could be anything.
[00:15:33] Kamil Rextin: But I think face to face time adds a lot.
[00:15:37] Kamil Rextin: It builds more trust and more familiarity.
[00:15:39] Kamil Rextin: So you have to maximize that.
[00:15:41] Kamil Rextin: And you can think about it as, how do I make sure when they leave this event, they still remember who we are and what we do?
[00:15:49] Kamil Rextin: Because there's so many boots.
[00:15:51] Kamil Rextin: Everybody has a boot and boots are crazy.
[00:15:54] Kamil Rextin: People spend an insane amount of money on boots.
[00:15:57] Kamil Rextin: So some people were making like ice cream and coffee and blah, blah, blah, but that's just the event itself.
[00:16:04] Kamil Rextin: But what can you do outside of the event that can drive more conversation.
[00:16:08] Ramli John: Right.
[00:16:11] Ramli John: I'm trying to recall this, but there's theory around how to remember things.
[00:16:16] Ramli John: There's this guy who's watching on YouTube, like he is like a memory expert.
[00:16:19] Ramli John: And the way that he remembered things is by thinking of something weird.
[00:16:23] Ramli John: If some guy has a purple hair, he's more likely to remember that over somebody.
[00:16:27] Ramli John: I mean, Seth Godin also said this with purple cow, where people are more likely to remember a purple cow over a brown cow, so to speak.
[00:16:36] Ramli John: And I think that's the thing that I love about this.
[00:16:39] Ramli John: And I keep saying I love it because it is so good.
[00:16:41] Ramli John: But they're going to get hundreds of pens and swag, right?
[00:16:47] Kamil Rextin: Yes.
[00:16:47] Ramli John: But what they're going to remember is not that because let's give the swag because it's going to keep a stop of mind, but what's going to get them to remember is something that is unexpected in a limo.
[00:17:01] Kamil Rextin: Right.
[00:17:02] Ramli John: It's like super more memorable.
[00:17:06] Ramli John: Was that something that you were thinking?
[00:17:08] Kamil Rextin: Yeah, like a blue ocean.
[00:17:09] Kamil Rextin: Right?
[00:17:09] Kamil Rextin: Like everybody's going to get a booth.
[00:17:10] Kamil Rextin: Everybody's going to be doing sales pitches.
[00:17:12] Kamil Rextin: Everybody's going to try.
[00:17:13] Kamil Rextin: We're not going to do a sales pitch.
[00:17:14] Kamil Rextin: We're just going to try to be generally helpful.
[00:17:16] Kamil Rextin: People struggle.
[00:17:17] Kamil Rextin: People have to pay for uber every morning to and from the event.
[00:17:21] Kamil Rextin: If you can save them that money and headache and give them a free ride and create that memorable experience, hopefully they remember us as a positive.
[00:17:31] Ramli John: I love that.

[00:17:33] Innovative Marketing Ideas from 42 Agency

[00:17:33] Ramli John: Was there anything, any other ideas that didn't.
[00:17:36] Kamil Rextin: Oh, so many ideas.
[00:17:38] Kamil Rextin: Yeah.
[00:17:38] Ramli John: Any other ones that you'd want to share?
[00:17:40] Ramli John: The airplane idea was crazy because I just love to hear how you guys were thinking about that.
[00:17:45] Kamil Rextin: I wanted to buy billboards at Sofo airport.
[00:17:49] Kamil Rextin: I wanted to run a shuttle from the airport to the hotels and go there myself, say, hey, are you here for Saturday?
[00:17:57] Kamil Rextin: Let me give you a ride to the airport.
[00:17:58] Kamil Rextin: You're going to rent a car and drive people.
[00:18:00] Kamil Rextin: I do car pool, karaoke type stuff.
[00:18:03] Kamil Rextin: While they're in the car?
[00:18:05] Kamil Rextin: Yeah.
[00:18:07] Kamil Rextin: While I'm driving them from the airport to the hotel, we record some videos in the car, talking about something, I don't know, quick marketing questions or.
[00:18:17] Kamil Rextin: I don't know, whatever happened.
[00:18:20] Kamil Rextin: The other thing that we talked about was the billboard in the parking lot.
[00:18:26] Kamil Rextin: We talked about, oh, my goodness.
[00:18:29] Kamil Rextin: There's a whole list of things I don't remember now.
[00:18:32] Kamil Rextin: Airplane, I can't remember.
[00:18:37] Kamil Rextin: Sorry.
[00:18:38] Kamil Rextin: But there's a whole bunch of crazy ideas.
[00:18:40] Kamil Rextin: I was like, let's just throw stuff out there.
[00:18:42] Kamil Rextin: It doesn't matter how feasible it is, we'll figure out the feasibility later.
[00:18:46] Kamil Rextin: If it's inbound, outside of our budget is even realistic.
[00:18:50] Kamil Rextin: But let's just try and get the momentum going.
[00:18:55] Kamil Rextin: And the inbound thing, because Alejandro designed a brilliant creative.
[00:19:01] Kamil Rextin: We found a reasonable vendor that could print and do the billboard for under $2,000 for two days.
[00:19:08] Kamil Rextin: I'm like, fantastic.
[00:19:10] Kamil Rextin: If we can have even 10% of people who go into inbound see our billboard and remember that we're a HubSpot agency.
[00:19:19] Kamil Rextin: That's all I want.
[00:19:20] Ramli John: Yeah, I love that.
[00:19:22] Ramli John: That's so cool to hear this.

[00:19:27] Innovative Marketing Ideas from 42 Agency

[00:19:27] Ramli John: What was the next step?
[00:19:28] Ramli John: You had this list of ideas.
[00:19:31] Ramli John: Did somebody from your team kind of costed it out and like, okay, the limit from hotels to thing is feasible?
[00:19:37] Kamil Rextin: Yeah, we kind of worried on the ideas.
[00:19:38] Kamil Rextin: We're like, okay, what's like real estate?
[00:19:41] Kamil Rextin: What is know?
[00:19:42] Kamil Rextin: Throwing out flyers on a plane is not the best.
[00:19:47] Ramli John: Somebody's going to get angry.
[00:19:48] Ramli John: The cities.
[00:19:49] Kamil Rextin: Somebody's going to get angry.
[00:19:50] Kamil Rextin: It's going to create lots of garbage.
[00:19:51] Kamil Rextin: It's an environmental.
[00:19:52] Kamil Rextin: It's not a great environmentally.
[00:19:54] Kamil Rextin: So, like, let's scratch that idea off the table.
[00:19:56] Kamil Rextin: Billboards in San Francisco airport are super expensive.
[00:20:00] Kamil Rextin: You have to buy a minimum of, like, four or five weeks.
[00:20:02] Ramli John: Yeah, true.
[00:20:03] Kamil Rextin: Okay, let's cross that idea.
[00:20:05] Ramli John: Crazy.
[00:20:09] Ramli John: I'm just brainstorming.
[00:20:11] Ramli John: If you had a plane and you can do the cloud trail and write 42 on the sky.
[00:20:17] Kamil Rextin: Oh, somebody did that.
[00:20:18] Kamil Rextin: Somebody did that company called command bar.
[00:20:23] Ramli John: That's a long thing.
[00:20:24] Kamil Rextin: They do some.
[00:20:26] Kamil Rextin: They were flying a plane with a banner.
[00:20:28] Ramli John: Oh, no.
[00:20:29] Ramli John: Okay, cool.
[00:20:30] Kamil Rextin: They had a booth at the event, and they were flying an airplane with a big banner behind it saying a manbar.
[00:20:35] Kamil Rextin: I don't know, something, but I remember their name because I saw them, the plane, and I saw the booth.
[00:20:40] Ramli John: So I'm like, oh, okay, that's cool.
[00:20:43] Ramli John: I was thinking cloud trail with the smoke trail.
[00:20:46] Kamil Rextin: Oh, yeah.
[00:20:46] Ramli John: And you ride 42 on the sky because it's permanent there for hours.
[00:20:51] Kamil Rextin: We also thought about not permanent graffiti on the entrance.
[00:20:57] Kamil Rextin: So, like, going the night before, hiring somebody to do graffiti on the floor.
[00:21:01] Kamil Rextin: As people walk in, they see graffiti of 42 on the floor or toilets.
[00:21:05] Ramli John: People need to go to the toilet.
[00:21:06] Kamil Rextin: Toilets.
[00:21:07] Kamil Rextin: Yeah.
[00:21:09] Kamil Rextin: So last year when I went by myself, I left, like, I saw that dollar bill at the toilet, at the water table, and I just kind of left them everywhere.
[00:21:19] Kamil Rextin: Hockey stack.
[00:21:19] Kamil Rextin: Amir, who did up there, they did some cookie boxes around, like, random places and stuff.
[00:21:24] Kamil Rextin: So there was a lot of interesting cookie.
[00:21:26] Ramli John: I would not pick up that cookie box if it was randomly dropped on the street.
[00:21:29] Kamil Rextin: Yeah, it was on the table.
[00:21:33] Kamil Rextin: There was lunch.
[00:21:35] Ramli John: Okay, so it opens up like, you take this box home, like, oh, my goodness.
[00:21:39] Kamil Rextin: No, it was there.
[00:21:39] Kamil Rextin: It was on the table.
[00:21:40] Kamil Rextin: Yeah.
[00:21:41] Kamil Rextin: You just look at it.
[00:21:43] Ramli John: That's cool.
[00:21:44] Ramli John: I love that.
[00:21:45] Ramli John: That's super cool.
[00:21:46] Ramli John: I love to hear this.

[00:21:49] Changes in the Landscape of Performance Marketing

[00:21:49] Ramli John: I want to kind of shift gears and talk about what you're seeing.
[00:21:53] Ramli John: You've worked with dozens of, maybe even hundreds of b, two b SaaS companies.
[00:22:00] Ramli John: Are there anything right now that's working that you're seeing, especially with what's happening in the economy?
[00:22:06] Ramli John: Like what is working, what used to be working and isn't working anymore?
[00:22:13] Ramli John: What are some trends you're seeing in terms of performance, content, growth?
[00:22:18] Kamil Rextin: I think it just goes into some of what Becky wanted me to talk about.
[00:22:22] Kamil Rextin: But the landscape of performance marketing is changing with generative AI and everything else.
[00:22:29] Kamil Rextin: I think it's getting harder and harder.
[00:22:31] Kamil Rextin: Channels are reaching saturation.
[00:22:33] Kamil Rextin: There's more competition.
[00:22:35] Kamil Rextin: More and more people are trying to get attention.
[00:22:37] Kamil Rextin: So I think content and good content is always going to be working.
[00:22:43] Kamil Rextin: Like, you want to create that type of funnel that is really strong brand association for you.
[00:22:48] Kamil Rextin: But also on the performance side, I think Google search is still working.
[00:22:52] Kamil Rextin: It's been there for decades and still driving a lot of results for us.
[00:22:58] Kamil Rextin: Interesting.
[00:22:59] Kamil Rextin: It's competitive, it's getting more expensive.
[00:23:02] Kamil Rextin: But if the economics work for you, then it works.
[00:23:05] Ramli John: Right?
[00:23:06] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:23:08] Ramli John: Yeah.

[00:23:09] The Shift Away from Product-Led Growth

[00:23:09] Ramli John: I think the other thing we chatted before we were recording, we were talking about PLG, how that's like two years ago, cheap money.
[00:23:22] Kamil Rextin: Talk about that.
[00:23:22] Ramli John: You have some strong opinions that you've shared on LinkedIn and Twitter.
[00:23:28] Kamil Rextin: I think PLG was a zero interest rate phenomenon where people had a lot of money to spend and they were more willing to get.
[00:23:36] Kamil Rextin: I think PLG is great for top of lead time.
[00:23:39] Kamil Rextin: You get leads, you get people to sign up, but I don't think they're converting to big customers.
[00:23:43] Kamil Rextin: And I think in this, where budgets are tightening up financially, people are more careful about where to spend money.
[00:23:49] Kamil Rextin: I think the buying cycles are getting extended.
[00:23:50] Kamil Rextin: So even if you want to buy a tool, you have to talk to the C approval.
[00:23:54] Kamil Rextin: Build a business is then budget approval.
[00:23:56] Kamil Rextin: And that's where salespeople come in.
[00:23:57] Kamil Rextin: And good salespeople are great at helping you navigate those internal circumstances.
[00:24:02] Kamil Rextin: So I think PLG is going to.
[00:24:05] Kamil Rextin: I think it was great as there's a lot of money in the ecosystem, people are throwing money at different tools and you don't need to talk to anybody.
[00:24:12] Kamil Rextin: You can buy a tool for $500 a month and nobody's going to question you even if it doesn't have utility.
[00:24:17] Kamil Rextin: And I think there was a lot of companies that went down that route, but I think we're going to see the pendulum swing back to good fundamentals.
[00:24:27] Kamil Rextin: PlG is great for landing SMB deals, but SMB deals don't help you.
[00:24:33] Kamil Rextin: And it's not a problem.
[00:24:35] Kamil Rextin: All companies go up market because you need to be profitable and you need to burn more money.
[00:24:40] Kamil Rextin: And I think there's more pressure on companies now to show pre key and be profitable quicker.
[00:24:51] Kamil Rextin: And I think PLD doesn't get you there.
[00:24:54] Ramli John: Yeah, it's something that we've seen at appkeys where traditionally we were like, oh, let's invest in our low zero touch experience.
[00:25:03] Ramli John: But we've been driving more and more people to sales within the trial experience.
[00:25:10] Ramli John: Because you mentioned it before, we recorded a lot of people, they close quicker, they close at a higher rate because they're talking to somebody versus there's also.
[00:25:21] Kamil Rextin: That mental, like, it's on me as a user to go figure out the product by myself versus talking to sales for 15 minutes.
[00:25:30] Kamil Rextin: Might answer all my questions and show me how it applies to my use case and works for me or not.
[00:25:34] Kamil Rextin: So it takes that mental load off me.
[00:25:37] Kamil Rextin: We have quite a bit of customers that do that.
[00:25:40] Kamil Rextin: They have a free trial, drop a funnel, but then they route out most of those sales for qualification and demos because that closes at a 40% rate versus premium customer might close at a 10%.
[00:25:53] Kamil Rextin: And also those deal sizes are bigger.
[00:25:55] Ramli John: Bigger, exactly.
[00:25:57] Ramli John: Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:25:58] Ramli John: And that's something you've seen with the companies you're working with, where it's like, oh, let's do free sign ups.
[00:26:05] Ramli John: The focus is now more like, oh, the trial is just like a door towards them talking to sales, which is something.
[00:26:14] Kamil Rextin: Okay, so it's like jump up on a LinkedIn.
[00:26:16] Kamil Rextin: So instead of saying, hey, download this ebook, you're saying, hey, sign up for a free trial.
[00:26:22] Kamil Rextin: Cool.
[00:26:22] Ramli John: That makes sense.

[00:26:24] The Future of Growth and Performance Marketing

[00:26:24] Ramli John: I'm curious.
[00:26:25] Ramli John: We've kind of touched a little bit about it, but what do you see is something that people need to be focusing on going forward, especially around growth.
[00:26:37] Ramli John: You talked about good content.
[00:26:39] Ramli John: Is that something?
[00:26:41] Ramli John: I'm curious what you mean by that especially?
[00:26:43] Ramli John: You mentioned search and AI.
[00:26:47] Ramli John: They're looking at content differently, of course, where traditionally, listicles and content crafted for SEO has been the focus.
[00:26:57] Ramli John: But it seems like things have been changing.
[00:26:59] Ramli John: Here's what you see, I think everything is getting noisy.
[00:27:03] Kamil Rextin: And with generative AI, everything's going to get more noisier, especially on the performance marketing side, like Google and Facebook and all these guys already have sophisticated algorithms that can optimize ads much better than you can.
[00:27:14] Kamil Rextin: I think the emphasis is going to go back to creative, having good solid creative that works for your target market and standing out from interesting.
[00:27:24] Kamil Rextin: And then I think field in person events, I think those are going to get human, whatever involves more human involvement is going to get valued higher.
[00:27:35] Kamil Rextin: And I think performance marketing as we know it today might not exist in five years.
[00:27:40] Ramli John: Interesting.
[00:27:42] Kamil Rextin: I think the role of the media buyer who goes in and tweaks your ad optimizations and uploads ad creative, it's going to slowly evolve because machines can do it much better than we can.
[00:27:53] Kamil Rextin: We give machines certain inputs on here's my creative, here's my website, here's what I'm targeting.
[00:27:58] Kamil Rextin: It can generate copy for you.
[00:28:00] Kamil Rextin: It can potentially generate creative for you down the line.
[00:28:05] Kamil Rextin: I think that's going to evolve with time.
[00:28:07] Kamil Rextin: I think performance marketing started as like, hey, I'm going to send you coupons and I'm going to do this.
[00:28:12] Kamil Rextin: I'm going to run ads, but manually bidding on keywords.
[00:28:15] Kamil Rextin: I think the algorithm has so much data, the machine learning algorithm has so much data that they know at what time showing message to what purchase will result in a higher conversion.
[00:28:25] Ramli John: And what would be the role of performance there where like AI, you might have mentioned it there, but I might have missed it, where the machines are the one who are optimizing it.
[00:28:34] Kamil Rextin: We're providing the inputs.
[00:28:36] Ramli John: The inputs right there needs to be that human who provides inputs.
[00:28:40] Ramli John: Still the strategic stuff, the positioning, the.
[00:28:44] Kamil Rextin: Insights and then interpreting the results and insights and generating the feedback loop.
[00:28:49] Kamil Rextin: But I think even today you can go into Google, you can put in your website and Google auto generate ads for you and targeting and everything.
[00:28:57] Kamil Rextin: It's not perfect like performance max.
[00:28:59] Kamil Rextin: A lot of these things were very much automated.
[00:29:02] Kamil Rextin: You still need someone to enrollment at this time.
[00:29:04] Kamil Rextin: But it's not unrealistic to think that in five years just do it by itself.

[00:29:09] Standing Out and Being Memorable in a Noisy Market

[00:29:09] Ramli John: What you mentioned there around going back to creatives kind of brings back to mind that you mentioned it's getting noisier out there and standing out like what we've talked about with what you did as faster and being memorable and having strong creatives that stand out.
[00:29:27] Ramli John: Blue ocean stuff is kind of like kind of looping back to what you mentioned earlier where you did that for events in person events.
[00:29:34] Ramli John: But that's something that companies need to be thinking about.
[00:29:37] Ramli John: Not just events but like everything, content, creatives where standing out video is more important than ever because there's more noise.
[00:29:49] Ramli John: All right, is that what I heard from you?
[00:29:54] Kamil Rextin: I think traditionally b two b companies over index on drug response.
[00:29:57] Kamil Rextin: And like short term, I think we need to balance more the short term with the long term.
[00:30:02] Kamil Rextin: I think sales cycles are getting longer.
[00:30:05] Kamil Rextin: So it means that you need to stay top of mind reading the consideration set of a customer because they're thinking about like if I'm thinking of CRM software, there's probably three names that come top of mind and how do you become one of those names that they think about when they become, when they're like, oh, I need a CRM software.
[00:30:22] Kamil Rextin: They think of Salesforce and you, if you are selling CRM.
[00:30:26] Ramli John: Yeah, true.
[00:30:27] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:30:27] Ramli John: I love that.
[00:30:29] Ramli John: Well, thank you so much.
[00:30:30] Ramli John: I love that chat.

[00:30:31] Marketing Power Ups: Kamil Rextin on Understanding Marketing KPIs and Broader Business Impact

[00:30:31] Ramli John: I want to actually shift gear one last time and talk about career power ups in terms of you.
[00:30:37] Ramli John: You've worked in marketing over a decade, worked at Uber Flip, a crowd drift, in demand gen, and now you've started, you've been running 42 agency now for quite some time here.
[00:30:51] Ramli John: Gearis, what's a power up that's helped you in your career?
[00:30:54] Ramli John: Something that's helped you get a leg up over others or could be something that know like a networking or it could be something more like marketing skill related, but it's totally up to you.
[00:31:05] Kamil Rextin: I think a couple of things come to mind.
[00:31:07] Kamil Rextin: One is I was lucky enough to have a lot of people who helped me and gave me good advice as I was going to have a career.
[00:31:14] Kamil Rextin: I think I was always curious and I always wanted.
[00:31:19] Kamil Rextin: I think marketing can sometimes think about marketing too much and we don't try to connect you to the broader business.
[00:31:25] Kamil Rextin: And now that I'm running a company, I understand how a business owner thinks.
[00:31:31] Kamil Rextin: And as a marketer, it's not just about the, you have to think about business KPIs and business performance and thinking about broader outside of marketing, what is a third order effects that your marketing has?
[00:31:44] Kamil Rextin: So understanding churn rate and just being familiar with what those business KPIs are and how they tied to the work you do.
[00:31:54] Kamil Rextin: And I think broadly, I think marketers over index, you should be curious about learning about other industries like how economics work and how whatever.
[00:32:12] Ramli John: That makes sense.
[00:32:13] Ramli John: That whole curiosity really does help.
[00:32:15] Ramli John: And thinking of.
[00:32:17] Ramli John: I love how April Dunford, she was one of the very first episode where she mentioned one of her career props was thinking less about marketing and more about the market, which is such a good way to put it, where you're thinking about how the impact of your work broadly in terms of the company, and also in terms of thinking about it from beyond the organization.
[00:32:43] Ramli John: If you enjoyed this episode, you'd love the marketing Power ups newsletter.
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[00:33:26] Ramli John: That's all for now.
[00:33:28] Ramli John: Have a powered update marketing power ups until the next episode.