Kamil Rextin: The Symbiotic Relationship Between Performance & Brand Marketing #201

Hello, hello everyone. This is your host, Akeel Jabbar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District. In today's episode, we'll be talking about the symbiotic relationship between performance and brand marketing. Today we have our guest Kamal Rexton joining us. Kamal is the general manager of 42 Agency, a B2B agency that helps SaaS companies scale demand generation and build RevOps infrastructure. He has worked in RevOps growth and demand gen for the last 12 years at companies like CrowdRiff and Uberflip. Uberflip. He uses a scientific approach when it comes to marketing. So rather than believing whatever is trending, he experiments and whatever proves to be effective, is what matters to him. So welcome, Kamal. Super excited to have you on the show today.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Yeah. So let's, let's start this episode off really simple, right? Like, just for our audience to kind of set the base here, can you start off by sharing what— to our audience, what is demand generation?

Oh, great question. So the way I view demand generation is any marketing that is focused on directly generating pipeline and revenue. So you can call it direct response, you can call it performance marketing, you can call it Growth marketing, you can call it whatever have you. And also, in my view, demand generation also includes a little bit of the RevOps work because ultimately, like, I view demand generation as an umbrella that includes marketing plus RevOps, the backend infrastructure, experimentation, all that stuff. And I tend to view demand gen as something that happens when you sell to more enterprise or upmarket companies where you're Partnering up with your sales team on revenue goals versus growth marketing might be something where you're selling more SMB freemium, where you're getting people on a trial and then the product and the lifecycle pieces take over to get them to convert into a customer.

Got it. So you run your agency, 42 Agency, so you're working more RevOps, you're working with more, you're working with sales teams and helping them generate pipeline. These are more kind of maybe enterprise clients. Does that sound about right?

Yeah, we do work with some SME folks as well, but majority of our focus is more on the enterprise side.

Enterprise side. Okay, great. So good to have that kind of background. And then we have, when we're thinking about building pipeline, there's 2 thoughts, right? You have demand generation and then you also have brand marketing, right? We're trying to decide the difference between them. Where should we spend? Where should we focus our attention, especially when it comes to the higher market industry? And as a founder, Should I choose one or the other, or how do they kind of complement each other?

So this friend of mine, Michael Lorenzos, he wrote this great essay about the false dichotomy between brand and performance. So we tend to view them as 2 different things that serve 2 different purposes, but actually they're pretty complementary. And essentially the way I view it is brand marketing gets more people to buy in 12 months, like a more longer-term view. And performance marketing is focused on getting people to buy in the short term. So if you only do brand marketing, you're focusing more on the people who are not in market right now and getting them aware of your product, because how are they ever going to buy your product if they don't even know you exist and who you are? But if you only do performance marketing, you're going to run out of people to sell to because there's only a finite number of people who are actually looking for a certain product at any given time. So it's kind of like complementary to each other because without brand marketing, you're going to run out of oxygen pretty soon on your marketing side because there is like, I mean, very tactical example, there is X number of searches on Google for a certain keyword every day or every month and there's like a finite ceiling to that. But then there's a whole other universe of people who might fit into your ideal customer profile, but they're not actively searching on Google. So like making them aware that Hey, we exist, this is a problem we solve for, and that's more of a longer-term play versus performance marketing might be focused on, hey, we need to generate revenue in this quarter, so we need to hit our revenue goals.

And can you do— if I'm thinking of how they complement each other, if doing one or the other. Okay, so if you're doing brand marketing, okay, I understand it's more of a long-term play. You're building the trust with the leads and then eventually they come to you, they already have that trust. You have that recognition of your brand. But if you're only doing performance marketing and you don't have any brand, would you say you're as effective? If you don't do any, like say zero brand marketing, would your conversion you think would be equal? Conversion rate?

I think you'll see an uplift in conversion. So we have done some studies on our side where we look at customers and we built a data model on our customers trying to understand what is the impact of brand marketing, which I can define as video campaigns on YouTube. What is that? Because video campaigns on YouTube are not like, nobody's clicking and directly going to the website and signing up for a product, but they might see it and then they might come back from another channel. So we do see an uplift in brand campaigns. When brand campaigns are running, you tend to have a lower CPC, lower CPA on your performance marketing campaigns. The other thing is that performance marketing itself can also help reinforce a brand just by the virtue of you keep seeing somebody's ads all the time everywhere. So like you go on LinkedIn, you go on Facebook, you go somewhere else and you like pop up and they're like, okay, it's like that's also sort of reinforcing that brand in the prospect's mind.

Makes sense. Okay. So it's always worth kind of doing both if you can, but short term you want to hit up some demand gen. Yeah.

Yeah.

What are some maybe say top 3 or 5 mistakes that you see B2B SaaS companies making when they're trying to implement demand gen and RevOps kind of together? And that's why where you come in And see the opportunity, right?

Yeah. I mean, a couple of things. One is, it's technical infrastructure. They don't have it set up right. They don't have the right tracking code. They don't have the right trackers. They don't have the campaign set up right. Especially on paid social and display, creative can make a big difference. So a lot of companies will run campaigns with terrible creative and then they write it off that it doesn't work when we found that creative makes a big difference. Not understanding channel economics. So like, if I'm selling to a larger target market like SMBs, Facebook might work better for me because it's lower cost and has a wider reach. But if I'm selling to more enterprise companies, I might be investing more in LinkedIn because I can get hyper-targeted on enterprise and like build out custom audiences, account-level audiences, all that stuff. Not only treating channels in isolation. So we've seen this a lot where YouTube ads will have an uplift in organic and direct. So like when you're running YouTube ads, you tend to see an uplift in organic and direct conversions. Where you stop YouTube ads, they go back to— so even though you can't directly attribute something to a YouTube ad because YouTube by nature, like, you're not clicking on it, you can't write it off a channel because it's like a media mix. So it's like YouTube, search, paid social, Billboards, all that stuff sort of working together, not in isolation.

Got it. So you mentioned about the creative piece. What is the main issue there? Do you see that the quality— is this image versus video or just kind of the— it's just not as quality image?

We actually see static images perform better for direct response campaigns than video. But it's like you have to— when you think about creative, it's not just your your ad in the feed, you're also like Netflix is trying to reach the same audience because they're not just weekly marketing at a SaaS company, they're also watching Netflix. So like Netflix might be one of their ads, they might be seeing ads from monday.com or whatever. So like you kind of have to stand out in the feed. Uh, if your creative is like just like everybody else's, it kind of blends into it, then you're not really standing out. So like using a mix of different illustrations, like we do a lot of creative work for our clients where we use illustration versus static versus Motion graphics and like different types and see what works best. Also pushing the envelope a little bit on the brand. So not like completely going off brand, but like pushing the envelope within the brand guidelines. So like making the colors pop a little bit more because, you know, you're on LinkedIn, your feed is white. If you see something black, it kind of stands out more versus like something with a white background that might kind of blend into the feed itself.

That makes sense. And then you mentioned also about, you know, LinkedIn ads, you know, that's kind of a good channel to focus, especially if you're going kind of more enterprise. And that's something we hear a lot about. founders who want to experiment with LinkedIn ads or they have, but with the enterprise client, it's also a longer sales cycle. So how do you kind of justify, right? You run it for 2 months, maybe you'll generate a bunch of leads, but enterprise client is not going to close in that month. What is that kind of process? What do you recommend to them there?

So there's 2 things we can do. One is just look at a cohort of when you generated the leads from LinkedIn and when they closed, because if you If you run LinkedIn today and you expect to find a closed customer within a month, but your sales cycle is 6 months, that's not realistic. So you have to give it that full sales cycle length to understand. The second is like making sure your economics make sense, because on LinkedIn, your average cost per click is, say, $20. Out of $20, you might get a conversion rate of 10-20%, and that's like an average cost per lead of, say, $500. But if your average customer value is $100, then the economics don't make sense. But if the average customer value is $5,000, then if you can close like a healthy percentage of those demos into customers, then it makes sense. And it's also not just LinkedIn, the channel, but what happens after. Like, are they getting followed up on in a timely manner? Do they have— are they qualified? Are they getting— like, are we getting them on a call or not? Why are they being disqualified? And then also auditing your LinkedIn placements, like your bid strategies to make sure you're maximizing those, leveraging custom audiences because you might have a bunch of close-won customers. You can upload that into LinkedIn and create a lookalike audience. Or even if it's somebody in an existing opportunity stage, it doesn't mean you should stop showing them ads because it can help move the pipeline, move the deal along. So the messaging for top of funnel might be very different than somebody who's an existing opportunity, but you can leverage those to Increase your pipeline velocity.

And typically for these type of leads, are you pushing them directly? Because I know they also have lead gen form. Would you go in a lead gen form and then try and nurture them through email campaigns, or are you just trying to direct them to a demo, to a trial, and then push them?

Yeah, some— most of the time we use a lot of document ads now because document ads are like native documents in LinkedIn that work pretty well. We use LinkedIn lead forms where we put in their LinkedIn profile URL. So even like it's just a, you know, assign it to check on, is this the right kind of person I want to be talking to? We do it if it's straight to demo, then we try and get them to like Revenue Hero, which is like a calendar booking tool. So like they can, they go to the landing page, they fill out the form, the calendar pops up, they book a time. So like you're trying to shorten that time from like somebody saying, I want to talk to somebody, to like I'm actually talking to somebody because there could be a big drop-off between They fill out the form and then somebody follows up 2 days later, you're not like— the odds of getting them on a call is pretty low. So you want to shorten that time to lead because I don't know if this is where I read this stat, but the lead sort of decays the longer you wait. And if you follow up within 2 days, then the chances of booking a call with them are like 5%. So you want to shorten that time to conversion. So we use RevenueHero with some of our customers that Straight up the landing page, they book a call right away if they're qualified. If they're unqualified, then you cannot show them. And with the document and the stuff, it's like, and it doesn't like, the other thing is like, we try, we like to think about like people are in certain stages of the funnel, but the reality is like people might, you don't want to show specific people specific ads sort of. You want to let themselves select what's best for them. So we don't hyper-segment because I think when you hyper-segment, you just You're getting less effective with your spend.

Got it. That makes sense. And then you talk about performance branding. How do you kind of look at it in terms of how it's reinventing marketing ROI these days?

So I think traditionally we've looked at brand marketing as something very different that is not held accountable by the same rules of performance marketing, but I think the time horizons are different, but you can pretty much measure them in similar ways. And with performance branding, what I'm looking at is like good creative that are meant for direct response. Even if people don't convert on them, if they're being— if people see them repetitively, like every time I go back to Monday because they spend a boatload of money on paid media, like you just constantly see their ads every single time. Like they just run away from it.

Yeah.

Or Jacob, for example, like ClickUp is just everywhere you go. And then over time you're just like, okay, these are performance ads, but they're also building that muscle memory for me that, okay, next time I need a project management tool, I've seen the ClickUp ad so many times in my Facebook feed that I'm just going to go to ClickUp and sign up because that's the first thing that comes to mind.

Yeah, that makes sense. If I'm a, let's say I'm a brand new SaaS startup today, right? And I'm just looking to start off. You know, starting to do brand or performance marketing and trying to see how I can leverage them to work together. What are maybe my first steps I want to try to understand or think about or work through internally before I start, you know, designing a plan here?

Emily Kramer has this great essay on engine versus fuel. So engine is your product positioning, your product messaging, your customer marketing, your— like, all the product marketing pieces need to come first. And you sort of have to understand who is it for, what, why do they care about it, how does this fit into the broader landscape of what other products are out there. And then performance marketing sort of adds fuel to the engine, so it helps you grow faster. But if you don't have those foundational pieces in place, you're going to have a bad time doing performance marketing.

Okay.

I think outbound is more effective for early-stage startups than doing performance marketing, because with outbound you get that direct feedback from the customers. Hey, this thing works, this doesn't work, and I got to call, get your feedback, sort of understand what resonates, what doesn't resonate. And then performance marketing sort of helps you scale up what's working, but it doesn't help you lay that foundation that you build upon.

Okay. Yeah, I think I've heard of that framework. So, okay, we talk about the fuel and the engine. So if I'm looking to generate my first, let's say, $10K in MRR, what should I focus on? And then how does that compare between, let's say, going from $10K To $100K ARR, which is— and then from there, I would say $10 million.

Under $1 million, like we typically work with companies doing $5 million in ARR. Under $5 million ARR, what we like to say is like you have to do hand-to-hand combat. So you have to go to events where your customers are, you have to like go to LinkedIn and find them and go talk to them and just do that hand-to-hand, very unscalable stuff because it helps you understand what do they care about, what are they struggling with, what causes them to buy something like this, what are the problems they're trying to solve, like the jobs to be done framework and all that stuff. So that helps you understand And then you also have to have a strong sales process, right? Because what if we generate, like, you spend $100K on LinkedIn and we generate like 10 demos off of it, but if you don't have a pretty defined sales process, you're not going to grow. Like, that's a waste of money. So like, you have to have a repeatable sales process before you can actually go in and like, or if it's a freemium product, you have to have a good product lifecycle email flow and like, Good flow for people to come in and experience the product, understand the value, and be able to sign up because we can generate a lot of tries for you at a low cost. But if they get into the product and the value prop doesn't stand up and the product can't deliver the value it's been promising, then it's not going to work.

Yeah, that's important. I guess also with your sales product, it's important to have a really good sales process for outbound too, right? Because I know You know, some SaaS companies are kind of more designed for inbound leads and kind of generating pipeline that way. But when you kind of go the outbound way, I think it's a little bit different in how you approach it, right? And try to warm them up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, this has been great, Kamil. So I appreciate you sharing kind of your insights and experience. I would love to jump kind of to the second part of the episode, which is more of the rapid-fire personal questions.

So ready for that? Yes.

All right, let's do it. So, Kamil, uh, what's one activity you enjoy outside of work that gets you into flow state?

Outside of work, I have 2 small kids, so there's not much that gets me into flow state because it's always chaos. But I love, like, uh, outdoors. So we live in Vancouver now, and like, we love the outdoors, going hiking, mountains, all that stuff. And I enjoy reading.

Nice. Yeah, I guess work becomes your work. You're as close as you can get to flow state, right? Yeah, I get it. What's one piece of advice, Kamal, that you wish you had known? If you can go back, you would tell, say, your 20-year-old self?

Data is not everything. So in marketing, I think we've overindexed on data for the last, I would say, 10 years. And data is part of the story. And also how you collect the data, where the data is coming from, also matters a lot. So like we've been data-driven to an extreme where it's been killing the creativity in the marketing piece. And I think you still need to make that emotional connection.

So finding that connection outside, kind of stepping away from the data and looking at it kind of more holistically. Makes sense. What are some of the biggest challenges you're currently facing in order to continue to grow your agency, 42 Agency, meaning You know, what keeps you up at night these days other than your 2 kids?

Hiring. Hiring is also— yeah, it's tough, tough to find the right people that are the culture fit, the skills fit, and that stuff. I think any company is as good as the people you can hire, and ultimately that's, that's what matters.

Yeah.

So is there any roles you're looking for right now? If anybody listening in looking for a position, maybe—

We are pausing hiring for now because we are sort of at capacity. We have too many clients and we have like we have to balance, but we are always hiring for designers. We're always hiring for strategists, so if you're interested, reach out and love to talk. Perfect.

Okay. Who are some of the best 3 resources? We can say books, mentors, or people you follow in the space who you'd say have been most instrumental to your success over these last few years.

Yeah, I want to give a shout out to my old boss, Samrita Gurney. She's at Float right now. She's been very instrumental in my career growth. I want to give a shout out to Emily Kramer, her newsletter, and just Having her as a friend and advisor has been super incredibly helpful. Too many people. Dev Vasu, who taught me a lot about the agency business. He was part of my search business. Yeah, I love the guy. He's super great. He's been helping me a lot to the business. Oh man, so many people. Joffrey, who's a friend of mine and also a current customer. I want to give a shout out to him. He's at A2X. Joffrey is head of marketing. I think they might be hiring too, so check out A2X. Tara Robertson, who's been challenging some of my assumptions. She's at Chili Piper right now.

Oh, there's a lot.

There's a lot of people. There's a whole list, but yeah, I'll stop there.

Any books? Any favorite books? One or two?

Creativity Incorporated. It's a story of Pixar. I really enjoyed that book. There was a really great book, Working Backwards, which is the story of how Amazon runs teams. That's been super instrumental. Those are the two that I like, sort of business ebooks. Cool.

I do know Dev. I worked with him, you know, some at his agency. We worked, you know, had an agency in the past and we worked with him on some projects back in 2015, '16, I think.

Oh wow. Oh wow. Nice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a good guy. Cool. What does success mean to you today? Whether, you know, personally, business, financial life.

Providing for my team so they can have financial flexibility, providing for my family so we can have financial flexibility, and then also using some of the Like doing, giving back to the community because like there was a earthquake in Turkey. I want to be in a position to be like, you know, be able to give. Like there's a lot of stuff going on in the world and I think sometimes like marketers or business people or whatever, we get trapped in this bubble of ours, but there's like, we need to look outside and like take care of the people around us.

All right. So seeing the beauty of kind of the financial side of how much it can help you, your family, but also Yeah, giving back to the community, broader world.

Yeah, like there's a lot of Afghanistan, Syria, you name it, like there's so much stuff happening.

Yeah, yeah, love it. Thank you. This has been great, Kamal. I appreciate you kind of joining here and sharing all your insights. Yeah, where can founders listening in get in touch with you, learn more about you and your company?

We run a newsletter called 42slash.com. We write a ton of our playbooks and our stuff there, so definitely check that out. I'm on Twitter, Kamal Rexton. You can give me a follow on Twitter. I'm always there. Or email me, kamal@42agency.com.

Sorry, kamal@42agency.com. All right, perfect. All right, thank you, Kamal. We'll add those links to the show notes. So people want to hit him up on Twitter, LinkedIn, or also subscribe to his newsletter, that'd be great. So thank you.

Thank you so much, Kamal. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you.

You as well. Cheers.

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Bye.