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Dave Gerhardt (Founder of Exit Five, former CMO) chats with top marketing leaders and CMOs. Join 5,000+ members in our private community at exitfive.com.
Dave [0:00:00]: You're listening to B2b marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt.
Matt [0:00:17]: Alright.
Matt [0:00:17]: On this episode of the Exit Five podcast, talked about out of home advertising, things like billboards, newspaper ads, Tv ads, bus ads, and how that really is making a big comeback in b2b.
Matt [0:00:31]: We're specifically talking about how this marketing leader ran a campaign using these channels and the results that they saw from it.
Matt [0:00:39]: We broke down, why they chose it, the measurement, all that good.
Matt [0:00:42]: So you're gonna learn a bunch about that.
Matt [0:00:44]: I'm talking to Amrita Gurney, who is now a fractal marketing leader, but at the time she was an in house head of Marketing Vp marketing, one of the fastest growing startups ups in Canada.
Matt [0:00:53]: I think you're gonna love this episode.
Matt [0:00:55]: We'll see you inside.
Matt [0:00:56]: Alright.
Matt [0:00:57]: Alright.
Matt [0:00:58]: I'm here with Amrita Gurney.
Matt [0:01:00]: Amrita
Matt [0:01:00]: How's it going?
Amrita [0:01:01]: It's going really well.
Amrita [0:01:02]: Nice to see
Matt [0:01:03]: you.
Matt [0:01:03]: Yeah.
Matt [0:01:03]: Nice to see you too.
Matt [0:01:04]: Still in Toronto.
Matt [0:01:05]: Right?
Amrita [0:01:06]: Just outside of Toronto, very much enjoying being based in Canada and your plans to change that.
Matt [0:01:13]: That's it.
Matt [0:01:13]: Yeah.
Matt [0:01:13]: Same here.
Matt [0:01:14]: Same here.
Matt [0:01:14]: We have a cloudy rainy day today.
Matt [0:01:17]: It looks like it's getting nicer, but it's great.
Matt [0:01:19]: I don't always get to speak to people in Toronto.
Matt [0:01:21]: So I always like to bring it up when I
Amrita [0:01:23]: do Nice.
Matt [0:01:24]: But, cool.
Matt [0:01:24]: First things first would love if you just, you know, told the audience a bit about yourself.
Amrita [0:01:29]: Sure.
Amrita [0:01:29]: So I'm a veteran startup marketer, typically have been a founding marketing leader over the last ten years, joining companies shortly after their seed round and growing them up to the sort of fifty million arr range in terms of my own background, I would say that I lean more towards brand and product marketing, although my very first job was actually in demand did that for many years, but I would say over the years.
Amrita [0:01:57]: I'm more of what I call a full stack marketing leader, and I know we're gonna get into this.
Amrita [0:02:02]: Worked at three of Canada's fastest growing startups ups over the last ten years as founding marketing leader.
Amrita [0:02:09]: And this year, I've decided to go off on my own and be a fractional marketing leader.
Amrita [0:02:14]: Which has been a great change of pace and working with early to growth stage startups right now.
Matt [0:02:21]: Awesome.
Matt [0:02:21]: Awesome.
Matt [0:02:22]: Cool.
Matt [0:02:22]: No.
Matt [0:02:23]: That's great.
Matt [0:02:23]: I've noticed you've always worked for companies that I've seen experienced lot of growth.
Matt [0:02:29]: So that's really cool.
Matt [0:02:30]: You know, I know you've had a really great experience.
Matt [0:02:32]: You've, you know, went through a lot of things that a lot of marketers don't always get the chance to.
Matt [0:02:37]: So so that's great.
Matt [0:02:38]: You know a lot, but a lot of things today, you know, as people can tell about a title of the episode, I really wanna talk about out of home advertising and B in your last stint with float did a big campaign around out of home.
Matt [0:02:51]: So I think that'd be really great topic to go super deep into today.
Amrita [0:02:55]: Sounds great.
Amrita [0:02:55]: I love talking about this stuff.
Matt [0:02:58]: Yeah.
Matt [0:02:58]: Super quiet.
Matt [0:02:58]: We don't really talk about it much on this podcast, so I think it's gonna be a really good episode.
Matt [0:03:02]: So, yeah.
Matt [0:03:03]: I we'd love if you just started with, like, okay.
Matt [0:03:05]: Your last role would float was Vp marketing.
Matt [0:03:07]: Right?
Amrita [0:03:08]: Head of marketing.
Amrita [0:03:09]: Yes.
Amrita [0:03:09]: Yeah.
Amrita [0:03:09]: Mh.
Matt [0:03:10]: Yeah.
Matt [0:03:10]: You marketing, head of marketing, and you did some billboard Tv advertising.
Matt [0:03:14]: Why don't you walk us through, like, what was your goal at the time?
Matt [0:03:20]: And what led you to pick that are those channels?
Amrita [0:03:26]: For sure.
Amrita [0:03:26]: So for those who don't know float is a Canadian fintech, similar category wise to ramp in Bricks, which are, I think, two well known brands in the Us.
Amrita [0:03:36]: And I joined when we were about fifteen people about four years ago.
Amrita [0:03:42]: And at the time, of course, I do wanna preface this by saying, you know, the market was very different flo just raised a forty million dollar series a when I joined, so definitely had a lot of capital.
Amrita [0:03:54]: But one really interesting thing was the founders were big believers in brand, which was part of the reason why I took that job and probably why they chose to bring me on.
Amrita [0:04:04]: And as you can imagine, you know, Fintech, especially B2b to fintech, you're dealing with companies money.
Amrita [0:04:10]: You need people to trust that your brand is credible.
Amrita [0:04:14]: And we were competing against five big banks in Canada.
Amrita [0:04:19]: So in Canada, there's lot that many options and there's five that have been around for about a hundred years.
Amrita [0:04:24]: And so even in the interview process, we talked a lot about different ways we were going to be able to reach people.
Amrita [0:04:29]: And at that time, we just felt like using a channel or using out of home in particular was a way to really aim big and look bigger than we were and also be in an environment where very few B2B companies were.
Amrita [0:04:46]: And so very early on.
Amrita [0:04:49]: In fact, I think when I joined we originally wanted to launch our first billboard campaign in six weeks, but I pushed a little bit to get that timeline changed to about three months, because I did wanna bring on an agency, a small agency called Burners Bo lee, who were truly instrumental in the success of that first campaign.
Amrita [0:05:10]: And the reason we justified it was we felt that, again, it was kind of our debut was our way of coming out to the market who had never heard of us.
Amrita [0:05:21]: And saying, hey, we're here.
Amrita [0:05:24]: We're different.
Amrita [0:05:24]: We're not like a typical bank and we are here to give something to businesses and finance leaders at these businesses that they're just not getting with their traditional banks.
Amrita [0:05:37]: So that was kind of the reason and rationale for us going ahead and deciding to invest in billboards at that time, and maybe the last thing I'll say is that billboards were just one part of an integrated...
Amrita [0:05:51]: Strategy.
Amrita [0:05:52]: So, you know, just throwing up a billboard is one thing, but we wanted to make sure that in addition to the billboards, which were a big brand building component.
Amrita [0:06:00]: We also took out a full page ad in print news, which is kind of a dinosaur in some ways.
Amrita [0:06:07]: But again, for our market, we felt that it was sort of making a bold statement, and then we had a ton of digital to capture the demand that we were creating.
Matt [0:06:17]: Very cool.
Matt [0:06:17]: Very cool.
Matt [0:06:18]: Okay.
Matt [0:06:18]: So lots sent back here.
Matt [0:06:19]: I love the piece about when you spoke to the founders in the interview, you're thinking about how you can, you know, build awareness and more specifically trust.
Matt [0:06:28]: And I feel like just billboards, maybe whether it's Tv ads or print paper ads.
Matt [0:06:34]: I think that physical component, like, psychologically for the average person makes it feel like, oh, this is a big company that I can trust.
Matt [0:06:42]: Right?
Matt [0:06:43]: Like, who do you see on billboards typically companies who are, like, doing well or have lots of money.
Matt [0:06:48]: You're not just gonna see, like, at a ten person startup up there.
Matt [0:06:51]: So I think that's a...
Matt [0:06:52]: Or at least maybe not a lot in Toronto, maybe in San Francisco but not here.
Matt [0:06:55]: So I think that's pretty cool.
Matt [0:06:56]: And then also, I like that, you know, one of the decision criteria seemed to be the fact that this was just differentiated from what's out there.
Matt [0:07:05]: Which...
Amrita [0:07:06]: Exactly.
Matt [0:07:07]: Looking back now, it seems like, oh, yeah.
Matt [0:07:08]: That makes sense why you would do that.
Matt [0:07:10]: But in the moment, it's actually really difficult to pick those things that are differentiated.
Matt [0:07:13]: So was that just, like, the founders were cool taking, you know, bigger, maybe risk bets or did that take a lot of convincing on your end to make them take a bet on that type of marketing?
Amrita [0:07:26]: Yeah.
Amrita [0:07:26]: Luckily, it did not take convincing.
Amrita [0:07:28]: And again, I think we were really in Sim when I joined the company, and I think they were excited to do something like that.
Amrita [0:07:38]: I think one thing we really admire about American companies in generals that they have a lot of confidence and they're bold, and they think big.
Amrita [0:07:45]: And so one of the values of float is to take big bold bets.
Amrita [0:07:48]: And this was a great example because no other early stage company that was that small, was doing anything like that in Canada.
Amrita [0:07:57]: So it was really making a big bold statement.
Amrita [0:08:00]: It was risky in the sense that it was a reasonable amount of capital.
Amrita [0:08:04]: It wasn't risky in the sense that if it didn't work.
Amrita [0:08:07]: The company was gonna run out of money, so it was a measured of risk.
Amrita [0:08:10]: But it was risky in that we were also going out with creative that was...
Amrita [0:08:16]: Not very safe.
Amrita [0:08:17]: And I think that's another topic that I love to get into when it comes to out of home or any type of offline channels is that, you know, the channels are one thing.
Amrita [0:08:26]: Yep, Billboards are they're very big and bold, but what you put on them is also such an important part of it.
Amrita [0:08:33]: And I see a lot of B b brands that do actually buy billboards, but the creative is so boring.
Amrita [0:08:41]: It's not really going to draw a lot of attention and recall in my opinion.
Amrita [0:08:48]: And I really appreciated that it float our creative was actually very different.
Amrita [0:08:53]: So just to kind of give people a snapshot.
Amrita [0:08:55]: Our colors were unusual for a bank.
Amrita [0:08:58]: We use sort of this very vibrant turquoise as one of the main colors in the billboard, and we chose that specifically because when you walk around a city or a neighborhood block.
Amrita [0:09:08]: You see a lot of gray.
Amrita [0:09:10]: And even the, like, a lot of them are not really that attention getting.
Amrita [0:09:16]: And we just felt like that color, which happened to be, you know, one of our brand colors also was one that was gonna really stand out.
Amrita [0:09:23]: And then what we decided to do was instead of just copy which talked about, like, the benefits of the product, which is like, the way B2B marketing is typically done.
Amrita [0:09:33]: You just focus on logic.
Amrita [0:09:35]: We really drew on emotion.
Amrita [0:09:37]: So we we worked with a portrait photographer, and he took these four portraits of personas.
Amrita [0:09:44]: You typically find in an office.
Amrita [0:09:45]: So the receipt loser, which was actually inspired by me because I'm that person whose desk is usually messy, and I always lose receipts.
Amrita [0:09:54]: The big spend.
Amrita [0:09:56]: I think we all know those people who work in companies and just ignore all the expense policies.
Amrita [0:10:00]: The corporate card share.
Amrita [0:10:03]: I was guilty of that as well for a long time.
Amrita [0:10:05]: You know, I had the marketing corporate card, and I would handed it out to my team as needed to use, and then the bottleneck, which was the person in finance who was typically overwhelmed with the volume of manual work that was required.
Amrita [0:10:19]: And so by going that approach, I think that we also showcased people in a way that a traditional bank never would, if you looked at the expressions on their face and the props that we used.
Amrita [0:10:32]: And so I think again, you know, Billboards were the story, but the creative was really what got this campaign to take off.
Amrita [0:10:40]: And to this day, it definitely put float on the map, but I'm really grateful that anytime I meet anyone in Canada, and I tell them I worked at float.
Amrita [0:10:51]: The first thing they say is we love your ads.
Matt [0:10:55]: Yeah.
Matt [0:10:55]: No.
Matt [0:10:55]: I'm the same.
Matt [0:10:56]: I remember.
Matt [0:10:56]: They're on the subway too from what I remember.
Matt [0:10:59]: Right?
Amrita [0:11:00]: Yes.
Amrita [0:11:00]: Mh.
Matt [0:11:01]: Remember right the subway.
Matt [0:11:02]: I think I remember them being...
Matt [0:11:03]: I could...
Matt [0:11:04]: Maybe on buses and so I could be wrong.
Matt [0:11:05]: Maybe they're...
Amrita [0:11:06]: Yeah We've done it all airports, buses.
Amrita [0:11:08]: Yeah.
Amrita [0:11:09]: Billboards on highways, billboards on city blocks, bus shelter ads, Like, we really did over the course of my three years there.
Amrita [0:11:17]: We did multiple brand campaigns.
Amrita [0:11:19]: And so we did test different types of out of home as well because it's not just one type of buy.
Amrita [0:11:25]: So, yeah.
Amrita [0:11:26]: We really were everywhere, and I think that was part of the success as well was you can sometimes get attention with just one billboard.
Amrita [0:11:34]: If you make a lot of noise around it if it's very controversial.
Amrita [0:11:38]: But in general, marketers need reach and recall and for us that meant, we have to be in certain neighborhoods with a certain type of frequency so that you started seeing our ads over and over again, and that's what created that recall.
Matt [0:11:57]: Yeah.
Matt [0:11:57]: Very cool.
Matt [0:11:58]: Very cool.
Matt [0:11:58]: Okay.
Matt [0:11:58]: I really love that part about the creative, you know, one the bright colors I agree, I think obviously, you're walking through a neighborhood, and you typically don't get that.
Matt [0:12:08]: It's typically more mono colors.
Matt [0:12:10]: The messaging of the ad was you're playing on emotion as opposed to logic, which I think is smart you see a lot of B2c companies do that whenever I webrtc see ads driving on the highway that is typically the strings or at least the good ones the strings that they're pulling on.
Matt [0:12:24]: And then the last piece is you've made the ad human by taking pictures of your Ic in making that.
Matt [0:12:30]: The center of your ad, as opposed to, like, a screen grab of your product in action or not including any kind of visual at all.
Matt [0:12:38]: So I think those are three really good components and takeaways for creative for this type of advertising.
Matt [0:12:44]: You talked about testing different creative.
Matt [0:12:47]: And when you test a creative on Facebook advertiser meta ads, whatever.
Matt [0:12:54]: You know, you can see the data that tells you, oh, more people clicked on this one or saw this one.
Matt [0:13:00]: So what is the testing process like with an out of home type advertising?
Amrita [0:13:04]: Yeah.
Amrita [0:13:04]: A great question for us.
Amrita [0:13:06]: You know, it was our first time doing anything like this, and I think even I look back at myself and how much I learned.
Amrita [0:13:14]: So my honest answer is we didn't test it.
Amrita [0:13:17]: We just went out and just put this everywhere.
Amrita [0:13:22]: I think bigger, more sophisticated teams and companies.
Amrita [0:13:26]: They often will do things like focus groups with certain creative or they'll run a small test on a digital channel to see how people will respond.
Amrita [0:13:36]: We didn't do any testing.
Amrita [0:13:38]: We did a little bit of informal testing with our customers.
Amrita [0:13:42]: So we have a group of friend that we would reach out to in marketing for all kinds of things.
Amrita [0:13:47]: And we actually brought them along through the whole creative process.
Amrita [0:13:52]: So even before we chose this campaign concept, there were two other concepts that we also considered.
Amrita [0:13:58]: And so we would bring people in and just to ask them, like, kind of more specific questions and that helped us narrow this down.
Amrita [0:14:04]: So I guess in some ways, that probably was a big risk.
Amrita [0:14:07]: You know, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that could land or could not land.
Amrita [0:14:13]: And, again, that was our big bold bet, and we didn't do any testing.
Amrita [0:14:18]: And even since then, actually, I don't even think we didn't see testing.
Amrita [0:14:21]: In future campaigns.
Amrita [0:14:23]: I think we just felt in some ways too that we felt pretty strong about our convictions in terms of how we wanted to portray ourselves.
Amrita [0:14:31]: But again, I'm sure there are other people who might be listening to this podcast.
Amrita [0:14:35]: Certainly in the B2c world.
Amrita [0:14:37]: They are very doing a lot of consumer testing in our case, we didn't.
Matt [0:14:42]: Got it.
Matt [0:14:42]: Okay.
Matt [0:14:42]: Cool cool.
Matt [0:14:43]: Another thing that I wanted to touch upon that you mentioned is this term called recall, which I hear a lot of brand marketers talk about for people who don't know.
Matt [0:14:53]: Can you tell us like, what recall is and what the importance of building that is in when you're building brand and Bp?
Amrita [0:15:00]: For sure.
Amrita [0:15:00]: So definition wise, there's sort of two kinds of recall that we care about in terms of building brand, the first is una recalls?
Amrita [0:15:09]: So that means if I were to ask a finance leader, what are the trusted or leading business finance companies in Canada, what would be their answers.
Amrita [0:15:23]: So that is una aided recall, like, do they think of you without you, you know, kind of mentioning your name.
Amrita [0:15:30]: And then the other is aided recall, which is have you heard of x y z?
Amrita [0:15:35]: You know, I I'm on reddit it a lot, and I feel like I'm seeing these surveys all the time now?
Amrita [0:15:40]: Like, have do you recall seeing an ad from one of these five institutions.
Amrita [0:15:44]: And so that's more of a aided recall survey?
Amrita [0:15:47]: And, ultimately, though recall is just are you remembered?
Amrita [0:15:52]: And are you remembered for the thing that you wanna be remembered for?
Amrita [0:15:56]: I'm sure you've experienced this where you've seen an ad and the ad is really clever, but you can't remember who's at it was?
Amrita [0:16:04]: That is not really what the brand wants to do, we want to get to the point where when you think of something that you wanna buy, that that brand is on the shortlist list.
Amrita [0:16:19]: And certainly, if that brand is put in front of you in form of a Facebook ad or some other kind of, like performance ad, you do a Google search, and there's five responses that come up at the top.
Amrita [0:16:33]: Hopefully, the recall is going to make you go, oh, yeah.
Amrita [0:16:36]: Float.
Amrita [0:16:37]: I've heard of that company versus some other brand who may have purchased, you know, or spent that money on that Google campaign.
Amrita [0:16:45]: But they might be a company that you've never heard of before, and we know that recall does really make a difference in terms of performance metrics.
Matt [0:16:54]: Gotcha.
Matt [0:16:54]: Okay.
Matt [0:16:55]: Cool.
Matt [0:16:55]: I don't wanna steer us too far off the original topic.
Matt [0:16:58]: But how do you know that, I guess, a couple things.
Matt [0:17:03]: One, if you do big brand campaign?
Matt [0:17:05]: Let's say, like, what you did with flow a lot of the billboard, Tv newspaper ads, are you running these, like, are you running recall surveys in between the campaign or after the campaign to see if your stuff is actually working?
Matt [0:17:18]: Like is that how you tie in?
Amrita [0:17:21]: Yeah.
Amrita [0:17:21]: So the first year, we didn't do any recall surveys.
Amrita [0:17:23]: We mostly just looked at our performance metrics.
Amrita [0:17:27]: And I was really happy to see.
Amrita [0:17:30]: We've never tried this before.
Amrita [0:17:31]: I was very happy to see that when we were running those campaigns and for about four to eight weeks after, all of our performance metrics, whether not just website visits, but, you know, demo requests, opportunities created, even our performance campaign performance.
Amrita [0:17:49]: So, like, our Linkedin adds our Google everything was lifted.
Amrita [0:17:53]: At the very beginning, it was lifted as high as thirty to fifty percent.
Amrita [0:17:58]: Like, we had amazing lift on all of our performance metrics.
Amrita [0:18:02]: And then as we got a bit more mature, and we felt like we wanted to be more structured about how we measured things.
Amrita [0:18:12]: We did start running these recall surveys, and they also showed some really positive results for us where we were making traction at the same level as brands that were much more established or had much deeper pockets and so that really helped us see that we had moved the needle in terms of that aided and una aided recall.
Amrita [0:18:38]: So we did start to do much more tracking around that.
Matt [0:18:42]: K.
Matt [0:18:42]: Very cool.
Matt [0:18:42]: Yeah.
Matt [0:18:43]: Because I think the measurement is where a lot of people could get hung up when it comes to a campaign like this, and it makes a lot of sense.
Matt [0:18:51]: Like you said earlier, like, if budgets are slim, and you don't have a lot of money then making putting all your chips, you know, on that bed is maybe not the greatest your day or maybe tough to justify because it's like, you won't know right away if there is this immediate impact without spending all the money first or spending a lot of it, but it's also really that simple where it's, like you did this campaign and then you looked at are more people visiting our site and interested in what we have to sell.
Matt [0:19:20]: And the answer is, yes.
Matt [0:19:20]: And it's like, okay.
Matt [0:19:21]: It's working.
Matt [0:19:22]: I feel like that's...
Matt [0:19:23]: That was great.
Matt [0:19:24]: If that's really, like, all it took.
Matt [0:19:25]: Great.
Amrita [0:19:26]: For sure.
Amrita [0:19:26]: And I think that, like, any investment, you have to think about what portion of your spend?
Amrita [0:19:32]: Do you want to spend on experiments?
Amrita [0:19:34]: And I remember back when I had a podcast and I would interview marketing leaders.
Amrita [0:19:38]: One of the questions we would ask them is sort of how are you thinking about brand versus performance spend, and I was really surprised.
Amrita [0:19:46]: Like, the range was anywhere from twenty percent of our marketing spend this brand to fifty percent.
Amrita [0:19:52]: And so that was kind of interesting, and I think it's always a conversation it's hard to give even blanket guidance on this because I think it depends on your product, your market, your audience, how crowded it is.
Amrita [0:20:06]: Like, there's so many different factors there.
Amrita [0:20:08]: And so just because I did billboards that float.
Amrita [0:20:10]: Or Tv at float doesn't mean I would necessarily do it for another company.
Amrita [0:20:15]: But I think the lesson I learned from my time there, and even from prior roles is that these offline channels or kind of non performance channels whether it's billboards, but you could even expand that to say Tv, even direct mail, I think that these are in a lot of ways kind of the forgotten art of marketing.
Amrita [0:20:37]: That B2B brands need to be embracing, and I'm really happy to see that there's more conversation around that now partly because of the impact of Ai and you know, search kind of disappearing overnight to some degree.
Amrita [0:20:54]: I generally feel like we can learn a lot from our consumer marketing counterparts who have always gotten brand.
Amrita [0:21:02]: And I think in B2B, we always felt like the product functionality is going to be the main reason why someone chooses you, and we know that even in B2B.
Amrita [0:21:13]: I mean, look at Exit Five.
Amrita [0:21:15]: Like, there's other marketing communities out there.
Amrita [0:21:17]: But there is something very specific and special about Exit Five, and I would argue that that's about your brand or your reputation.
Amrita [0:21:25]: So I'm hoping and part of the reason I was so excited to come here and talk about this is I hope that people will start to pull back from just looking at very short term marketing plays and think about some of these channels and tactics that have actually existed for decades, but became kind of out of fashion when performance marketing came to be.
Matt [0:21:51]: Yeah.
Matt [0:21:51]: Totally.
Matt [0:21:52]: Yeah.
Matt [0:21:53]: I feel like, you know, even just doing this conversation now.
Matt [0:21:56]: Like, this is the kind of marketing that...
Matt [0:21:58]: Makes me love marketing.
Matt [0:21:59]: Mh.
Matt [0:22:01]: The other just, like, short term quick get them, They can be great too.
Matt [0:22:05]: I mean, look, if you're running a paid campaign and you're raking and demo requests or any contacts or sales.
Matt [0:22:11]: That feels great Too.
Matt [0:22:12]: You don't get me wrong, but we've all seen, like, that at some point gets a lot more difficult.
Matt [0:22:17]: It starts to run out, and then you find yourself stuck on this hamster wheel of spend.
Amrita [0:22:21]: Mh.
Matt [0:22:22]: So, yeah.
Matt [0:22:22]: I mean, it...
Matt [0:22:22]: This is the stuff that I love to and the stuff I, like, wish I could do more of, and maybe I will in the future, but I think a big medal lesson two is just, like, going in places where others are not as well.
Matt [0:22:34]: That's
Amrita [0:22:34]: a great point.
Matt [0:22:35]: Like, at a past company.
Matt [0:22:36]: My first company I worked at my first marketing job, we have a lot of money and looked at or competitors and what they were spending on, and they're were all spending a ton on Google ads, a ton on Linkedin.
Matt [0:22:47]: They were doing a bunch of, you know, Seo at the time.
Matt [0:22:50]: And they were just spending a lot of money in all those areas and crushing it or and we decided to run ads on Facebook.
Matt [0:22:56]: Now that is more of a short term play, but it was the only channel they weren't running ads on.
Matt [0:23:00]: And for years to come, I think even still to this day that channel crushed for us with a much smaller amount of spend.
Matt [0:23:08]: So I think that's a big part of this too is, like, even if you may not think your customers are in that other place, it is always worth trying and experimenting and seeing if you can get stuff from it, which Kyle also makes me think like, with this out of home advertising, like, you're targeting is not as specific as like a performance marketing play?
Matt [0:23:28]: So how did you think about who you're were targeting?
Matt [0:23:32]: Where to put those ads and how that all like, played into each other?
Amrita [0:23:36]: Yeah.
Amrita [0:23:36]: I think media buying for out of home.
Amrita [0:23:38]: I mean, it's a profession, they're companies that...
Amrita [0:23:41]: That's all they do.
Amrita [0:23:42]: And so, again, working with Burners Bo lee, we worked with one of their media buying partners.
Amrita [0:23:48]: Since then, I've also worked with a great freelancer based out of Canada, Simon Mills who did a lot of this work for us as well.
Amrita [0:23:58]: And then there's another team at Kingston starr Media.
Amrita [0:24:00]: I wanna get a shout out to.
Amrita [0:24:01]: But ultimately, it all comes down to...
Amrita [0:24:04]: It's actually quite scientific.
Amrita [0:24:05]: What we did was we mapped where our customers were.
Amrita [0:24:09]: So we actually...
Amrita [0:24:11]: You know, we had all their office addresses, and we mapped that literally across the country.
Amrita [0:24:16]: Then we narrowed it down to where their concentration.
Amrita [0:24:20]: So for arguments sake, you know, we picked Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver for our very first campaign because the highest concentration of people who looked like, the people we wanted to reach were in those cities.
Amrita [0:24:33]: And one thing I learned is that, you know, it's better to go all in in a region versus just trickling a little bit throughout the country because you do need that repetition in order for people to remember your ads and your brand.
Amrita [0:24:49]: So that's kind of where we started.
Amrita [0:24:51]: And then we had our budget.
Amrita [0:24:53]: I mean, all of these billboards are owned by a handful of different companies, and so whether you work with them directly or through your media buying team, they will then map out to say, okay, These specific neighborhoods are where you wanna buy these billboards.
Amrita [0:25:09]: And in a lot of cases, we would actually visit the neighborhoods, to say.
Amrita [0:25:14]: Okay.
Amrita [0:25:14]: Yeah.
Amrita [0:25:14]: We like this intersection and even on an intersection.
Amrita [0:25:18]: I learned, for example, on the highway.
Amrita [0:25:19]: Like, you don't think about it when you're just driving by, but some door billboards are in a better spot than others.
Amrita [0:25:24]: And so we learned things like that that likes just because you're buying it on a major highway.
Amrita [0:25:29]: You know, this media company, their billboard is a little further away.
Amrita [0:25:33]: The other one is a little closer and bigger.
Amrita [0:25:34]: And so we spent a lot of time mapping that out, and then deciding kind of where we were gonna allocate that budget to And that's where you have these trade offs of, you know, billboards are the most expensive, then you also have digital billboards, then you've got transit or shelter ads.
Amrita [0:25:51]: So in bus ads, I remember when we were thinking about transit ads.
Amrita [0:25:55]: There was some conversation internally about well, our audience there...
Amrita [0:26:00]: They're not taking the bus to work typically.
Amrita [0:26:02]: But then we realized that, well, if you're sitting in your car and you're commuting to work, you're often sitting behind the bus.
Amrita [0:26:08]: And so we actually bought the outside of the bus, not the inside of the bus because it was going to be in front of where people were same thing with transit ads.
Amrita [0:26:19]: Like, you may not be standing at a bus stop.
Amrita [0:26:22]: But you are gonna be parked at that bus and everyone knows Toronto traffic, especially as horrendous.
Amrita [0:26:28]: Yeah.
Amrita [0:26:29]: So you get a lot of dwell time because people are just sitting there and they're just looking around.
Amrita [0:26:34]: And so that was another way that we thought about where we wanted to put that money.
Matt [0:26:40]: Got it.
Matt [0:26:40]: Okay.
Matt [0:26:40]: Very cool.
Matt [0:26:41]: Very cool.
Matt [0:26:42]: Okay.
Matt [0:26:42]: I love that piece about, like, just thinking about the customer and what their day is like.
Matt [0:26:46]: And, obviously, you're not gonna nail it a hundred percent, but even just, like, whatever majority of them...
Matt [0:26:51]: Problem me doing.
Matt [0:26:52]: It's like, okay, They probably drive into work they're not bus people or or these finance people who are parking under their big expensive buildings.
Matt [0:26:58]: So that's really smart and cool.
Matt [0:27:00]: Budget.
Matt [0:27:01]: You just talked to a budget.
Matt [0:27:02]: I wanna go deeper here.
Matt [0:27:04]: I think that's probably the area where a lot of people would get hung up, you know, outside of measurement.
Matt [0:27:09]: I think it's another big one.
Matt [0:27:10]: Obviously, there are people who could probably just not afford it right now.
Matt [0:27:13]: And then there are some people who can, but don't know how to think about how much to allocate So I wanna break it down.
Matt [0:27:20]: Can you talk about...
Matt [0:27:22]: You don't have to give an exact amount, but what percentage...
Matt [0:27:25]: Well, I guess, it was a in integrated campaign.
Matt [0:27:28]: Where you use a lot of channels.
Matt [0:27:29]: So maybe let's talk about, like, what the budget was there, like, in terms of percentage of your entire marketing budget, And then let's talk about what percentage the went to, like, the billboards and Tv ads, and things like that, just like, roughly.
Amrita [0:27:44]: Sure.
Amrita [0:27:44]: So I think our very first campaign at float.
Amrita [0:27:47]: The billboard campaign was less than five percent of our annual budget.
Amrita [0:27:52]: So again, it was a lot of money, but we had raised a lot of capital at that time as well.
Amrita [0:27:58]: And we had decided to kind of go all in because it was our...
Amrita [0:28:01]: Again, I look at it as it was our debut.
Amrita [0:28:03]: It was our first time that we went out into the market, and we didn't...
Amrita [0:28:07]: To be honest, like, we didn't really know at the beginning.
Amrita [0:28:09]: We had kind of a rough idea of what it cost.
Amrita [0:28:12]: It was only when we did the media planning that we got a much better sense of.
Amrita [0:28:15]: Okay.
Amrita [0:28:15]: We need to spend this much I'm creative and then this much on the channels themselves.
Amrita [0:28:20]: But the other thing you just made me think of is I would say, you know, one thing American marketers have to their advantage is that there are so many major markets in the Us, and then there's major...
Amrita [0:28:34]: Like, there's quite a lot of secondary markets as well.
Amrita [0:28:37]: So one thing that if I was doing this for an American buyer, you could actually do a test at a reasonable cost, meaning less than a hundred k where you pick two cities that are kind of sister cities that have very similar profiles of buyers.
Amrita [0:28:55]: And you run your normal performance campaigns, and then one city you add on this additional layer of these out of home or Tv or whatever you choose to do.
Amrita [0:29:10]: And then measure that to see the lift, and that will really tell you very mathematically that if we spend this much money, we're gonna get this much back in terms of pipeline or revenue.
Amrita [0:29:22]: In Canada, was a little bit tougher because as you know, we don't have that many business centers where at that time, there was enough of a concentration of people, so it was a little bit harder to do those tests.
Amrita [0:29:34]: So I would say for us, if we did wanna do that again, you know, we would then just choose one market, and again, just measure lift.
Amrita [0:29:43]: So even a market like calgary, you could see what your typical pipeline gen was during a quarter or even a month and then see what that would be like when you added on you know, that ad spend, and that's how we were able to start forecasting and deciding how much we wanted to spend because even though we all talk about the fact that you can't directly measure brand, maybe to the same degrees you do with some of these performance channels, It's not, like zero.
Amrita [0:30:14]: So you can measure some things, and we could measure that lift.
Amrita [0:30:18]: And I know x five has...
Amrita [0:30:20]: Is it P, I think are P, who is part of the community and he talks a lot about measuring brand as well.
Amrita [0:30:28]: And so he's probably a better expert than me, but you can certainly think about allocating budget by number one looking at your overall spend.
Amrita [0:30:37]: And then looking at maybe doing a test first, if you have a market where you can do that, and then using that to forecast, spending that money on out of home or direct mail or any of these kind of offline channels, versus spending it on performance.
Matt [0:30:55]: Right.
Matt [0:30:55]: Okay.
Matt [0:30:56]: Cool.
Matt [0:30:56]: Yeah.
Matt [0:30:57]: That makes sense.
Matt [0:30:57]: So did you find, like, when you started putting up these ads that you saw, like, a pretty quick lift on your website performance?
Amrita [0:31:08]: We did.
Amrita [0:31:08]: I think it was within days.
Matt [0:31:10]: Within days.
Matt [0:31:11]: Okay.
Amrita [0:31:11]: Yeah.
Amrita [0:31:11]: Cool.
Amrita [0:31:12]: And then we also did Tv, not in our first year.
Amrita [0:31:15]: I think we did that in our second or third year.
Amrita [0:31:16]: And Tv was really interesting because what we did there with the help of our partner King star media is we were able to measure the impact within the fifteen minute window after a spot had aired.
Amrita [0:31:33]: So you can go into your analytics.
Amrita [0:31:35]: Because typically with Tv, I mean, there is gonna be recall that's gonna help you later on, but we also wanted to see, like, if we have a commercial on Tv.
Amrita [0:31:43]: Will someone do something, like...
Amrita [0:31:46]: Right away.
Amrita [0:31:46]: And so that was another thing that we actually were able to measure.
Amrita [0:31:49]: And until I done it, I didn't even know that that was something that we would do.
Amrita [0:31:54]: So that also gave us more confidence in knowing whether or not to spend that money on that type of channel as well.
Matt [0:32:02]: Got it.
Matt [0:32:02]: Okay.
Matt [0:32:03]: I wanna talk about time frame.
Matt [0:32:06]: Are these ads running...
Matt [0:32:08]: Is this a campaign you're doing, like, just always on or do you run it first specific period of time.
Matt [0:32:14]: Like, how do you think about how long to do it for?
Amrita [0:32:17]: Yeah.
Amrita [0:32:17]: I think this is the million dollar questions, quite literally millions of dollars.
Amrita [0:32:22]: So for us, again, you know, growth stage start.
Amrita [0:32:25]: We were, you know, at that point, after our first campaign, you know, in our first year or two, like, we did go from that one to fifty million in three years.
Amrita [0:32:33]: We didn't have the budget to run it as an always on campaign.
Amrita [0:32:38]: And so we would keep brand ads on Youtube and other digital channels on to kinda keep that campaign top of mind, but the actual at of home campaigns, we typically did them twice a year.
Amrita [0:32:52]: So we picked sort of times of year where we felt like, you know, people aren't gonna be on vacation, you know, it wasn't gonna be a time where people were otherwise going be distracted, like when they were closing year end something like that.
Amrita [0:33:08]: And so we would just run the campaigns, typically spring in fall.
Matt [0:33:12]: K.
Matt [0:33:12]: Got it.
Matt [0:33:12]: Okay.
Matt [0:33:13]: Cool.
Matt [0:33:13]: Let's say that there's someone listening to this and they've been thinking about running these type of ads, doing a campaign like this.
Matt [0:33:22]: Is there anything that you think they should either a for sure, do and look out for and then b, like, what are some things?
Matt [0:33:31]: And I guess it relate but what are some things where, like, off, I could've have done it differently year when I probably would have done this differently.
Amrita [0:33:37]: Yeah.
Amrita [0:33:37]: I would say the first thing is, don't start with the channel, and that's advice I give no matter what the channel is.
Amrita [0:33:43]: You know, I think there's a lot of swag of using billboards, but it has to come back to your strategy.
Amrita [0:33:48]: So for us, we chose billboards because of the strategy of wanting to create an impression to come out of the gate with you know, kind of a big bold statement.
Amrita [0:34:01]: We didn't say, hey, let's do a billboard campaign and then kinda figure out later why.
Amrita [0:34:06]: And so, yeah, I would say, like, start with the strategy then choose the channels to fit that strategy, that would be one thing that I would say, The other thing too is, you know, a lot of my advice was based on a company that was targeting tens of thousands of businesses.
Amrita [0:34:22]: If you are an enterprise orientation, sales led, you probably don't need to take the same approach as I did.
Amrita [0:34:33]: So again, I've spoken to other people who have gone after really high value, you know, six figure enterprise accounts.
Amrita [0:34:42]: I mean, I think segments is one of the most famous ones that were even earlier than us in terms of using billboards for that purpose, and they would buy the billboard outside that target company's office, and they could measure like, in sales conversations, they could actually measure that people were called seeing that ad and actually did help them move the needle.
Amrita [0:35:04]: And that approach was in some ways, maybe even more cost effective because they were buying a billboard next to, I don't know.
Amrita [0:35:12]: Let's say, a hundred companies offices.
Amrita [0:35:14]: Versus us where we're trying to reach tens of thousands of people.
Amrita [0:35:18]: So again, come back to the strategy.
Amrita [0:35:20]: And then the last thing I would say is, you know, think about how much your overall spend is.
Amrita [0:35:26]: So if you're already spending, I mean, you have lots of community members who work at companies where you're already spending, you know, six figures a month on performance.
Amrita [0:35:36]: You certainly have budget at that stage to be considering out of home.
Amrita [0:35:42]: And again, you can start with one market to test it, measure the lift.
Amrita [0:35:47]: But I think, you know, it wouldn't make sense if you're spending five thousand dollars a month on paid marketing, then of course, it's not a good fit.
Amrita [0:35:55]: It needs to be at the right stage for your company.
Matt [0:35:58]: Got it.
Matt [0:35:58]: Alright.
Matt [0:35:59]: Well, Amr Reaching...
Matt [0:36:00]: This has been such a great episode.
Matt [0:36:02]: Again, a topic that I don't think we talk about enough at eggs Exit Five.
Matt [0:36:05]: I don't really ever see it getting talked about a lot in B2B.
Matt [0:36:09]: I have seen it a bit more in the last, like, year, but still not that much.
Matt [0:36:13]: So this is great.
Matt [0:36:14]: I'm sure people will have some follow questions for you.
Matt [0:36:16]: So if they do, I know you're in the X five community and you're pre active on Linkedin.
Matt [0:36:21]: I'm sure people can hit you up there.
Matt [0:36:22]: But, yeah, I just want to say, thank you so much.
Matt [0:36:25]: This was awesome, and Yeah look forward to sing out.
Amrita [0:36:28]: Thanks, Matthew.
Amrita [0:36:29]: This is great.
Amrita [0:36:30]: And, yes, I've been a member of Exit Five for a long time and would love to answer any questions if people wanna reach out to me.
Matt [0:36:38]: Awesome.
Matt [0:36:38]: Awesome.
Matt [0:36:38]: I appreciate it.
Matt [0:36:39]: All right, see you soon.
Dave [0:36:43]: Hey.
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