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Insider Secrets for Digitial Marketing Success
Steffen Horst (00:01.004)
Welcome back to Performance Delivered, insider secrets to marketing success. The podcast we dive into what's driving results in today's ever evolving marketing landscape. I'm your host, Stefan Holtz and today we're talking about what really takes to build a marketing engine in industries where sales cycles are long, the buyers are complex and trust is everything.
When the customers are governments, nonprofits, and humanitarian organizations, the traditional B2B playbook doesn't always apply. Today's guest has built her career figuring out what to do combining high-tide relationship building with smart, scalable system to drive pipeline in some of the most challenging go-to-market environments. Joining me today is Cameron Eng-Wright, Vice President of Marketing at AidKit, a venture-backed public benefit corporation and certified B Corp.
that builds aid and benefits, delivery infrastructures for governments and nonprofits at scale. Karin has spent her career building marketing functions at early stage startups, operating at the intersections of technology and public good, including ExoDiggo, Viya and Remix. She's developed practical data-driven approaches to marketing in complex long-cycle B2B and B2G environments, where leadership building and precision matter.
far more than traditional demand generation tactics. Before moving into tech, Caroline was a journalism fellow for the United Nations Environment Program, a management consultant at Monitor Deloitte, and had analytics and marketing roles at Loan Planet, Electronic Arts, and Blog. She was a bachelor in English literature from Brown University and joined masters from the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene, Tropical Medicine.
Today we'll explore how Caroline thinks about building a high touch marketing engine from identifying the right events to layering in digital, leveraging AI for conference strategy and measuring what matters when new deals take months or years to close. Caroline, welcome to Performance Deliberate. Now, before we get into the specifics of your approach, I'd love to set the stage.
Caroline Ang Wright (02:08.793)
Yeah, thanks for having me on. I'm excited for this conversation.
Steffen Horst (02:17.666)
Your company sells to governments, nonprofits, and to inventory organizations. How does that change your approach to marketing versus a typical B2B company?
Caroline Ang Wright (02:30.289)
Well, I think when you are looking at selling to a really complex enterprise buyer with the additional complexity of being government, nonprofits and humanitarian organizations have their own ways to navigate as well. But especially for government, it really is that you are playing a very long game. And I would say in most B2B companies, you're trying to capture demand. So someone has a problem, and then they're searching for a solution. You get them into a demo.
And you can sell them from there. And I would say in the world of B2G, it's typically not that straightforward. And people aren't typically Googling things like a delivery infrastructure near me, right? It's a lot longer of a game. So really, the whole orientation shifts because you're not just capturing demand. Obviously, for the 5 % of people who are actually in the market right now, we try to do that.
But I would say you're really building presence and you're creating trust so that when the moment arrives, you're already a known quantity in the room. Ideally, they know people who know you, who have used you, happy customers. They can see case studies and use cases that are exactly the problem they're trying to solve. We have a saying sometimes that local governments, state governments, county governments often never want to be first. They want to see.
what you've done, they want to see the results because they're dealing with taxpayer money, they're stewards of that money. They have real, real outcomes that they are trying to achieve for recipients, for their constituents, for people. you, you know, you don't want to trust a tiny startup that might go belly up in six months. What you want is a trusted partner who has done this before, who can operate at scale. And that's, that's what we, what we try to help them feel comfortable with.
Steffen Horst (04:22.126)
Yeah. So what do marketers who use them at SaaS Playbooks tend to get wrong when they enter this world?
Caroline Ang Wright (04:29.755)
think part of it is just the length of the sales cycle. I've seen folks who came in, net new to our world, say in a conference a year and a half ago, a deal gets opened and we're still trying to close that deal because there are legislative cycles. There have been a lot of changes at higher levels that trickle down, just priority shift.
All sorts of things. so really just preparing yourself that it takes a long time. And I think that's why when you work in B2G, you really have to take a long view of investing in marketing because the payback period is very long.
Steffen Horst (05:12.878)
I imagine, I'm not saying I can imagine actually, as we have as an agency worked with nonprofits in the past, one of the challenges I always see is kind of what signals to use to justify investment and justify that you're on the right track with your advertising, right? Because we all like to take information about, okay, what closes, which clients come on and why did they come on, through what media.
for example, what channels and what messages that we use. But if the SID settle is so long, it's really hard after two, three months to use these kind of signals to fine tune a campaign. From your perspective, how do you approach that? Because you've got to dial it down to something because you cannot wait one and half years to say, oh, you want to remember what we did one and a half years ago? It actually works. We should replicate this.
Caroline Ang Wright (06:06.575)
Yeah, it's interesting that you say that. think, you know, I'm trying to think where to start because there are just so many thoughts. You know, one thing is that we do analyze closed-wann deals, and we try to see what the touches are, what the cadences are. And so, you know, I remember we were doing some analysis, and one deal took, I think it was something like 78 touches, you know, between conferences and sending collateral and meetings and demos and all of it.
And so just being prepared and understanding what the touch points are. But I think also, one thing that I'm really proud of is the conferences and events program that we've built up because that has been our strongest channel. And that's one where, yes, the payback period is long, but you really can look back and say, this conference worked incredibly well for us. We look at a few different things. One is,
Steffen Horst (06:46.103)
No.
Steffen Horst (06:55.886)
It's been.
Caroline Ang Wright (07:02.309)
marketing qualified leads that our sales team is connecting with the conference. And then we also look at deals open pipeline created from those conferences. So, you know, it's really interesting because I, I've mentioned that the sales cycles are long. can be anywhere from, you know, six, 12, 18 months, but I will say in certain use cases and certain circumstances, it can go much quicker. So, you know, just also taking that approach, thinking, you know, what
Steffen Horst (07:06.05)
Yep.
Caroline Ang Wright (07:32.081)
What is the buyer needing right now? And when do they need it? So 8Kit sells disaster relief solutions and infrastructure. So you can imagine when a disaster strikes, there isn't time for a 12-month sale cycle. And there are special provisions for emergency procurement. So those go very quickly. And then there are other things that are waiting for legislation to pass or for voters to approve or
funding to be released and those can be much longer. So we also think about that and we try to vary the conferences that we're going to to make sure that they're reflecting our investment in the different lines of business.
Steffen Horst (08:10.21)
Yeah, you just mentioned events and conferences. So that there are your strongest channel with so many options out there. How do you identify which ones are actually worth attending and which ones you should skip, even if they look good on paper?
Caroline Ang Wright (08:25.401)
that is a great question. think, you know, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this because I've had to do a lot of this myself manually and trying to think about the criteria I use to vet conferences. So it all starts with the ICP, right? Thinking, you know, who is coming to this conference? Are they the right people? And it's not just, it's not just, are they from the right organizations, but are they the right titles? Are they the right seniority?
And then I also look at the themes of the conference, because for example, county officials are dealing with a number of different things. It's not always cash assistance. It's not always disaster relief. It's not always these human services programs. So if they're meeting specifically to talk about things like public safety or any number of other things, that's not the right place for us to show up.
I think I also tend to, there's a bunch of other stuff that we look at too in terms of, is there a call for proposals that we can credibly submit for? And we can talk about that strategy too, but I have found that being able to speak at conferences obviously gives you the visibility and the credibility, especially if you're coming with a trusted partner. So that's been something looking for those opportunities. And then there's also the human side of it, right? Like I firmly believe.
Steffen Horst (09:40.525)
Yes.
Caroline Ang Wright (09:47.793)
Salespeople have lives too, and I don't want the sales team to be traveling back to back to back every week. They also need time to follow up, to do pre-outreach, all of that kind of stuff. So we look at some of those. I think the last thing I'll mention too is just that conferences have a seasonal nature to them. So they start in Q1, they really ramp in Q2. think at last look, Q2 was like 15 events in 12 weeks.
And then, you know, little slower Q3 and then Q4, there's a bit of a burst and then everyone goes on holiday. it really is. And then, you know, maybe the other thing I'll mention is conferences are not a set it and forget it program. It really is. You're checking because they're not always posting the call for proposals when they put the website up. Like, you you got to know when the registration opens.
Steffen Horst (10:24.078)
Bye
Steffen Horst (10:31.726)
Cut.
Caroline Ang Wright (10:41.989)
when it closes, how much is it, all of those types of things. So it really is ongoing management. And then I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the conferences and events program also includes virtual events like webinars that we have started investing in in the last year and have grown the program this year. And also things like executive dinners, which are smaller and more intimate gatherings where.
8-Kit folks can meet with customers and prospects and just all learn together.
Steffen Horst (11:14.254)
It sounds like this personal touch that you have when you're at a conference or the other events that you just mentioned seems to make the difference versus kind of being in front of computer, doing some research, popping up, I don't know, search or as a of a banner ad. Now, while that I think is important, we'll talk about this in a second, but being able to build this personal relationship, as we all know,
has and can have a huge impact because you all of sudden get a face that you attach to a company.
Caroline Ang Wright (11:52.089)
Yeah, I mean, think we've probably all heard many times people buy from people and that's true in government as well. Obviously there's a lot of steps, you know, within that, but I really think it is true. And also one thing that's really great about conferences and events, you know, and I'd say webinars in particular, you know, for kind of virtual events is that people are already in this mindset thinking about the topic, open to learn, excited.
engaged and interesting. think one of the challenges that we've had before is that, you if you're just putting out digital campaigns into the world without that kind of touch point, that really meaty touch point, it can just kind of fly by, right? And, you know, what we've found the most success with is when we have a large event and we're really preparing for it and thinking through, like, who are we inviting?
Who are we connecting with at the event? What is the follow-up plan after? Then when you surround it with some of the digital campaigns, email, LinkedIn ads, any of those things, it really works a lot better because you have a specific thing that you're driving at as opposed to just a broad like, here we are.
Steffen Horst (13:07.384)
Yeah, let's stay there. Let's stay there. Let's stay with digital. How are you thinking about layering those digital marketing activities around in-person events? And where are you seeing early traction? Is digital more of an amplifier for event or is it becoming its own pipeline?
Caroline Ang Wright (13:27.353)
Yeah, I would say for us, particularly in B2G, in this context, it's an amplifier. So really, you know, we're thinking about a specific event, whether it's a conference or webinar, we know the ICP, we know who's coming. So then we can think about what is going to be on their mind and how can we address that. I mean, that's where we've seen the most success. think, you know, we've experimented with various things, but honestly, the results of those experiments, when it's just an awareness,
at least in this context I found it, it's not very effective. But if we're saying, we've got this webinar, we've got this replay, this is what it would mean for you. This is what we're gonna be talking about. This is why it's relevant. What we find is if we've chosen the messaging and the topic right, people are interested and they're like, yeah, that has been top of mind.
Steffen Horst (14:23.298)
Interesting. Now, how do measure the ROI of events when your sales cycle can be long? We talked about this earlier, right? That, you know, if I run an e-commerce campaign, I mean, it's like a 14-day conversion, you know, and then it's much easier to optimize towards, you know, what is selling and what is not selling. Normally to be, although there are some instances where we're kind of from initially to sale and also go to six, nine months, but
say the majority somewhere between three and six. So you can set up signals along the way that informs what's going on. How do you tackle that in your situation?
Caroline Ang Wright (15:03.601)
Yeah, it is a tough challenge. It's probably the most tough challenge that I faced because you're always having to show why these channels are worth investing and you're having to prove that what you're doing is working. I've always been very jealous of the 14 days. You're really pointing results there.
I would say, you the reality of it is that we have to track leading indicators. So I would say the main things that I've used to run the business day to day is marketing qualified leads generated at each event. And that's, you know, net new folks whom 8Kit has met.
and that are in the ICP that could potentially have use cases for aid kits. So just thinking about bringing those folks into our universe. And then there's obviously pipeline created. so, you know, that's honestly, if the MQLs are good, if they're high quality, if they're the type of people who would really benefit from our solution, the deal creation should follow. It may take a while, but...
Honestly, as I've analyzed a lot of our data, the deal creation can show up pretty quickly. The deal closing is a whole other thing. And we've even had situations where things start off as a direct sale and then the organization decides to move to RFP. it's just lots of things can happen. But I would say looking at
the MQLs to deal creation, it has been really great for us. And maybe I'll just talk through a recent example. Our best performing webinar of all time, I say all time, we've only done three, but it really was much more successful than the ones we've done before, because I think every time we do it, we get better. So we had a few of these magic moments and I'd say,
Steffen Horst (16:48.451)
Yeah, please.
Caroline Ang Wright (17:05.905)
It was really like thinking about a topic that was very on point for our buyers given some of the things in the news and expected guidance from a certain agency that was supposed to come out. So we were able to bring the former FEMA administrator, Deanne Criswell, to speak at a fireside chat with our CEO. And she's really well known in the space, very respected.
So having someone like that who could help guide folks through navigating some of the changes, know, the webinar was all about navigating upcoming FEMA changes. And so very timely kind of star power with someone that people really wanted to hear from. And then two other elements. And the first one is we really did lean into all of our channels. So we worked with ads, emails, even like physical palm cards with QR leading to registration.
that we distributed at conferences, home page banner, media alert, outbound SDRs mentioning it and inviting people, all of those things working together for the single focal point. And then we really had a coordinated follow-up approach. marketing prepared a prioritized list of everyone who'd come, noting did they have questions? Were they engaging in the chat?
a little bit of information there. so sales was able to take that list and reach out right away. So that was really impactful. And then after that, started the marketing outreach, but just really being able to jump in there and say, hey, I know you're interested in this, especially because this was the question. Here's some answers. How can we be helpful? I think all of that was really great. And just to brag a tiny bit, I was looking at the average watch time for folks who came. We had almost
250 folks who showed up to watch it live. And the average watch time was about 50 out of 60 minutes. I mean, I've been to a ton of B2B webinars and most of the time I'm out of there after 15. I'm like, I'll get the recording, I'm sure. You really have to hold people's attention and I was really proud that we were able to do that. So yeah.
Steffen Horst (19:08.632)
Alright.
Steffen Horst (19:22.956)
Great. Now, let's talk about AI. Just one step back on conference strategy. You told me earlier that you started using AI for streamlining conference research and selection. What does that look like in practice? How has it changed for you when you plan your event calendar?
Caroline Ang Wright (19:49.585)
Yeah, think here's where I want to be really honest because I think there is a lot of LinkedIn content out there that makes it sound like working with AI just instantly makes everything better. And it's so easy. And, I spent like 15 minutes vibe coding and I replaced my whole marketing team, stuff like that. I mean, it drives me nuts because I have, you know, seen those posts.
thought, okay, I gotta learn how to do this. And then I go into the tools and like an hour later, I've got something that like kind of half does what I want. And so, I just want to preface by saying that this is not glamorous and it didn't come super easy. But I think what I've found, and I've heard people say this before, I didn't come up with it, but working with AI really is like working with an intern that has a PhD, right? And so,
Steffen Horst (20:16.575)
Yeah.
Caroline Ang Wright (20:39.941)
brilliant at certain tasks, really impressive capabilities, but still needs that taste making or that direction. Because there is something about having done things for years and years, you just kind of have a system in your head and you know. And I think the beauty of AI is you can take that system out of your head and put it into a workflow that then other people can run and you can run yourself too. you know, there's that. And then also just honestly, like the QA, the quality assurance, like making sure that it's not giving
Steffen Horst (21:01.827)
Yep.
Caroline Ang Wright (21:09.009)
crazy answers and that it deals with edge cases and the editing. takes a lot longer than I had originally thought. But if I think about the conference flow, really there are a few key workflows that were ripe for AI building. So one of them is the conference vetting process. Because as we talked about before, there are tons and tons of conferences out there. And a lean team can't go to all of them and shouldn't.
I mean, all those things that I talked to you about before, like who's the ICP, who else is going? I mean, what's theme this time? Where is it? Is it in a geographic area where we could then visit some other customers too while we're at it? All of those types of things. I'd originally built a lot of this stuff in ChatGPT and then I switched over to But kind of rebuilding all of it in Cloud, I was able to refine.
a lot of it. And the beautiful thing is that we have connectors from Claude to Notion and Claude to HubSpot and Claude to Granola for call transcripts, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, really, I think the magic for me has been when I've kind of gone back and forth with Claude and said, like, this is how I do it. Like, this is how I would choose, you know. So I'll be like, this conference.
I thought was a great one for us because of XYZ. This one I also thought was great, but it turned out it wasn't. Or all of that kind of stuff. just put it in there, and it really is just like chatting to this PhD intern. And then I say I need it in this output because I'm going to write it to a Notion database. And it does it for me and actually writes all those things. And then I just check it. yeah, so that's been one. And then we've also started
Steffen Horst (22:42.797)
of it.
Caroline Ang Wright (23:00.997)
doing some for speaking proposals. Again, I really am very cautious about using AI to generate content. I think it's pretty good at some broad outlines, but it always needs fine tuning. And it really needs the direction of, this is the partner we'd want to speak with. And here are the use cases that will be interesting to this ICP. It can get you some of that way there. So I think just knowing that, knowing the limitations, and then building tools that then get us started.
So then you can go in and say, all of that. So those are the workflows. And again, like I said, not very sexy workflows, but really each time I do it myself, it takes X number of minutes and now I can run a bunch of them and someone else on the team can run them too.
Steffen Horst (23:47.148)
It's interesting that this is your view because, I mean, we as an agency, we get a lot of requests from clients that think now that you have AI and AI would get smarter, obviously, certain things can be done quicker or certain things will not take as long as they used to take, right?
And also what we feel and see here is exactly what you said. It can help a lot with data collection, doing the first draft. I recently used it to work on a proposal or better strategy plan for a client. But it's still needed the prompting of, you thought about X? Have you thought about Y? Can you look into this? This is fine-tuning element of things. I think that's where...
where a lot of people get it wrong. They just take the output. think like you prompted and it gives you a work ready output. And that's just not the reality in the end. It needs to, as you said, it needs someone that understands everything and can ask critical questions and can ask deeper questions than just the surface level that AI usually gives you when you feed it the information and ask it for a prompt.
Caroline Ang Wright (25:02.513)
Yeah, it's not even just like, you remember when the big craze was, you are a marketing expert who, et cetera, et cetera, like, you know, write me the strategy based on that persona. It's like, yes, there's some stuff that AI can bring in that is quite good. But I think there really is something about having someone who knows your ICP, knows your product, understands the dynamics, reads the news.
Steffen Horst (25:05.477)
Thank you.
Steffen Horst (25:10.464)
Thank you.
Steffen Horst (25:20.696)
Thank
Steffen Horst (25:27.736)
Thank
Caroline Ang Wright (25:28.281)
All of those things, that is that special layer that I think marketing teams are always going to bring to AI-generated content. The other thing that I'll say AI is really good at is some of the manual copy and paste stuff. mean, honestly, again, had another magic moment when I was preparing some work for executive dinners that we are running and was able to say, here are folks that I might like to invite.
check whether they're already in HubSpot, check whether we have individuals in these geographic areas, and then right back into the document, the HubSpot link, LinkedIn profiles, all of that kind of stuff. And it's the same type of thing that I would have been taking an org name, typing it into HubSpot, copy pasting it back, and the connectors let me do all that stuff. Again, it's not instantaneous, but it certainly is.
I could do it manually for five, 10 folks, but you know, if I've got a few hundred, it really saves some time.
Steffen Horst (26:32.686)
Absolutely. Now, what's your advice for small marketing teams trying to figure out where to place their bets between high touch events and scalable digital channels? What do you think about that trade-off when resources are tight?
Caroline Ang Wright (26:51.665)
That's a good one. I will say, I think that I have a bit of an advantage here because I've had to be the zero to one marketer in multiple contexts. And so there really is nothing like doing it all yourself, like putting little bets across all of the channels and seeing what works and then doubling down. And I know that sounds so simple, but when you're one person who's like doing all the things, it's actually quite hard to keep track of. you know,
That's how during the first part of my time at AidKit, it was just me. And I saw like there's traction in the events. Like we really are seeing, for the first time, I had to set up all the tracking. We were seeing who we were meeting at the conferences, whether deals were being created. And so was able to say, actually, this is worth investing in. And so you do that, you understand the job, you understand the outputs, and then you're able to hire folks who are experts in.
in that and really invest. I'd say the experimentation phase is really important. It's just hard sometimes to get that latitude from leadership, the board, et cetera, because it means that some channels are going to fail. You got to be ready.
Steffen Horst (28:04.27)
Yeah. Thank you so much for joining me the Performance of It podcast and sharing how you've built a marketing engine that works in one of the most complex selling environments out there. The way we balance high-tech relationships with systematic data-driven thinking is exactly the kind of approach our listeners can learn from, no matter what market they're in. Now, for those that want to connect with you, or know about what 8Kit is building,
What's the best place to find you?
Caroline Ang Wright (28:36.227)
say I'm on LinkedIn. I think I'm the only Caroline Angwright on there, so would love to hear from anyone. yeah, and then 8Kid is 8Kid.com, so there you go.
Steffen Horst (28:47.566)
Perfect. As always, we leave that in the show notes. Thanks a lot for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode of Performance Delivered, please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast application. To find out more about Symphonic Digital, visit us at symphonicdigital.com or follow us on X at Symphonic HQ. See you next time.
Caroline Ang Wright (29:08.315)
Thanks.
Steffen Horst (29:12.664)
Perfect.
Caroline Ang Wright (29:14.147)
Oof, we did it!
Steffen Horst (29:15.694)
Thank you