EP 52 - How to Launch a Brand Marketing Campaign with Alex Mospanyuk @ Luminous

Speaker A: So I want to start with, uh, ultimately the biggest question, right? Which is, like, what originally even spurred the idea to get a brand marketing campaign going? Because I think they. I'm sure you would agree with this, that the majority of SaaS brands are not even investing in anything like a comedy ad, brand marketing ad or anything like that. I mean, everyone's really running a lot of the same old tactics from a playbook perspective. And I think most just don't want to invest the money or the dollars into a campaign, like, because it typically is a little bit more expensive on the front end. But I know that you guys have had awesome success with even before we started working together. But I wanted, uh, to hear, like, was that something that you came up with? Was it something the CEO came up with? I mean, why even decide to do a brand marketing campaign over anything else you guys could have done?

Speaker B: Yeah, so it's a great question. Um, Jared, it was actually his idea, um, is the CEO. He's the founder and CEO of Luminous. Um, and so he kind of had the idea of creating something that was different. So we were, um. I only came on about a year ago, and they've been now in beta. They have their core group of customers for like, a long time. And we service E commerce clients, like specifically E comm brands that are like 10 million to 50 million or 100 million. Um, so just that huge gap, but like, large established brands. Um, and so we were trying to think, like, how do we get their attention? What's a way to. To get them to notice us? Because there's so many solutions in the market and we notice, like, they're all incredibly boring. I see my competitors getting me to download their white paper on Facebook all the time, and I'm like, I would never download this. But, like, so we were trying to think, how do we. How do we stand out? How do we be unique? And then we were thinking a lot as we were discussing, you know, how do we kind of put our first piece of massive content, like a brand marketing piece out in the market to stand out? And we're like, well, how do ecom brands usually advertise? They advertise by being funny, different, unique. They have to constantly get attention. And so we're like, well, why don't we try to advertise the way that they advertise? You know, the super bowl type of commercials where it's like, oh, God, talk about it for months after, because it was so funny, made you think or feel something. So we wanted to advertise the way they would to get their attention in that kind of a way. Um, and that's where we kind of came up with like, okay, let's actually go to an agency that creates ads for E Com brands. So E Comm brands go to that and pay them a lot of money. And we were their first B2B SaaS client, actually.

Speaker A: Huh, that's interesting.

Speaker B: That was kind of the thought behind that, like, how do we stand out and how do we get this specific ICP's attention? And it was through an app like that.

Speaker A: When did you guys. How early did you do that? What stage of the year ago? About a year ago.

Speaker B: About a year ago. And, um, so we recorded probably December of 2023 and then post production took a couple months and we think launched in about early April 2024.

Speaker A: Right, right. I think it's great. I mean, I think you're totally right. I mean, ultimately people are looking for something to be remembered from. And I think a lot of times you can accomplish that in some other ways, clearly. But I mean, when you do something big like a brand marketing campaign, it's just going to be different. And adding a little bit of entertainment value to it is going to make a huge deal. Because ultimately we want to get the associations around some of the pain points situations or the things that your clients are experiencing, but in a memorable way where they're gonna be like, oh, yeah, shit like that. Brand aluminous. I see those guys all the time on Meta, you know, and whether they're in market today or another day or whatever, they're gonna probably remember that more so than they would just any old, you know, white paper, gated piece of content or you name it, that I think everyone wants to read on.

Speaker B: Yeah, you kind of have to gain respect from these brands. It's such a referral heavy, like brand recognition, heavy industry. So we're like, how do we do that? Well, the brand piece is gonna have to be the first thing.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker B: And it worked well. It was a good bet. Big bet. Everyone thought we were crazy. They're like, you're spending how much on this ad? And we're like, oh, God.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll get into how much you spend in a second. I'm curious on the, like, the whole process in the planning from like A to Z. So like, you start and you say, okay, we want to do this, we want to be different. We want to do something that's a true comedy ad, et cetera. Something that's going to set us Apart from the competition, what was the first thing you guys started doing? Was it just getting video agencies lined up and trying to interview? Did you have a brief document that you put together and said, all right, here's what we generally want to say, here's kind of some script ideas, here's the goal and how we're going to measure the campaign. Was it that organized or is it just kind of like, hey, let's just go talk to some people and see what they come back with?

Speaker B: Yeah, there's, there's a few things. So we knew the goal of it was to be our first piece of go to market. So we knew we wanted to make a splash in the industry and everybody knew like to kind of, that could be our introductory piece of content. So it meant a lot to us and we knew the agency we were going to go with and that was creatively. So shout out to creatively. Um, they were the ones we knew we wanted to go to because we've seen their content before and they've, they've blown up brands with their, with their ads. Um, but ecom brands, right, so we, we knew we wanted to go to them. We knew we wanted this to be a brand piece that would be all inclusive to most of E commerce, the majority of E commerce. Um, and so we kind of just went to them and they're, they're one of their founders, their head of creative, Damien, he, they also own a couple of other brands and so they understood the pain points that we were trying to solve for. So it was actually a perfect fit because they understood who we were, what we were building, why it was important and their icp, they service all the time. It was just like such a great fit. Where we were kind of like this is kind of a no brainer. Um, and it was a unique fit. You know, usually people go through multiple agencies and they're local, they're just down the road too. So we kind of were just, we knew it was going to be them. Um, we've since spoken with other agencies, we've tried other ads through like a lower tier, less production heavy, less expensive agency and you get what you pay for. So um, we'll talk about that later. But yeah, like we knew who we were going to go to. We knew kind of our message but they really helped us hone in um, on the story, the script, um, and like just all of the post production that came with it, it was all done.

Speaker A: How about the message though? I mean I think that, you know, the common thing that happens is There's a whole bunch of different pain points that your audience suffers from, but there's some that are obviously bigger than others. Right. Not all of them felt the same way. And so I bet you that the sales team would say that nine times out of 10, like, customers come to Luminous for this top thing. And so ultimately, were you kind of taking that into consideration when you were building messaging around the campaign and saying, like, hey, guys, we need to have skits around this type of pain point? Because we know that, like, literally they mention it all the time on sales calls. And it's the one number one requested feature, the one number one requested capability that they. They wanted the product. Was that. Was that the case or.

Speaker B: No, uh, very similar. It was more or less that. It was, um, we thought of like, who. Who is this person that is feeling all of this pain? And what is their journey, going through that process where they start to feel those pain points? And how can we identify ourselves as like, hey, we understand what you're going through? Because Jared was his first own client. You know, he built the product for the company he was running at the time. Um, and so the story essentially was like a little girl with a lemonade stand, Lila. And she started building this lemonade stand because she was having fun and making a little bit of extra money. And then it just blew up and became insanely complicated. And like, she didn't. She'd never wanted to be a manager of Supp Chain and back end off, she just wanted to sell lemonade. Like, she just want to have fun doing what she's passionate about. Right? And so the whole story is like, following her through this journey of her being just, like, overwhelmed with all these three PLs and Amazon and Shopify, and just like, this is not what I signed up for. Okay, here we go. Here's Luminous. And majority of the time, you go through that journey. And so we kind of like created that. That story and that brand narrative or the narrative around Lila. And then, um, so many people who watch it were like, that's me. Like, so it was directed towards the founder, like, in this specific, um, brand piece, um, so they could. They could know that we understand the journey that they go through. And they watch us from start to finish, and they're like, oh, my gosh, I relate to it. Okay, I'll talk to Luminous and see if they can help me. So that's kind of the, um, the journey that I went through. So it was. It was intentional. Um, and it also meant to just be engaging and fun to Watch.

Speaker A: And.

Speaker B: And relatable more than anything to our ideal customer.

Speaker A: Right, right. Was it difficult figuring out actors and whatnot for that? I mean, was there a whole lot of processing back and forth?

Speaker B: Yeah, we helped them choose. They sent us a bunch of different options. So they sent us a couple Lilas. Couple of different. Like the. The host or Tito. He was the funniest narrator ever. Oh, my God. Um, we were like, can we just have him for every ad? Was like, the consistency. Um, well, you're giving me.

Speaker A: Right, like, the second ad like, Tito's gonna be.

Speaker B: Not for this one, sadly. Uh, no, you're gonna love the next one. It's Lord, uh, of the Rings parody. So that'll be.

Speaker A: Oh, fun.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah. Um, but I wish we could maybe down the road. But, um, he was great. We had a couple options for him, and there's a couple other key characters in there that, like, we were able to choose from. So they would give us, like, two or three options, and we chose the best one that would fit for that specific character.

Speaker A: What did that look like? What did they give you? Just, like, uh, them reading out the script and saying, like, in character. Like, I kind of feel the vibe. Like, you know, is that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: So it was like a. We got like a. Essentially a deck. And then it would be like, here's this character, and here's, like, three people that we think are going to be a great fit. And so we would watch them. They would send us a recording of the script. Like 30 seconds to a minute of them recording as that character of the actor doing it. And. And then we'd be like, oh, this one feels the best. Um.

Speaker A: Um.

Speaker B: And so we chose them based on that vibe. It's pretty straightforward.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think, um, you know, kind of getting the tone right and making sure that delivery is good, I think is difficult to some level. But I guess he's trying to trust your gut on it. And you say, like, hey, uh, you know, like, good. It's fun. It's entertaining. He seems normal. He's not too awkward. Like, you know, they're going to be fine.

Speaker B: He's goofy enough. He fits the vibe enough. And then, you know, because the agency has filtered out probably 50 plus actors that wanted it, they give us the best of what they think. So we go off of their, you know, their gut feel, and then we finalize it by. Okay, this. This is the one.

Speaker A: Right, right. What about scripts, then? I mean, ultimately you could. I think you guys had how many Videos came out of the first production round, I forget was this five.

Speaker B: So that one was a full two and a half minute ad that was a full production piece. And then they chopped it up into a 60 second version, 30 second and 15 second. And then also included five explainer videos, which is really nice. So, um, we had multiple explainers that we use on our ads. Like, how much does Luminous cost? How do I know if Luminous is a good fit? Um, like what? How is Luminous different than other people? It just, um. So they gave us five explainers. So it was an all in one package that included all of that. So that was great, huh?

Speaker A: M. That's easy.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It's interesting because I know some people will take the approach of like five individual skits, right? So, like, each skit is maybe focused on kind of rolls up to a core theme, but they might have a different pain point for each skit. Find the same types of actors, right, in different situations. They're going through, I know, hockey stacks actually going through some things, doing this exact thing around the whole credit game. So they're like sales versus marketing, arguing over who actually won the deal or not or who sourced it. And so, uh, that's just one skit, though, uh, of a couple of different situations that marketers and salespeople commonly find themselves in. So it's interesting you guys decided to go down the right words, like a full issue, like, production element just kind of clipped up, which makes sense. That keeps it easier too, in the back end, I'm sure from a production perspective, versus keeping new sets and new actors and new props and all that other stuff.

Speaker B: You might do that in the future. You know, I've chatted with agencies that, you know, record a bunch of things all in one day, and then they just cut it up for you. Um, but this was meant to be just like a story piece, like just all in one fun ad to watch and engage something shareable. Um, and then. Yeah, so that worked out for us. And then we were able to test the different formats, different lengths of that, like the 60 to 30 to 50 and the full two minutes across. And see, people clicked on and reacted with better. Which was the 32nd one, I would say by far the best, um, in terms of getting demos.

Speaker A: So that's very cool. How about the script process? How was that? I mean, I'm sure that they let a lot of that, but how involved were you guys there? Did you guys have some ideas on what you wanted to say? Were there ever any conflicts of like. No, no, no, no. Like, you guys are ruining the ad. Like, don't change the copy here. Like, this is exactly the way it needs to be. We do this all the time. Or how much were you guys involved in the whole process from a script writing perspective?

Speaker B: This is actually one of the key differentiators from other agencies. And why we went back to them recently again was we actually did a whole day together. Like a. It was a writing retreat is what they called it. So we get in there in the morning to their offices in Orem, Um, and so, you know, they've got coffee and bagels, and we just like, shoot the shit. I don't know if I'm cursed, but we just talk. We have ideas, um, and they pitch us on a bunch of, uh, well, we talk about, like, who the ad is for, um, and then we just. The whole day we're discussing different ideas, throwing things out there. Um, and that lasts nearly, probably about till 2, 3 in the afternoon. And then about two weeks later, we come back, um, and they actually pitch us on like, five different scripts and five different ideas. So we got back a couple weeks ago and the writing tree was like, beginning of January, the end of January, we came again. Um, and they gave us five different scripts, five completely different ideas, different characters, different everything. And they read all of them out for us. Um, and then we chose two. And so, like, from there, um, once we chose those two, um, then they send us the text, like the actual. The actual script itself, and then we go through it. We're just literally before this call, finalizing a couple of the product pitches in there. So they're super collaborative. Um, they make sure that we know exactly. They know exactly who we're writing this for. Um, they pitch us on multiple ideas with other agencies I've worked with were like, here's your script. And like, that was it. Like, you're kind of like, I kind of want a more collaborative process, like, just to make sure you know exactly who this ad is for, especially when you're spending so much money. Um, they're great in the terms of, like, they. We have two full days of going back and forth, going through multiple scripts, deciding on something altogether, and then we let them do what they do best, which is recording and everything else.

Speaker A: You mentioned it again, but how much did you guys spend on the first production round?

Speaker B: Uh, so the first ad we did with them, about 230.

Speaker A: 230,230. How did you. I mean, it sounds like. I m mean, your CEO was like, in on this from day one. But you know, everyone thought most CEOs are probably not the way he is.

Speaker B: I mean, not of a seed stage startup that has barely hit a million. Yeah. What would you say?

Speaker A: Yeah, you're, you're head of marketing. So what would you say though? Because I think like you're in a really lucky position at Luminous where you guys have great brand, great content. CEO that just gets it right from day one. I think everyone's always in the position of ultimately, how do I get budget approval or how would I ever even convince my CEO who maybe is a non marketer, doesn't really get it, isn't part of that whole thing, doesn't understand brand marketing is just more of a. Probably coming from a sales background, possibly what would you say to them and what would be something that would kind of help a marketer get through the, the hurdle of getting something like that approved, maybe not even at that sc. I mean they could do something clearly cheaper than that, not just something high production. But how do you, how would you approach that?

Speaker B: Um, I would say start with, start with creating content in house, like what we were doing. So we were doing all of this for a good year. Um, creating, posting, we had a podcast, a bunch of things. Start creating a brand early to kind of see how the brand recognition grows over time and then throw the brand piece on top of it. Um, so I think something a lot of marketers don't do, especially in B2B, we think, okay, cool, there's no brand, no nothing. You have a landing page and a couple, you know, blogs or whatever. Um, and we just throw money in PPC and hope for the best brand. And B2B is becoming more and more important now than ever. So I think if you start growing that brand presence, if your CEO starts posting on socials and creating a personal brand around himself and you guys start getting that recognition from the industry as like we're creating content, we're putting things out there. I think it'll be easier and easier for them to understand that then spending a good amount of money on a large brand piece, um, will make sense because you've got this entire ecosystem of content and you've got a small brand there already, if that makes sense. It's something good to place on top of. Creatively has run ads or created ads for other B2B company since then. They flopped. And we were all trying to figure out what was it about us that um, was different that made this ad a success. We paid that ad off within a couple of months, which we weren't even expecting that. But it wasn't because the ad was so good. It was because literally for the last year, we created a brand that was different, that was unique. We were putting content out there every day, no matter how much it sucked. We just kind of kept building that muscle of, like, let's put a podcast out, have 15 clips from that. Let's, um, let's have Jared get in and go into the studio and record, you know, the entire journey of our ICP and why they get so complex and why Luminous is that solution. We had video content everywhere, all across our website, all across our socials. So then when we were ready for that big brand piece, when they see that piece and they click through, they go onto our website, which is already optimized with more content for them, and then they convert. And that's why our ads convert so well. It's not really the ad plays a huge piece, but it's purely awareness. And you need to have a really solid foundation of everything else for it all to work well together and be profitable. Um, so that's how I would pitch it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love this point. I think it's such a good one. I mean, these things support each other is the bottom line. Right. And I think also too, what you did is you de risked a lot of things. I mean, number one, like Jared, like, came from this space and everything, but content that was already getting out there in the world. So you were getting feedback loops constantly over the content that you guys are putting out there, whether it be podcast, organic, post, you name it. And so then you could take that feedback and also internally that you're getting from your customers and then use that all as, you know, ammo once you actually got to production to say, hey, cool, like, we already know that these things resonate. We already know these are the top pain points. We know this is the same freaking journey that every com brand goes down. And so we know we just need to lock into that story and position Luminous as the potential solution to that. And I think, like, that's too many brands to do. I mean, it's a difficult one too, to say, just go build a founder brand and go start posting. Because I think even a lot of people have difficulty there as well. But it also doesn't need to always be the CEO or the founder. And I think that's where some people get locked into this idea. It has to be whoever's the leader of the company. Right. I m mean, you could have an SME that's just really deeply ingrained. In everything that's going on with the business. Because not every CEO is going to be the SME. And so I think in those situations you have to promote someone up to be more of the voice, the face of the company that's going to have the bigger connection with your audience and then can do all those conversations back and forth, be in the comments, be in the DMs and doing all those things so they can get feedback.

Speaker B: Yeah, build a person like choose personalities in your company. Let them start putting content out there. It does not have to be the CEO, but it helps because they usually have a very convicting story and journey as to why they started the company. Very rarely are you going to find the head of sales that has, that can match the enthusiasm of the founder who has spent years probably building this from nothing when everyone thought he was crazy. You know, like there's usually a story there and like you can kind of push him into it. But also if you've got a really charismatic head of sales or marketing or head of partnerships. Yeah, let them do content. We're getting our head of product right now to start doing product drops and product breakdowns because he's awesome and more like he'll be great on camera and we need someone besides Jared putting stuff out there. Right. Um, so yeah, no, it just put a face to it. Start creating content, optimize your website and then yeah, invest in that brand piece because purely it's going to be awareness. Um, and it's only going to do good for your brand if you've got that whole ecosystem of content under it. Yeah, well, it helps a marketer, but don't do it as just like your first thing out the gate, like let's do a brand we just got funded and you have nothing else. It might flop. High chance it will flop and you'll probably catch the brunt for it. So spend a good year slowly building something and when you feel ready, um, that's when you, when you drop it.

Speaker A: I think it's hard not to talk about the thing that we always struggle with. And I think every marketer is in this position where you've got short term goals that you have to hit right now. Right, exactly. And um, you know, brand marketing campaigns or comedy ads generally speaking are more of a long term play. Uh, although you guys have had amazing success in a very short time frame and there's some clear reasons why that makes sense. But what would you say in those situations? I mean, I think there's that, that balance to your point, when Maybe you don't want to necessarily invest in a big brand marketing campaign. You know what, you just need to kind of play the game of hitting some of those short term goals first and then taking a bigger swing at something later. I mean, do you feel like that's really what should happen or do you feel like these things kind of overlap so much so in the way that you guys did it, because you said first couple of months, right? Two or three months, you guys paid it off. Roughly.

Speaker B: Yeah, roughly.

Speaker A: Um, so it was very quick. It wasn't like a long time.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, because we charged by like ARR. So it all kind of came back. We had to close a handful of deals and it paid itself off. Um, but, and also it helps that we have a large contract, like annual contract value size. So um, that was also beneficial for us. Um, I would say, yeah, you want to think short term and long term. You know, short term things. You could hire a couple of SDRs to start cold calling, going to trade shows and they'll get your results quicker and you get that feedback loop of, you know, and then your CEO is probably out there selling as well. You've got partnerships, you got referrals and you can try some basic PPC if you feel like your website's ready for conversion. So that's all stuff. You can start getting results in the first three months or so, but then the long term, up to one year at that same time, I would say start creating that organic content, start putting stuff on YouTube, on social media, on your website. Every video that we do right now, um, we created into a blog. We use AI turn into a blog and you have the video on top and it's also on YouTube. And our SEO has actually skyrocketed. We, the other day we ranked number one for E commerce inventory software. We haven't written an actual blog for the sake of a blog in like two years. We've been posting all of our videos. We transcribe them, we put them on our website, um, and they start getting results for us over time. So like we do all those things, you know, you think short term, okay, we need immediate results. I would say that's, that's the SDR route, that's the PPC route, trade shows, all that stuff everyone's doing and then they kind of stay there. They don't really do anything else because it's like, oh, it's working. But I think in the meantime start working, start doing the organic content, building the brand, that brand piece within a year. Mhm. And Then all that compounds really well together if you do it right.

Speaker A: I think, I think that's the thing. It's not like a, you know, this or that. It's always, uh, let's do them together. Right? There's nothing stopping you from creating content on LinkedIn now or whatever channel that your audience spends time on. There's nothing stopping you from doing some of these other activities. You don't need to necessarily have a huge budget for really many of these things to create even just a little bit of content. And so to your point, you could have the PPC stuff and the cold emails and all the other things that are happening as you're kind of working on the side of building that brand. To your point, you guys spent a lot of time doing that in the beginning, before you even spent the money that you did on this big brand marketing campaign, which again, de risked it a ton, which I love.

Speaker B: So, um, the founder brand on LinkedIn, like that's such a huge topic. I'd say it's a mix of short term and long term because you can start getting results really quickly. We used to do outbound for Jared through his LinkedIn. We'd book three to four demos a week easy. Um, through just doing automated outbound and sending requests to his ICP on LinkedIn. I would actually go into his account and just DM, like supply chain ecom managers. And we book stuff because he was also posting. That's pretty short term. But then also it's built his long term brand in the industry too. Anyway, sorry to interrupt that, but that's the strategy.

Speaker A: I'm curious, like, did you guys, before with the brand campaign, once you guys actually built it, before you even decided to spend the money on it, were you already thinking about how you wanted to distribute it? I mean, to get in that a little bit more. I mean, you were kind of mentioning some stuff around like blog and then we clearly know what you've done on the meta side. But just like adding other context to that, I mean, what was the plan? Like, okay, cool, we're going to spend 230,000 bucks, we're going to allocate X amount of budget to ultimately put paid dollars behind it to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible. And then in terms of channels and all that, like, how did you guys make those initial decisions before you launched?

Speaker B: We put it on our homepage, but, uh, we knew it was going to be a paid ad piece. The awareness is going to be funneled through the paid media. Uh, and the Agency creatively, they make paid ads, so that's what they specialize in. Um, so they create it with a hook and they do testing before they even hand it over to make sure that the user will get through an X amount before clicking or for jumping off. Um, and if they don't, then the ads not successful in their eyes and they keep iterating until they've got that. I forgot what the term was. It's like the drop off or something. Um, so I think it's like meant to be like 15 to 20 seconds, which is so much longer than the majority of the ads out there. Um, and so we knew it was optimized for paid media and um, it was going to live across our socials and our homepage just as an evergreen piece until we're ready for our next brand piece. But, um, it was for paid ads and that's where it brings the most clicks and ultimately demos.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think it makes sense. I mean there's so many different things that you can do obviously with how you promote this type of thing. We've been actually talking about doing our own brand campaigns too. And I mean one thing is clearly you've got the paid aspect. I mean just even organically, like talking about how you did it, how you put together the asset, et cetera, I mean for marketers and all sorts of other people, like that would be incredibly interesting, um, just to kind of walk through that process because then at the same time, of course you're, you know, promoting the ad itself. People are seeing it and seeing how you've done it behind the scenes. So it's more just kind of the transparent, like, hey, this is how we did it. You know, this is what the steps we went through, so on and so forth. Kind of like we're doing right now. Uh, yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: Yeah. I need a. That's one of my things I'll be following. Um, we're recording our next one at the end, actually. No, March 6th. So that's a great idea. I need to follow the process and the journey. I think something else is building in house content studios. A lot of people ask about that, like, how do you get a sign off from your CEO? How do you build something in house for content? But like. Yeah, I agree. I think that I'll make a note of that to record the process so we can put something out there after.

Speaker A: Yeah, totally. I'm um, curious about one other thing too. So in terms of measurement, I mean clearly like there's the common stuff, right when you launch the campaign, we distribute it out there. I mean, I think everyone wants to look at the typical stuff, right? How many conversions, how much pipeline did we get? Did you guys ever look at any other metrics that are more like brand specific metrics or was it always very just kind of bottom of the funnel, direct response? What I mean by that, like share a voice or just the amount of traffic or people mentioning your brand name on social channels, like other things that are happening there through like brand24 other platforms like that or was that not as much a focus? You guys say, you know what, we're just going to kind of use the good old fashioned in channel metrics inside a meta LinkedIn, you name it.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's been mostly. How many, how many demos has booked my choices closed for me? Like it's. I think as we grow and as we get bigger, that stuff will matter a lot more and I will be able to get more granular. But I was, I just hired my first person on my team, but I was a one person marketer, so I was like, my end goal is just to drive revenue. Like that's all we care about right now. And then I think more as, as we have more revenue to grow our team and you grow a brand in the industry. I'm super open to more metrics alongside that, but at the last year I was like, how can we, how can we prove this by demos and qualified demos to revenue. And that's really the only metric that mattered at the time. Um, yeah, and still does, I would say, and probably will still.

Speaker A: But yeah, oh, it'll always matter, right? It's always going to be the bottom line metric that everyone cares about at the end of the day. I mean, the thing about it though is that a lot of this, a lot of times, like content, like good content, the byproduct of that is demos and all those things. And so sometimes when you look at things in a vacuum and say, all right, well how much did our blog produce last month? Or how much did that organic post produce in terms of reven? It kind of gets too granular at some level. And so sometimes you just need to zoom out a little bit and say, wait a minute, we know the demos are up, we know that people are mentioning Jared and, or other people, uh, at the company that are actually posting. We know it's generally working. We don't need to identify the exact one post that did it. Right. We just need to know that, hey, we need to do more of this and we need to get the message out there. And I think the thing that's also still interesting about this, just to say it again, is that you know, while it would fall into the category of more of a brand marketing campaign which would typically be like long term need to look at share of voice and traffic and some of those like longer term and indicators like you guys had results pretty, pretty quickly off the bat. Now again some of that probably done from some of the founder growth right There was some ramp up, there's some awareness. So when clearly like if you have some of those things, those should be in place before you're even spending any anywhere to that much amount of money. But the point is that you don't necessarily need to wait for these things to happen like three, six, nine months. Because you know in channel, as you know all too well in meta or LinkedIn, you're going to be hitting people that are in market looking for something that you do anyway. And so the majority of the market's not in market. They're not, you know, they're not actually thinking about Luminous. They're not going to be receptive to advertising. You're still going to hit people that obviously are. Which is why you can look at some of those metrics in the short term versus thinking about this. Oh well, you know we're going to do this brand marketing campaign and we just need to be patient, you know, just keep waiting and waiting and waiting and like that's not a message that any CEO or anyone wants to hear. Like you can't deliver that to them. And so I think it's really interesting that that campaign not only drove short term impact but also of course now you guys have had it running for how long? I mean like nine months, something like that.

Speaker B: Yeah, and it's still bringing in great results. So like we're super happy with it and we're hoping it's going to run for a couple years, like at least two years. So that's, that's our goal. I mean the creatively who they also target e comm brands. Um, they've been running the same ad now for a couple years and they get, I mean they spend over a thousand dollars a day on that ad. Um, so a little over 30k a month and they're, you can, I think their head of ales posted on LinkedIn yesterday their schedules are booked, they've got SDRs purely sitting on 15 to 30 minute demos all day long, completely booked out just qual qualifying leads and pushing them into the AES. So it's like. And they have a 10X. I mean they're selling two, two three hundred thousand dollar ads, right? So it's like there's a huge qualification process involved. But like they're using the same ad. It's hilarious. It's so funny I should send it to you. Um, and it's like it's bringing in demos every single day. I don't know what magic or like voodoo they're putting into their products to get people to act that fast. Because I was equally surprised. I was like, I'm gonna get a bunch of clicks, then when they're ready, they'll come through. But it's like we. Within six weeks, six weeks, we started seeing multiple demos a day being booked, the 32nd version. And it was like, wow. All right.

Speaker A: Uh, makes sense. Even if they're not like ready to go right then and there, they're still want to talk. Yeah, they still want to talk. They're like, who are these guys? All right. I just got to at least like put them in my radar because maybe they're in an annual contract or something like that, but I bet you a lot of them are coming back around. So you're CRM, you're seeing some that have a conversation. Hey, cool. Love you guys. See your ads all over the place, blah, blah, blah. I love Tito, he's hilarious. And then. Okay, cool. As soon as our contract's up and we can get out of it, like we're going to come over.

Speaker B: Exactly. Please get us off the netsuite immediately. Yeah, that's a lot of the conversations we're having.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So you mentioned the next campaign. We have to talk about that because it's brand new and fresh. What can you share from that? What's coming up?

Speaker B: So there's two. Um, the first one's going to be like a Lord of the Rings parody type of thing. So I'm not huge on Lord of the Rings, unfortunately, but I know that there's Sauron and is he the wit. The wizard. There's the wizard and then there's the guy with the, the horns. Um, and then there's um, a couple of the, um.

Speaker A: God.

Speaker B: What? I'm. They will kill me. One of the. One of the. The hunched over Gandalf.

Speaker A: There's Frodo, there's.

Speaker B: There's Gandalf's in there. Um, okay, so there's a bunch of the core wizard, Lord of the Rings characters. So I've watched it like seven times. Um, but like I always fall asleep. I'm literally the worst. Um, but it's going to be around them, and basically they are arguing about inventory management and why is it so complicated? And Luminous is the one source that rules them all. It's ridiculous, but it's so funny. Like, when they first pitched us the idea, we were kind of like, this is bizarre. And then they read out the script. By the time they were done with the script, I, like, looked over and I was like, this is brilliant. This is gonna be so funny. And not only that, but it's really gonna hit. Like, our, like, our key person we're targeting in this ad, which is, like, operators who are probably going to be guys from like 25 to 40. They're 95 huge Lord of the Rings fans. So I think they're really going to resonate and find it funny and then actually relate to it. So we're like, oh, this is like the perfect setup. Um, the second ad that we're doing is, um, it's going to be. It's going to be a founder piece. It's going to. Jared's going to be in it. Um, and, uh, there's also like a kind of a. What's the word? When you have like a. Like a character? Um, well, it's. It's a. It's a pink elephant. And so the pink elephant, essentially. Yeah. So there's the elephant in the room. And you know when you think of something and someone says think of a pink elephant, you'll think of a pink elephant. Even if they say a different or something like that. Something psychologically. So the pink elephant in the room is all these issues that you're having within, uh, your brand. And it's the thing no one talks about. It's like you made $3 million last quarter, but you actually lost $500,000. And no one wants to talk about that. They just want to talk about the wins. And so this whole piece is going to be around Jared and the elephant in the room, but the elephant is a problem that no one really wants to address. They just want to celebrate everything but not talk about the issue. So there's. And that. That, I guess mascot is the word I'm looking for, is going to be used across, like, long term, maybe in conferences on our, you know, across our socials as that elephant. But then we also have this piece of Lord of the Rings that's purely just for fun, but also high production value and very intentionally written for our icp. So two pieces we're working on. I'm pumped for you guys to start pushing them through when they're ready. It's gonna be, um, fun.

Speaker A: That's gonna be great. Is the messaging really? I mean, you said complicated, so about how basically Netsuite and others are like so complicated. Why make it so complicated? Et cetera is gonna be the basic message. But how much different is that from the first, first round of uh, videos? I mean, have you guys really switched it up a little bit based on feedback?

Speaker B: Yeah. As we've gone up market and started targeting more complex brands, you know, we were kind of doing anybody made 1 million to, you know, 20 million was a key, you know, uh, account. But now it's more like you gotta be making at least 5 million. You gotta be across these multiple channels. And that's where Luminous is really your, you know, that's our sweet spot, I guess. Um, and so we're getting very specific on talking about edi, talking about multichannel, talking about purchase ordering, supply chain, like all that back end stuff that really a brand starts to see issues around when they probably hit 10 million-plus and they're in Walmart, they're in Target, they're on Amazon, they're on Shopify, and they're like, we are holding all of this together with our bare hands on spreadsheets. Like how do we. Or everyone's questioning them, Netsuite, how do we get them? Huh? How? We're that solution for that brand saying, you don't have to go to Netsuite, it's way too big for you. And you also don't need to be on spreadsheets or you know, um, as we call it, like taping all these point solutions together. Like we can do everything in one so that we're going more up market, getting a bit more specific. Where before we're like, oh, all of E commerce and now we're like, no, we for Omnichannel brands. M the more off market Omnichannel brands.

Speaker A: So makes sense. So the targeting is probably going to change a little bit as you guys move up market, obviously.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah. That's fun. I can't wait for the Lord of the Rings kit. That's great.

Speaker B: Oh, you're gonna love it. It's so good. I'm sorry I couldn't speak to it more with the references, but

Speaker A: you need to refresh your memory. Watch it. All of them are like three hours, right? I mean, do you know what?

Speaker B: I might send you the script for you guys to read because I'd love to see if you have any feedback.

Speaker A: Um, be great. Yeah, feel free.

Speaker B: Let me know what you think? Um, because as a paid marketer, maybe you have some actually, like, oh, maybe this hook will be better. But yeah, I think you'll appreciate it. So I'll send it to you after today.

Speaker A: Totally love it, love it. I can't wait. I think it's gonna be great. That's cool. Any final thoughts on just like brand marketing ads or anything like that that you didn't think we didn't cover or anything like that that might be helpful for others thinking about it? Cause I think most people are not in your position. Most people have not done it before. Most people likely are not gonna be able to get budget to do certainly anything like you guys have done before, but anything that might help them kind of as they're thinking about how to drive more demand, more demos, the whole bit.

Speaker B: I mean, uh, just resonating what I said with earlier. Just make sure you just start putting content out there. Core differentiator. Um, not just in terms of your product. Your product needs to be different and unique and you have to be clear in that, but in terms of a marketer. And then as you build the brand, create content, get good at it, build the muscle of putting it out there all the time, talk to your audience, get your feedback, optimize your website, and then, yeah, a brand marketing piece will make sense. It will accelerate your results so much quicker. Um, and it is worth it. But don't do it just because you have a bunch of money. Maybe raise some money and you want to kind of throw something into it. Make sure you have that ecosystem. Make sure you're building and putting content out there for about a year. And then, yes, pitch that idea and I almost guarantee you that you're going to have great results.

Speaker A: So love it. Love it. Guaranteed. All right, go to Alex. There's a guaranteed right there. I love love guarantees.

Speaker B: Yeah, maybe not. Maybe 8 out of 10 chance.

Speaker A: But yeah, we'll edit that part. Um, well, cool. Well, thanks so much for jumping on for a little bit. Uh, where can people find you if they want to reach out, learn more about the campaign or anything else, uh, about you?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm, um, on LinkedIn to Alex and Stan Yuk, uh, work for Luminous. I doubt there's another someone else with my name because my name's called Annoying. Uh, but yeah, so happy to chat anytime.

Speaker A: Good, good. Love it. All right, we'll chat here a little later.

Speaker B: Thanks. Bye. See you.

Speaker A: All right, well, thanks for listening to another episode of the Demand podcast again. I'm Jonathan Bland, the co founder of OmniLab I'll also have with me Jason Steele, who's the other co founder of Omnilab on this podcast as well. Well, uh, we're a demand gen agency for C2 Series B SAS startups. Um, if you like this episode, uh, or you're looking for some help with demand gen, please feel free to reach out to us on LinkedIn over a DM. Or you can go just directly to our website, that's omnilabconsulting.com. otherwise, uh, we look forward to seeing you on the next episode where we'll be talking about all things Demandin. Until then, thanks. Bye.

Speaker B: Bye.