The Hidden Power of Community-Led Campaigns That Generate Pipeline and Build Brand Trust

Hey Ashish, welcome to the show. Hey Venkatar, glad to be here. Thanks for joining and I'm really excited for today's conversation. And yeah, Ashish, could you please start by telling about yourself and your company for the audience who really don't know you yet? Yeah, sure. I think before telling about my company, I would love to obviously share a bit about myself and then why I started this. I think that could give a lot of people context. So I come from a background of tech, a studied computer science back in Bangalore. And as a part of studying, I think college times are amazing, right? Like you make friends, you be part of many events, you feel the vibes of such, right? And then during that time, I innately was just not into studying, but actually more, you know, be spending time with a lot of like people in the industry especially startups working with them and also trying to bridge that opportunity for a lot of people in college to the startup world and i pretty much started off my first initiative there through setting up the entrepreneurship cell so the whole part of setting it up was to ensure that whatever we study we apply we bring in that bridge we build a bridge between the startups and the students and stuff like that and then eventually create an entire startup show around it and and you know build a community and ecosystem around it so that's where i think a lot of my interest towards community-led initiatives event-led initiatives started off and then from there on i worked in paypal for three years while working in PayPal as well. I wanted to always, you know, once 95 is done, I wanted to hang around with product managers, everybody else and come into just a lab and start thinking about what kind of innovations can we solve? How can we talk to other peers in the industry, right? Things like that. So it always, that energy carried on, right? Wherever I went. And after a few, few, I think years I realized this is what I love to do right I always love to build ecosystems and bridge gaps I love to enable the community empower the community especially builders innovators founders everyone and so from there you could say my career started off right in marketing in community and events so So pretty much back in 2017, I became a community manager at this co-living house for entrepreneurs called Draper Startup House. With that, my passion towards travel also came in and travel in nature. And I was working as a business development guy in a company called Camp Monk. But both of them shared a very similar mission towards what they wanted to build is to provide a great community for either outdoor lovers or entrepreneurs to thrive, right? And to connect. So that became, you could say, my life for four years, right? Where I was hanging around with entrepreneurs. I had my startups myself. I was building stuff. I was trying to understand how to grow companies and things like that while I was also trying to learn and enable each other as a community. And on the weekends, I used to go out in these camps that we partnered with and used to host a lot of these amazing premium camping, glamping experiences, not just around Bangalore, but around India. So that for me gave me a great foundation towards how to build marketing programs, how to build a brand, how to build from an angle of community and ecosystem, all of that as a core part of your marketing campaigns. campaigns. And I think during that time, we saw a rise in influencer marketing, you know, a lot of event led activations came into play in the B2B world. And that's where both of those things combined that, hey, I want to primarily work with a lot of tech companies and, and give them, you know, every tech company wants to become sell their product to an enterprise or so let's say, to a mid market enterprise, especially for are focused on that and what i realized while working in these teams that they genuinely lack a community legend and event led core core campaigns engines which creates not just brand trust relatability authority thought leadership but also generates pipeline right so a lot of us as event marketers we've been always or only just told that you gotta you put of a great series of events and we want our brand to be showcased and create a PR campaign out of it but now things are not that way now every marketer is responsible to bring money on the table and it needs to influence pipeline right otherwise it's a wasted amount of money for the business so that's That's where I think I started my agency, GoToMarketers, two years ago, where what we do is we take a lot of community-led, event-led approaches to existing marketing campaigns and partner with either marketing leaders of these tech companies or partner with marketing, sales, rev ops, sales team, everyone. In the end, everyone's goal is the same, right? Bring prospects onto the table, get them to remember us, and obviously have them as one of the top vendors that a prospect would think about or recommend to another peer and then primarily also start coming in and and talking about how you could partner up and solve each of those problems or things like that so for me it became a a very one i've done this for a long period of time i kind of know everything deep in and out of it along with that this is how this will be ever needed right of sorts like you could see a lot of like hybrid activations being done by a lot of tech companies nowadays where they're just not being digitally active but they're also very much on ground trying to being billboards trying to build that brand out there create social juice out of it stand out in these events or do owned events of their own and then trying to build that relationships with prospects or customers or stakeholders or investors and things like that. Right. So an event led growth motion needs to come into play for that. And that's what we deliver, right as a company. So that's a bit about me and what we do. Got it. Yeah. It is really such an interesting kind of a business and the place where you are right now. And can you please tell me like what type of businesses is well, the kind of work that we have done over the last two years have been revolving around Martech, revenue ops technology companies, people who are trying to sell their technology to marketing and business teams, but we do have some like, interesting portfolios, which I would love to talk about as well, where we actually worked with a company who is in music sass like create a sass right company and they are both b2b c and b2b right so we worked with them as well to take a holistic branded brand marketing approach which had a lot of event-led approaches towards that as well and and we we actually also have while starting out you you pick up a lot of projects to just like, like build that portfolio. Right. So we actually partnered up with a old mentor of mine who wanted to get into the consciousness world, right? Like where a lot of like, like, like people are building towards inner, inner wellbeing and things like that. I'm not just talking about like DDC products here, but somebody who is actually building much more consciousness focused technology or leadership healing or employee well-beings and stuff like that. So in the end, they were also trying to position themselves to businesses of sorts. So it's very interesting. We're living in a great, interesting place right now where a lot of barriers between B2B and B2C are coming more closer than you think, right? Especially when it comes to approaches or marketing. But I think fundamentally marketing first principles have remained the same, right? That you need to be out there. People need to know you. People need to know who you are. People need to know why you're doing this. Why should they trust you? And then how can you be on top of their mind? How can you create that social, you know, authentic trust and word of mouth? And then obviously, how do you showcase your tone and authenticity that you want to showcase as a either a premium brand or somebody who is a challenger, but a premium focused company. So it's always like it differs case to case. But I think all of this can be delivered through an event led approach. Got it. Yeah. And yeah, so you I have gone through your website, as I said, even before. So you mainly talk about the relationships, trust and the trust-driven process for the businesses. Why do you think it is an important thing that trust and the relationships for to build any kind of business or to create a new business? Well, let's talk about this from an example, right? So, okay. So let me just take a case of Gruton, right? So we partnered up with a company, they came to us and what they were trying to do is a lot of music artists and recording labels who manages music creators or gives them different kinds of gigs. Most of the time, these guys are spending, especially if you're an artist, you're trying to figure out how to put your music out, get copyright license on top of that and trying to partner up with other playlists or put up an entire marketing campaign behind it. How do you get more shows and things like that? Right. So Grutin was trying to get into the space because they've been there doing this as a agency for quite some time, but they were trying to take a very product led approach to solving this problem, right. Where they could literally on, on you come in, you sign up, you put your music, you define your release and you primarily they they'll enable you your distribution to be sorted out, they'll manage your royalties for you and things like that. Now, even though they had some sort of personal connections built because of their previous experience, they were still trying to take a very approach that, hey, not many people still know us. We still need to expand. Now, when we came in and looked at this entire thing, we took a very bottom-up approach to marketing, which is a very unconventional way of looking at it. And I'll tell you why that is important. What we did is we analyzed what's going on within the platform first, right? Users coming in, are they dropping off? Why are they dropping off? Can we improve the stickiness of the product first, right? Through understanding user behavior and trying to nurture them and engage them in a way that they could literally know how to play around with the product, right? First, because that remains an important thing for any size especially grouton because they were giving a two week of free trial and then they were selling their paid subscription on top of that we we analyzed that and then we also saw a huge gap in this entire funnel from top to bottom and which had to be fixed was once we fixed that is where we said hey now the whole system and the engine is quite ready for quality traffic to come in and for people to start knowing about you or signing up and using the product or even talk to us personally if they are let's say a record label or they're they're a very well-known artist and they wanna they want a premium experience or premium service right so in this case what we really found out was no matter how much it was all marketed on social media they were not getting quality traffic they were not getting that in right of sorts so what we did was we said hey okay let's stay in this narrative let's change this entire perspective right so we worked with a creative team uh and put up two different campaigns one which builds brand one which converts that entire thing into product product users right um and through that what we did and and then we ensured that the bridge between which would which would put that nice glue to it or build that bridge are the event series that we're going to create where all of these music artists who are interested know who what do these guys do why should we trust them and things like that they would come as a part of these you could say educational webinars which showed an artist how to really think of their music and build it as a business and a revenue engines from there while they are doing their creative work. Now, what happened is along with these brand campaigns running and all of these performance campaigns running, the goal was to bring people to the events, which would showcase a lot of experience on how we approach a monetization model used to work up in our career, selling music and distributing it on how do you build that career? And how do you, how do you, we saw a lot of artists who are doing part-time work and trying to just build their music career. So we showed them that if you think of it from a very growth entrepreneurial standpoint, you could say a business standpoint, you could have a plan towards it. You could, you could, and everything. And it was not about like really telling them that we, we will do it for we'll do it do everything for you guys it's about really showcasing them that you gotta think this way you gotta you gotta plan this way you gotta function this way and yeah you might be not able to do everything on your own and whatever you feel you need help you can come and talk to us right and you're trying to provide all of that to to not just like like like like bring people in and showcase that, Hey, we, we know how this works and, and we're just trying to show a path, but everybody, you, every creator is different. Every genre is different. And, and this is why you need to come in at least like find us as a partner or a co-mentor or something like that. Right now, what this really changed the game is people not just started to come sign up to the platform, but try to speak to us more, started to speak to the founders and teams more quality record labels started to come and and and understand hey these guys have worked with bacha these guys have worked somewhere with some some previous guy before so obviously they are gonna do their due diligence of it because that's how even any anybody would do hey have you heard about them have you worked with them how have you have they done any impact right so what we did is we actually got real people who have got impact from the product showcase their stories as a part of this where we are not the see if we speak or the founder speaks everyone will know that it's biased right but how do you break that assumption that people are coming there and remove those biases to create that trust because this breaks all that stuff to have a and and at least be like hey these guys are something i could want to talk to they come from a genuine background around here and they know what they're talking, they know what can go wrong. They could really become that trusted, you could say a friend, right? Or a part of my life here, right? Or part of my passion or what I'm trying to do here, right? And yeah, that changed the game. And once that is built, and you know, you can show impact and you've done your impact, think about it. Why would anybody let go of you? Right? If you're continue to keep that impact of sorts because in business terms, that's more LTV, right? And that's less focus on acquiring new users, right? As well. So why this is important? Well, you bring in quality people, build that trust, they sign up with you and you showcase that impact. Well, for let's say a spend of say, for example, say a 500 quid, if you get a business out of 20,000 and you keep that moving on, then that means think of the LTV factor for your business standpoint from there and think about the impact that you will have in somebody else's life, whether they're working in a business or they're individually trying to do this. They will know that if anything goes wrong, they can come to you and talk to you about it. And all of these are important because from the marketing lens, this is brain share. This is, uh, this is, this is everything from them not choosing another vendor to move, they sticking on to you and this is great for the business as well. Right. So, yeah, uh, that's what I think I would love to say. Got it. Yeah, it was really an amazing answer. You provided, especially, I really liked this, like how you said you should, you should show them exactly what you are doing so that trust automatically builds up so that they'll really trust you and they'll they'll be ready to collaborate with you right so yeah even I believe that this is where most of the businesses kind of fail because they just kind of tell them okay we will do this and that but they don't really show them exactly what is really going to happen. Well, so what I've realized also is that a lot of people try to sell first than listen first. So it's a very fundamental thing that if another person is coming, and they are your prospect, you should listen to them more and understand what's going on with them and things like that. And then come up with an actual strategy plan and executable realistic goals and timelines on how you can really change that for them, right? In the end, your product is an enabler for that service or for that vision, for that impact, for that metric change, whatever you can call it, that you're trying to do. And you need to show them that you can do it. And they need to know you can pull it off, right? And trust me, let's take a very personal angle, right? Like any marriage which starts on trust sustains but any marriage which which doesn't start on honesty and trust will have its gaps and troubles moving on and later on it will not be great so things like that is very much important in here as well because in the end it's a marriage between two two people two companies two buying committees whatever things are that yeah exactly exactly i completely agree with you in that yeah Cool. So yeah, let's move on to the next kind of discussion about the business, especially. So in your experience, so you've been in the industry for a good enough time and you're doing your own business for more than two years now. So there are a lot of things happening, especially around AI, all the technology evolution, all that. So what was previously working is not working. So what is the kind of challenge in the businesses right now, especially in the B2B space? It's a very broad question. If you could give me some context on top of that in what you scale. So in terms of, okay, let's take B2B marketing. Okay. Especially the, so even market, if you take even marketing, what used to work really very well, but what is really not working anymore. And because of that, what are the challenges being aroused? Okay, so my point of view from that is that, okay, here is what it is. You see your competitors do something and you want to do it. And you want to do it fast because you're like in a competition. You feel you're in a competition. Yeah, you're in one. We understand that. But that shouldn't really take a lot of pressure, but it does. To how you should show up in these events, how you should plan that strategy, how you should, how you should look at it from, how do you break the pattern that other competitors have created? How do you come up uniquely, creatively from the noise, even when you're putting up a booth or any sort of activation in real ground as well? It follows the same concept of any sort of brand campaign or a story, story, story boarding when it comes to running. thinking about the campaign that a lot of businesses i feel are following similar playbooks but they are not having to focus on their unique value their unique pov their unique brand their unique social activations which could create that virality of sorts and this is a trouble right Because if people follow the same playbooks, then everybody is going to do the same thing. And it may lead somewhere for you. I don't say it will not work, but it can work better. It can be looked at it better. So if your competitor is putting up a booth, try to do something else which they're not doing as a part of that event so that you can grab all that attention. right for example uh when we thought about this for one of the companies all their competitors were putting up a booth right and they were in the middle of a market like so many people people walk in these events and they might not know you just not didn't know you if if they come up if they come to your booth and you start selling they are not interested right and there's so much uh Again, I don't know how you can do that also better, but I'll not run into that. But where you could really disrupt is around the conference. Can you build any sort of activations? It can be very cute things like partnering up with cafes and just telling that, hey, I'm inviting. we are doing these cafe roadshows where people all of us that whom we want to meet will meet in these informal settings right and promote those set of five three events that you're doing around these conference in all these billboards possible in all these social media possible and and think about why that will create that impact because a lot of people yeah they will they will come to these trade conferences and exchange business cards but deals get made in a different place and these are social activation these are these informal activation that you can create as a brand and interrupt the right and then try to and try to project that invite very specific people tell that it's exclusive invite only right make that you are not for everyone right and be very clear because that can create not just like pipeline impact, but a brand impact also out there, right? So, and, but obviously what I've changed, what I've seen this also, again, starts to become a competitive thing that everybody starts to do roundtables, everybody starts to do roundtables. So it's, it's an ever going game in the, in the, in, in, in business that to this year, if something worked for you next year you should do something different because your competitors will be obviously be like hey if they did it and and if they're gonna do the same thing yeah then we'll know so everybody is kind of like look at it and then from that lens so and with i i think what has come about is like especially if you're sitting underneath right if you're sitting with a we're sitting with a lot of tools we're sitting with a lot of people we're dealing with a lot of workflows and operations involved in making these happen. So I feel AI and automations and workflows could obviously help out in managing all of these top of the funnel, about the line campaigns, business campaigns, much more effective, right? And it needs to be a blend of all of these tools and AI and workflows, working with a lot of like brand event and marketing teams to make that impact out there. Right. I totally am not on board that AI is going to replace everyone. I don't know. It is not like that. It is more should come across as a tool and obviously a better infrastructure to improve your operations and give more time to do more productive, creative work and business work, which is more needed. And I think that's where you should use a lot of AI to cut down those times. Right. And yes, you should obviously train a lot of people in your team in order to make their role, how can their roles, their output, their impact can be better with the use of AI. And if, but obviously not, everyone is going to take that approach, because it differs business to business. But a lot of like lean teams, I've seen a lot of lean teams, like make a lot of money on the table. Every employee has revenue goals coming across. The whole business is beautifully designed that whatever money the company makes or the investor money is there, the investor money is kept for the runway for the company and growth experiments and expansion and everything like that. And then the money which is made as profit is completely well-deserved. Every employee is contributing to a part of that, right? And then shares are being distributed. Everybody is happy, right? The brand has an impact, the employees are happy, the investors are happy. It's obviously a very idealistic scenario. There's going to be a lot of challenges for every business around this, but it's about trying to optimize and keep these kind of numbers better in order to function better as a unit, as a corporation, as a product, whatever that is. As a brand, it can be anything. So this is my views that even in this space, but creativity should always be there. If you don't, if you lose that element of your business, you're going to be gone after some time. Until and unless obviously you have got all the influences of the world and big names of the world backing you and they are opening up their network for you. That's all great of sorts. So it's all about what you can do. But if you don't, then you are to take your own approach to this. What is your next move and where do you want to see your company go to market in the next 12 months, at least, or even beyond? Well, I think simply put, we wish to bring more unique activations and voice for a lot of B2B tech companies out there. Work with a lot of upcoming challenger brands, change their narratives out there, right? So I think it's more about trying to do the work more better, scale the business, and then hire more people, build a great culture and brand out of it. And for all of that, obviously, we want to work with more people. That's all as a business that we are looking for. And yeah, we are a small team. We come with a varied amount of experience. But every work that we build has a business impact, has a brand impact, has a cultural impact, has a narrative impact out there. That's the kind of work that we like to do. And in the end, I see a future where human connections, human relationships becomes a very important thing for people to hold along with brand share as well, mind share as well. and using AI and automation should be looked at it more as a cohesive unit within your org to enhance whatever it is. It can be money, it can be profits, it can be operation productive. Again, same thing going on again. And we obviously would love to work with people who want to change these narratives for the upcoming decades, because that's the kind of challenge that we love as well. And that's the kind of challenge that a lot of these companies will also have out there and we love to bring our creative game to change these narratives in their prospects and buyers and yeah so before we wrap up the episode if you could share one advice for the marketers out there what it could be um i would say work i mean keep first principles and fundamentals on as a foundation ensure that every marketing function is having that base and when you're been pressurized with a lot of like other things which you which which you know is not gonna put any impact on the money of sorts be very confident to say no on those things and obviously try to be innovating your campaigns out there your narratives out there your activations out there because that is a compounded game that you have to play for long-term success and long-term business building as well. That doesn't matter if you're in a horizontal category, vertical category, it doesn't really matter. All of this will play its part. And then obviously show, always work towards business goals and work backwards from there so that you are very much showing a potential ROI on the table coming from it because that will be important as well. No matter you are a vendor, no matter you are working in a team, it becomes more important. And if you function that way, one, you will get to keep your job. And two, you will be able to also work with founders who will allow you to do better experiments as well, which could give sometimes incremental returns. Or it could just create that unique perspective and mindshare out there. Yeah, I mean, but I think don't lose your creativity as marketers. We all have both art and science part of our games. And we have right now all the tools and technology to help us make better decisions out there. And what we should do is obviously keep our creative game on, our empathy towards understanding customers and community on, and take those stories out there in the best way possible. Yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation and I hope our audience also will find it really valuable. So before we leave, if anyone wants to find you out, they can check out for you. Yeah, I'm pretty much available anywhere on my LinkedIn. Even I have my personal number also put on there. Anybody can call me and start talking about obviously anything to do with marketing, business or any sort of struggles happening as a freelancer as well. it would be all i always feel that yeah we need to work together as a community and as a team to make things happen so yeah i'm happy to i'm i'm happy to talk meet for a coffee wherever you are uh if you're nearby and yeah uh keep doing good stuff keep doing good work thank you thank you ashish thanks for joining our show and it is really a pleasure talking with you and we are really looking forward thank you vankata for inviting it's been a good run thank you let me stop you

Most B2B marketers are still playing by the old rules — but in today’s competitive landscape, that’s a fast track to obscurity. Ashish Ramamurthy reveals the counterintuitive strategies that are actually winning in brand trust, lead generation, and community building for tech companies. If you’re tired of following the same tired playbooks and want to stand out in crowded markets, this episode is your blueprint for disruption.

Guest: Aashish Ramamurthy
Website: https://www.gotomarketers.co/
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/aashishramamurthy/