Marketers of Technology
00:07:25 · Andres Figuera, Tzvi Vaknin
[00:07:25] S1: Yeah. No. I also agree because, and especially with AI, like you can wear many hats at the same time now and you can really use, like you can really do a lot more of the job and learn a lot faster than before that you really had to specialize in SEO, demand generation, and it was just this one line of a vertical within marketing that you could only handle. But nowadays, everybody's doing everything they can with every single tool that is available to them. [00:07:50] S0: I agree. And on the other hand, it's a double edged sword, I think, because then expectations are growing. Right? Like, CEOs are non marketing people in most cases. You tell them there's a limit to the things that I can do, and they're like, what's the problem? You have AI. No. No, it doesn't necessarily work this way. And on top of that, like nothing could replace your know how. And this is something that I put on my flag these days And I'm pretty sure that it would resonate with some people who listening to this. These days, as you mentioned, because AI technology isn't like the, let's call it the moat anymore, which leaves the know how to be like the mode, like the the things that distinguishes you from the rest. And you have AI, it can solve lots of bottlenecks. It could be an amazing power multiplier, but you need to stay above the loop.
00:07:50 · Tzvi Vaknin, Andres Figuera
[00:07:50] S0: I agree. And on the other hand, it's a double edged sword, I think, because then expectations are growing. Right? Like, CEOs are non marketing people in most cases. You tell them there's a limit to the things that I can do, and they're like, what's the problem? You have AI. No. No, it doesn't necessarily work this way. And on top of that, like nothing could replace your know how. And this is something that I put on my flag these days And I'm pretty sure that it would resonate with some people who listening to this. These days, as you mentioned, because AI technology isn't like the, let's call it the moat anymore, which leaves the know how to be like the mode, like the the things that distinguishes you from the rest. And you have AI, it can solve lots of bottlenecks. It could be an amazing power multiplier, but you need to stay above the loop. [00:08:46] S1: No. Yeah. I agree completely with that as well. And Tzvi, in terms of your experience while being a fractional CMO, can you tell us about a problem you faced and how you solved it in one of the SaaS companies that you've worked with? Maybe if it has to do with their, I don't know, I know you mentioned something about an ICP at one point. So could you tell us a bit more about that?
00:09:06 · Tzvi Vaknin
[00:09:06] S0: Yeah, sure. I'm happy to. There was this client of mine, a SaaS company in the estate vertical. And they thought that they knew who their ICP is, but they weren't 100% sure about it. So obviously the first step would be talking to sales and analyzing the pipeline, like you have access to the CRM, you need to be data driven when you come up with who's your ICP. And if you don't have enough data, then you need to come up with, you need to make those conversations with sales, understand like what has been done so far regarding the design partners, paying customers, etcetera, and then you come with hypothesis. You can come up with one or two verticals or cohorts that you would like to test. I don't like spraying and praying. I think it's a professional suicide and focus is like what would matter the most. You need to be quick, especially when it comes to startups. The time to execution, like you don't have the error margin that larger companies have, right? While the company is bleeding money, you need to bring revenue right here, now. You need to bring opportunities to create pipeline right here, right now. So I came with an hypothesis of two cohorts and then out of it we created an ABN list. So we mapped the relevant companies that we would like to pursue and it took lots of hours, it took lots of resources even with AI. But at the end of the day, we came up with a list of a few hundreds or even thousands US based companies that we wanted to test our hypothesis on. But we realized that we're limited in resources and we're limited with budget. Now, we talked with colleagues and other companies in the real estate, like not competitors, but with other like adjacent real estate companies and CMOs. And we try to collect we try to collect info as for where those people, those ICPs or hypothesis ICPs actually spend their time networking, making buying decisions, researching, etcetera. And we realized that they spend their time on LinkedIn on top of other channels, but LinkedIn was a very interesting channel to begin with. Now when it comes to advertising, when you're limited in resources, you can't really run a full blown demand generation playbook, right?
00:11:45 · Tzvi Vaknin
You can't create like a multi funnel, let's have a gated asset, a checklist or whatever, and then drive them with an email drip and then retarget them with a demo request or just run a demo request for a cold audience. It requires a higher budget compared to what we had back then. And the greatest hack that in twenty five, twenty twenty six brought to LinkedIn was thought leadership ads. And that that leads me to another point I wanted to mention earlier, but I forgot. And when you mentioned AI, at some level, especially nontechnical people, they up they're with AI. Like, they're looking for this human connection. They're looking for people. And I believe that even in 2026, even if people operate agents to shorten their way for research, at the end of the day, they buy from people. And you sell to people, like they're the ones who make the decisions. So I created a Gantt of thought leadership posts, founder led thought leadership posts, And we labeled the founder, the CEO and the founder as a subject matter expert for this specific area in real estate. And then we ran those posts at thought leadership ads for the same ABM audience. Okay? When the main target was engagement. Like, we wanted them to comment. Why? Because then we wanted to roll them into a sequence. That way, it would help us with turning cold audience into something a bit warmer. Like you already have the foot in the door. They already engaged with a post from this specific company founder. And in some post, we even tested like... We we created a specific asset for them and we come... Came up with an offer that they won't be able to refuse. Like we offered basically leads. Everybody wants leads, right? Like I offer you leads right now, you won't refuse for free. Just a sample, just a sample. So we tested a few copies and we put like at the end of each post, if you want the sample comment x. It's a very cheesy practice, but It works. Some people... Yeah. Exactly. You can argue with success. Right?
00:14:12 · Andres Figuera, Tzvi Vaknin
[00:14:12] S1: If it's cheesy or if it's cliche, it's because it's been done a bunch before. And if it's done a lot, then it's usually because it actually works. [00:14:18] S0: Exactly. Exactly. And you know what? You don't necessarily have to do something that nobody else has ever done. You can do something... You you can do the same practice, just do it better. [00:14:30] S1: And this generated a lot of engagement via LinkedIn then? This is the post that then a lot of people commented on? [00:14:36] S0: Oh, a lot. Like, we get... We got, like, hundreds of comments. We enrolled them into sequences, and it helped us booking 16 qualified meetings in one month. [00:14:47] S1: That is amazing. And out of those 16 qualified meetings then, how many were you able to convert? [00:14:52] S0: Four. [00:14:53] S1: That... That's... Well, at least a quarter is good by me. That's a great Yeah. [00:14:58] S0: Yeah. It's not... On paper, it's not like the best conversion rate, but by the end of the day, you manage to add another layer of closed ones into your pipeline. So on top of everything else that you already have, like paid campaigns, organic efforts, etcetera, you... We already ran outbound for a cold audience as well. You just... That's just another practice to turn the cold audience into warm. So now you already have the connection, and then they already have, oh, okay. I remember this man. He's reaching out to me personally. Okay. That's nice.
00:14:58 · Tzvi Vaknin, Andres Figuera
[00:14:58] S0: Yeah. It's not... On paper, it's not like the best conversion rate, but by the end of the day, you manage to add another layer of closed ones into your pipeline. So on top of everything else that you already have, like paid campaigns, organic efforts, etcetera, you... We already ran outbound for a cold audience as well. You just... That's just another practice to turn the cold audience into warm. So now you already have the connection, and then they already have, oh, okay. I remember this man. He's reaching out to me personally. Okay. That's nice. [00:15:31] S1: Oh, cool, man. And, Tzvi, I'd also love to know, and I'm not sure how much you can tell us about this, but you mentioned that you're gonna be, what's it called, taking out or like pushing a product out for Reddit of your own creation or how does that work? What is that about?