Episode 264 / Shafique Gajdhar / Karix / Director Product and Solutions Marketing
Overcoming Biases and Irrationality in Data Driven Marketing
Shafique Gajdhar, Director Product and Solutions Marketing at Karix, wants to remind marketers that human beings are inherently irrational. This has two important implications for data driven marketing.
Firstly, people make purchasing decisions in irrational ways. “That’s why poor products with good marketing sell,” says Shafique. Secondly, marketers have their own biases which can cloud their judgment when they believe they’re making rational data driven marketing decisions.
Marketing to people involves emotion as well as data. For Shafique, this is becoming evident with his shiny new object, which is marketing led growth in the SaaS realm.
In an almost saturated market, developers can no longer rely on features as differentiators since all competitors can replicate these in a matter of months at most. However, marketing can make a difference in how it addresses the target audience, how the brand develops, and how it can, in turn, influence product development.
Tune in to the Shiny New Object podcast to hear about marketing led growth and top tips from Shafique.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Speaker 1 0:00
We as marketers should be cognizant of our own biases as well as consider our audience as to be also irrational. That's why we sort of have our jobs as marketers.
Tom Ollerton 0:17
Hello and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative, the creative effectiveness ad tech platform, and this is a podcast about the future of data driven marketing. Every week or so, I get the pleasure and the privilege to meet one of our industry's leaders from all around the world, from lots of different backgrounds, to get a truly unique take on what makes data driven marketing happen and what will happen in the future. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with Shafique Gajdhar, who is joining us from India, and his role is Director products and solutions marketing at Karix. So Shafique, I tried my hardest with your name, so it'd be really great if you could just introduce yourself to the audience, and we can go from there.
Shafique Gajdhar 1:02
Hey, thanks Tom for having me on the podcast. So my name is Shafique Gajdhar. I am, I lead Product and Solutions Marketing for Karix. I operate. I'm operating from Mumbai office here back in India.
Tom Ollerton 1:19
Shafique, can you give us a bit of an overview of your career to this point? How did you end up here?
Shafique Gajdhar 1:24
Yeah, so I'll give you a like a quick background about myself. So from an education perspective, I have completed my Bachelor of Engineering, and then I did an MBA in marketing and landed up with a sales job just out of college. And mind you, this was a field sales job when I was basically responsible for getting sales for installed sound division for Bose Corporation, the speaker company. Basically, I did that for about an year, and did not really enjoy it at the time, and got an opportunity to interview at this SaaS company. At the time, I did not know anything about SaaS or content marketing. For that matter, what I had was a flair for writing. And since this was a startup, and they were hiring for their second marketing person, I got the role and learned everything about content marketing SaaS in general, on the job, and then sort of from there transitioned to product marketing. From the past six years I've been doing product marketing, have worked across sectors like martech, briefly in FinTech as well, marketed to developers as well as HR leaders, working for a HRMS product as well in between. In my current role at Karix, which is a CPaaS player operating in the India market. By CPaaS, I mean communication platform as a service. So think of Twilio at a global level. Karix is like a regional player in the CPaaS industry, I lead the product marketing function at at Karix, basically.
Tom Ollerton 3:06
So I'm really keen to know in this career, what's been your worst mistake to date, what was that face palm moment where you just thought, Oh, I wish the world would swallow me up. But actually, in retrospect, you're glad that it happened?
Shafique Gajdhar 3:20
Yeah, I think I can recall one such career defining moment wherein I was very early in my career probably. I think it was with like three, three year experience, very early on, wherein I was just learning the ropes of the game, right? I sent out an email to about 20,000 subscribers with a glaring typo in the cover image itself. And the cover image was basically a creative on one side, and there was a title on the on the on the other side of the image right, and the title contained four words in it, and one of the words had a typo in it. So the moment we I basically triggered the email out. We received the responses from the audience, the target audience of the email saying that there is a typo. And within half an hour, the founder of the company, basically at that time, who I was reporting into, also pointed the same thing out. And being in very early in my career, I basically was very tense and anxious about what will happen next, right? So, sort of the very next morning we I was asked to do an RCA, and during the RCA, I was able to say that, okay, my brief to the designer was right, but the designer made, like, a copy paste error, and probably, you know, during that time, that error came on the image, and I basically prepared that RCA Document. With all the things mentioned, took it to my founder and explained to him why this has happened. Uh, although I was humbled after that, and the reason was that, you know, however, it was somebody else's mistake, it was my responsibility. So that one event made me realize the distinction between mistakes and responsibility, and how often it may not be your mistake, but it is still your responsibility, because I was the one taking care of the entire campaign, I should have been watchful of the errors or things like typos and be responsible from an end to end execution perspective and in life also, this I've seen generally applicable, right? Once you mature enough, you try and see things similar things play out elsewhere as well, like your kid breaking your neighbor's window, right? Is not your mistake, but it is your responsibility as a parent. So ever since then, I have, sort of, you know, taken more ownership and ownership of outcomes.
Tom Ollerton 6:11
So that's a lovely delineation between mistake and responsibility, very succinctly put. So that's a kind of what not to do. What advice do you have to data driven marketers to become better at what they do?
Shafique Gajdhar 6:25
Yeah, so from a data driven marketing perspective, right? I my sort of take here is slightly more psychological, and I want to cover the angle wherein we tend to miss on the fact that, you know, we are marketing to humans, and we ourselves as marketers, are humans, right? So we as humans are not the epitome of rationality that we think ourselves to be. And I think this is very well established in the very famous book called Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, right? Even in the presence of data, presence of evidence, we humans choose to act in irrational ways. So according to me, there are two very clear applications for marketers, right? One, the audience you are marketing to is not rational, and that's why poor products with great marketing sell right. And the Second of all is you, as a marketer, look at data with your own bias in deciding whether to pause the campaign or not if you get data that conflict with your expectations or your own bias, you let the campaign run for some time just to see how it pans out. So understanding your own bias as well makes a lot of difference. So my advice is basically, you know, on the on the side, wherein we think of ourselves as rational beings, wherein there is enough evidence that we are not and we as marketers should be cognizant of our own biases, as well as consider our audience as to be also irrational, And that's why we sort of have our jobs as marketers.
Tom Ollerton 8:23
So you've chosen your shiny new object to be marketing led growth. So I think I know what you mean by marketing led growth. But what can you give us your version of what marketing led growth is, and why you've decided that it's your shiny new object?
Speaker 1 8:39
Yeah, so why I was thinking about this, right? And I was essentially thinking about how this entire phenomena of product led growth and sales led growth and marketing led growth has been taking shape over the last few quarters, wherein there has been a lot of talks around companies that are self serving nature, and use their product to market their product also to get like, you know that those growth loops going, which are basically stemming from the existing set of customers that you have, and those existing set of customers bring in more and more new customers, and that is like a self serve growth through growth loop that runs for the business, right? So from a plg angle, there have been a lot of talks around it, and now it sort of has subdued over the course of the last few quarters, as far as I see it, and maybe that is just me, but that's how I see it, right? So my shiny new object in data driven marketing is the belief that SaaS is gearing up for marketing led growth, where marketing will be a key differentiator for software products and to. Know, to explain to you, why do I think marketing led growth will be a differentiator for software products is three things, right? You know, there is features that are getting copied from one competitor to another. So let's say, if you are a software product and your competitor has got a new feature, you can ape that feature in a quarter's time or a couple of quarters time, right? So feature differentiators don't really last as long as you would want them to last. Categories in themselves are oversaturated at this point. Products available are available for different price points, for different use cases, for different industries. Think of the CRM, right? So there is a Salesforce that's like a market giant of sorts. But CRM, other category, has products for at different price points different industries. You will find a CRM for SMBs. You will find a CRM for, let's say banks and so on and so forth, right? So from point solutions to full suites, full fledged suites, you will find the categories that are being most categories are over saturated, and marketing, I think, has already become a differentiator and will become more crucial in times to to come, because of, you know, product differentiating differentiators not working and as well as categories becoming oversaturated over a period of time.
Tom Ollerton 11:39
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So can you go into a little bit more detail about that view? So I think it's interesting that if everyone apes each other's features, then you've got you've got sectors where you've got suppliers and they're all the same. There's just a different price points. And so are you saying that you need to spin it with marketing to even be in the consideration set, or are you saying that the product itself needs to change in line with the marketing? So I mean, it's a really interesting point. I just want to get a bit deeper.
Speaker 1 12:42
Got it so if you look back right and look at history, or look at your own from your childhood to the product that you are marketed with, from childhood to adulthood to you know, you becoming a grown up as well, as well as today. So you will find there are good products with good marketing selling and there are bad products with good marketing selling, and there are some extremely good examples of good products with no marketing or bad marketing failing, right? So I think from a from a focus to towards marketing, and especially for SaaS businesses, since you will find categories being saturated, you will find features being copied very easily, even advantages like cost arbitrage, wherein you having a workforce out of operating out of the Third World countries, also, so to speak, developing nations, versus having a workforce in the West. The companies used to have cost arbitrage, but that also is sort of not working in the advantage or in the favor of companies operating from here, because over time, you know, these arbitrage also do not really make sense. So kind of like you know, since these other differentiators are becoming too prominent, you basically have to rely on marketing, and that marketing can essentially inform your product roadmap as well, as you know, position the product in a way that basically helps it to sell better. So I don't know whether that was a question, but that's my viewpoint.
Tom Ollerton 13:00
So we're talking purely SaaS here, right? So I think that the tension for me is that if you've got 15 SaaS products that are all the same, then it's the biggest marketing budget will most likely win.
Speaker 1 14:54
So not really the budget, right? You could have, like, a less budget or you are operating from a, you know, you are probably like a David versus Goliath kind of a player. So you are probably representing a David and you have a Goliath who is a market leader in the category, but with a small budget, small team, also you can, you know, displace or come against that Goliath of a company and still beat beat it. What I want to what I what I mean to say is marketing is going to be the differentiator for when it comes to sales, products in general.
Tom Ollerton 15:32
But I think where I'm coming from is that, like, even if you've got like a David and Goliath situation, and you've got the David for argument's sake, that can be risky, be a challenger brand, but ultimately, wouldn't, wouldn't the product and the positioning be the thing that actually works, as opposed to marketing, right? So if everyone's got the same 10 features, actually it's the business that's got the 11th feature, or the 15 features, or indeed, a completely different position in the category. So I think what I'm trying to get to is marketing as a word's quite broad. So I'm trying to get into the specifics of what kind of marketing, what kind of positioning can SaaS marketers who are listening to this podcast take advantage of?
Speaker 1 16:14
No, I think if I do get what you're saying right from a marketing perspective, I think brand and product marketing would be the key drivers of, you know, helping these brands achieve what they're trying to achieve, which is to get more and more customers in a in a market that is full of identical products. So you your investments on your brand marketing stuff, your product marketing stuff, which involves your positioning, communication of value prop, who you are essentially, how is your product different, defining your target audience in a way that helps you grow as a business. So let's say, if you are in a David versus Goliath situation, you take a beachhead, kind of an approach wherein you target a very narrow set of segment of the market and build your product and position your product for that market, and then sort of expand from there. So I think, from a strategy perspective as well, marketing can play like a huge role in in also influencing the product roadmap, as well as, as I said, brand marketing and product marketing would be the key drivers to enable companies to sell their software paradise in a market that is overly saturated.
Tom Ollerton 17:32
And I'm curious to go back to what you said at the start about growth loops, which is a, I guess, kind of an entirely sort of Californian SaaS buzzword, is that you said that that's being less talked about. But I mean, ultimately, a growth loop is, in other words, a referral, right, one client referring another one to the business in one way or another, automated or otherwise. So what's happened there in the SaaS world? Do you think, why are growth loops less effective than than a sort of paid marketing strategy.
Speaker 1 18:04
No. So what I meant at the time, like, what I was referring to, is, so there was product led growth and there was sales led growth and marketing led growth. So there was a huge during basically 2021 and 2022 the last couple of years. Around that time, there was a huge uproar about, you know, all SaaS marketing gearing towards plg and adopting plg, even if you are selling to, let's say, enterprises, you would build a version of the product that is probably catering to SMBs, and hence build a self serve version of the product and cater to the that market segment, to have that plg kind of emotion. So that was, that was, that is what I was referring to, essentially growth loops. Or, you know, growth strategies are concepts, and these are most, the way I think of them are, is basically like, you know, they are first principles so, so if you have to talk about, you know, if you have to make a growth plan around, let's say, getting the most out of this, uses you have got, you would be eventually thinking about a growth loop only, regardless of, even if you know that you are talking about growth loop or not, because, because of the very nature of it, right? It's a first principle thinking. So I don't really think that, you know, growth loops, in and of itself, as a concept is out of fashion. What I meant was essentially plg was being talked about, and now it is more it's the time for marketing led growth.
Tom Ollerton 19:46
So unfortunately, Shafiq, we are out of time. So if someone wants to get in touch with you, where's the best place to do it and what makes an outreach that you will respond to?
Speaker 1 19:56
Yeah. So I think if. At all you want. Anybody listening to the podcast wants to reach out to me. The best places to find me on LinkedIn, since I come from the subcontinent, my name and my name name, first name and last name are unique, so chances are, if you search search for my name on LinkedIn, you will land on my profile and send a connection request or an email, I'd be happy to respond to people. I'm quite active on LinkedIn. From an outreach perspective, I think what strikes me, what I can think of, what works right from an outreach perspective, is something which is contextual, succinct and to the point with a clear call to action, sort of works for me, and that's my that's my advice to anybody who is trying to reach out to a LinkedIn connect, or, you know, doing like a cold reach out for help, with respect to referrals, with respect to, you know, getting a booking for meeting done for a demo of the software and so on and so forth. One of the most impressive outreach that I distinctly remember is from Matthew Roberts. He did it like five years back. I don't know why I remember this, but he was working at chili Piper, and I think the reason why I remember this is because I am connected with him on LinkedIn, and I've seen him grow as an SDR as well in the last five years. Right now, I think he is heading a team of SDRs. I don't remember the name of the company, but Matthew basically reached out to me with a message that I talked about inbound leads initiating a live call or book a meeting direct from the web with a form that was basically going to the right rep, allowing for, you know, more inbound convergence and meeting completion rates and stuff. And at the time, I was working at this company called clevertap, and I sort of intrigued by, you know this, and we had the same kind of a problem wherein the website was the source of leads for reps spread across geography. So we were kind we were we integrated HubSpot forms, but there had to be some manual intervention there to be assigning these leads to people. So the outreach was essentially contextual. It was to the point, and it ended with something like, Okay, can we find time to speak about this next week? And I happened to take the demo next week, and although we did not buy the software then, but I did recommend the software to other people, other companies that I worked at later.
Tom Ollerton 22:48
Well, look, thanks again for all of your insight, and it's been a great podcast. Thanks, Shafique.
Shafique Gajdhar 22:52
Thanks, Tom for having me.
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