Welcome to Stacking Growth, called to action, a show for the Trailblazers, change makers, and paradigm shifters. Each week, a different marketing hero who is called to make a change in their field will join us to talk through each step of their journey. They'll cover the highs, the lows, and what's coming next. Together, we'll help you find the changes needed for your own business to win.
I'm Steph Crenola here with Evan Hughes, and today we are so excited to welcome John Burke-Bekker, founder of Roasted. John Burke is committed to refine Labs' vision of building a talent destination by consistently running experiments and sharing weekly insights and analyses on LinkedIn. John Burke, thank you so much for joining us today. Well, it was such a nice thing to thank you so much for hearing me.
We're really excited to chat about this. I've been keeping up with the experiments that you've been sharing, and I think it's such an incredible way to push yourself forward and push everyone around you forward, too. So can you tell us a little bit, just going back to the beginning, your path into marketing and the experiences you've had where experimentation maybe may not have been a priority, or may have even been discouraged or limited? Yeah, I think before going into that, I need to go to the beginning and I need to just go through why I think experimentation is such a huge thing and why I had always been a really bullish on experimentation because I wasn't trained as a marketer.
I was a lawyer and when I actually got my first job, it was a V2C company, but I was actually one of those lucky people with an amazing manager. My first manager was an ex-bank consultant and he was coming from a major to a concept of background, so he was really big on experimentation. And he was always pushing me to experiment new things, and this company, if I was lucky, I would be doing like 500 monthly budgets to spend, even experimentation budgets, but my entire budget. So it actually pushed me to try different things.
I was just reading through all of the game of marketing, so that other companies were doing all of the experimentation that other companies were doing, and I hate to build something. I hate to deal with something because I don't have any budget. I hate to experiment and find something that might be our golden goose. And then when I actually start working with VCBEC, V2B startups, the situation actually was completely different.
I assumed that this experimentation mindset would be applicable for every company, because of that, that would be to be VCBEC bootstrapped. But it's not the case. In those companies, the first idea was that, okay, let's get out of target first and then we can discuss about experimentation. Because you know, especially if you are working in a company where the marketing measurement makes metrics like cost-relit, you are just giving a budget and that budget is like always just divided by the number of least required.
So like, okay, you had X amount of budget and your cost-relit time is 12 dollars. And that's why I hate to be my first B2B SaaS experience. Like, you're getting the time of it, but if I was lucky, I would leave a bit like maybe 5K, mark the budget left maybe 4K, and then I'll try to run experiments with those budgets. But again, nobody would actually care about those experiments because everyone was just really focused on cost-relit.
Like, that's why I was actually really surprised in my first experience with B2B SaaS because, yeah, experimentation was different than not the Tink that was encouraged. It's so true that we run into situations where we all are in these roles of and moments of, okay, what is my actual goal here, right? Like, am I supposed to challenge what we are doing and challenge our experimentation mindset? Or am I just supposed to hit that target to your point?
Because we hit the target and we know next quarter, you know, our goals are going to go up 10%, the budget goes up 10%, it's just a one to one and that's the assume, sometimes it doesn't. But like, that's the assumed logic there. And I think that that's what stifles a lot of us. So, you know, when I started my career, I was in the search side of the business.
That's what kind of brought me here. And experimentation wasn't necessarily a thing because the experiment was putting more keywords in and just seeing what the hell happened. And I feel like that's, you know, the world of search prior to a lot of the AI tools and a lot of the machine learning was a bit of a different beast. But I think that mindset of like stepping into B2B, you bring up an interesting point of them, there isn't that idea of experimentation or how we define experimentation.
It's so different. It's like this idea of I'm an experiment by I'm just going to put this channel live and hope that it does well. It's not like truly I'm an experiment like copy, I'm an experiment, bid settings, I'm an experiment, different strategies or tools. And I would love you to talk me through like that moment, the kind of aha moment when you stepped into specially B2B, it's really there, but where you knew that like experimentation was pivotal for growth and you needed to do it in order to move the needle more than the traditional way.
Like what was that kind of like, holy shit, it's time we do this. Yeah, I think it was just because of Sittico, you know, like I was sitting in my office and next quarter, I would be given new time because I'm just like you said, the new time, it's cost-related should be 5% cheaper than next quarter to be 5% cheaper. But then you, if you think about the fundamental, it's like every day there's more companies beating on your target audience, every day it's more expensive. So you cannot just say, oh, okay, I'm just going to be decreasing my first-party every quarter because I'm going to be getting more efficient.
No. And at that point, I have to take care actually, you know, like because if this is my KPI, then I need to find a way to keep this KPI properly. Like when I was talking with the team, when I was talking to others, I was like, oh, it was so interesting for me, like, it's tough like I was speaking with someone from an end world because for the experimentation, okay, let's change the backgrounds from white to black. Or like, oh, okay, let's change the creative name, like just change the CTA from see how to get now.
And that's what the breaking point. And I said, you know what, if I notice budget, I need to do it on my own terms. Then they said no. But what I did was that, okay, what I'm going to do five minutes and then I just start to make an experiment by myself.
And thankfully and thankfully, numbers were better. So after numbers were better, I was like, okay, guys, I'm going to tell you something. They are experimenting with that and it hurts. But yeah, I was not given the green light, you know, like I was actually given green light.
I just said, okay, what I'm going to do five minutes. The good thing about the new K-low is that you cannot do the new files easily. So I was like, okay, they can't do the firing. I'm going to do something that I feel right.
Yeah, yeah. This idea of asking for forgiveness versus permission, especially when it comes to experimentation is key. And I think that people lose sight of what experimentation actually means and how it helps the business, right? So it's informed a data back, driven decision making.
And I think that that's why it's so important and to your point of like, I'm running this test with a budget just to see because then I can put that in front of leadership, hopefully and say this is we're either winning here or we're losing here because of X, Y and Z. I think there is so much gotten into wishing and marketing and that's important and that keeps the authentic and feels natural, but you do need some of that data and tangible insights to challenge kind of what you've been doing traditionally. And I'd love to know, like from your perspective, kind of go in a bit off the rails here, what makes a good experiment for you? Amazing question.
I think it's just a big watch like why I want to do this. Like because I see with everyone, they just want to learn experiment for the sake of printing experiment. But like why do we want to learn experiment? Like I speak with some agency that like, okay, every time I come to my committee, I take the K-chades to run one experiment every week.
But why? Like they just end up running experiments that they hate to change the background from the white to black, just change one word in the coffee. No, like because nobody's asking why and if an experiment starts with why that it eventually becomes the good experiment because if you ask why I want to do that, then you are going to understand if you actually need to do that or you don't need to do that because when you an experiment, that experiment needs to solve a problem. It needs to help with the pain point.
It just cannot happen for the sake of experiment. It's true. Do you think that there's a scenario where experimentation actually doesn't yield any results that are favorable to the business? Like kind of wasted.
But if you're not learning, then you know that it's not right and to think it's value and experiments, you cannot just assume that your success will be a hundred percent but this is a good thing. Like probably if you're like 20% of your experiments will be fine but the 25% of experiments will improve your results by 80%. Like this is pretty principle. Like I never run experiments once again it needs to fail but if I get like 20% success rate out of like 10 experiments, then the seven because I know that the 20% will change in trajectory of my business.
Yeah, no, it's okay. It's a game of interest where it all adds up in the end. Especially it was a thing with cognitive light. I had a digital magnet to make a cognitive and I was trying to push them to a more experiment and then they would come to kind of like it's not successful and we don't really think obviously we're talking about it.
And I was like no, like it needs to be a successful. Like if you fail, that's actually a good thing. But if you actually always come up with experiments that bring forth different results, it means that you are like trying harder, you know, like you are like trying harder. And there's a problem.
Like if you're actually getting all of the experiments which is us, something is wrong with you. Yeah, they're pre-can experiments that are, you're leading the witness in that scenario. Yeah. Like absolutely.
And I'm kind of thinking about, so your journey of working in B2C, coming to B2B, recognizing that there was a lack of experimentation or lack of importance in that. What are some of the, what's one of the, your most favorable experiments that you've run in that scenario in B2B world that maybe most early listeners are kind of familiar with and what gave you that idea? Well, this is kind of like, ah, shit, let's try it. I hate to be, I hate to do it.
I actually hate to go out with this. In the morning, I was like, okay, we got to do this. And if I actually like, either first or second month at cognitive and we just started bidding on, so I thought we were about. But I knew that there was so much potential with comes to Zoom because they had more traffic than we had.
They had more brand events in the US than we had. And no matter how much money you're spending on brand events, that was the fact that we would not be able to reach the Zoom in post-level in the first couple of years. And okay, you're jumping through that from those competitive keywords, but that's okay. What else we can do?
Like how we can attack differently. And I want to do it for you, people are doing co-opism. And I knew all of the contracting, you know, process it, all of the stuff that they do to you if you cancel, if you want to cancel your content, everything. So I started to be very long-care curious, like trying to cancel Zoom in for how do I cancel my Zoom in for, why is Zoom in for, is charging me extra.
And then I created three specific RSAs, like I was trying to cancel Zoom in for, you know, we'll have you out. Or like Zoom in for pressing, now you can do better. And the CTR, we had like 2.5, 3.5%, but we told our USA to actually check to try to decide. But obviously, they don't really think if they don't comment.
But then we created amazing, many pages, like if you're trying to cancel Zoom in for, but you are able to, here's how you can do it. And if you try to organize them, 25, 3 days here. Amazing. Like, we started spending like maybe a couple of grand for the first couple of weeks, but the CTR about maybe doing platform, the conversion is from M cloud, it's cloud was maybe, and they were actually converting really fast because all of those people hated Zoom in for, like, and we used the hate for talking to them.
And we just said, okay, you might still hate the contrast, we are going to get to the volume. But if you want to try first, here's a try for this, and you can just see the class one by yourself. I love that. We need more magnesium so I can start dreaming of some of these experiments.
That's wild. That's wild. I had a dream about something and I told someone when I woke up, I was like, oh, I feel like I should try this and they laughed at me and said, that's ridiculous. So now I'm going to use this as like ammo.
Like, no, follow your dreams is more than just an empty word, right? So I think what's really fascinating about this so far is the scope of these experiments. So you've talked about, you know, small, like changing one word, changing the color of a background, like that's not really a meaningful experiment. But I think that thinking of really meaningful experiments is daunting to a lot of folks.
Obviously we're not going to dream up ideal experiments every night. So what were some of the, or I guess what are some of the tools that you use to help you keep ideating and coming up with experiment after experiment? What are some tools, whether they're like programs or mentors or anything that helps you keep pushing? I might sound really blumish, but I don't mean to, but I do appreciate that I share a couple of things ago on LinkedIn and probably just share under this episode as well.
And that's appreciate I had been working on it for years, like I have been trying to perfect that because like I really couldn't find it or I really couldn't find anything that will help me to automate this process. But again, everything about it, especially if you're dealing with multiple clients, every client is different, like every client has different needs, every client is trying to do something else. But what I try to do is at the end of the month, I look at my numbers with clients, like, you know, every client has a different number, they have different success metrics. So like, okay, what did I do that month to keep those targets?
Did I miss anything? If I missed why or like what were the reasons that I might have been missing? And one thing I actually had been experimenting for last couple of weeks and I actually posted about it yesterday was the video format. Like I was just trying to understand how I can make LinkedIn this will be my content more than just the content.
And then I was like, okay, I'm going to do this because again, for between us, we know that this is converting, mobile is just for influence. And okay, I'm going to pay 50% of my budget for mobile, I'm going to get 50% of my impressions for mobile, but I realize that only things like five days more mobile than this stuff. Like, okay, like, holy shit, you know, and like, okay, what do I do? And then it was my wife's question.
Okay, why I want to increase the structure of it because I know that this stuff brings more convergence. Then how do I do that? What would be my variables? Like the second step is taking a step.
Okay, what my variables will be. I know that only things requiring are more mobile friendly. Yes, then can I assume that every time we do it, which would be more their stuff friendly. Let me test.
No, then okay, what else I can try only. Then I can try videos, security is mobile friendly and I know that I will get more information on mobile check. What if I try to return the video? Oh, okay, I think I found something.
And actually, I met from the finalist, I met from the finalist, went to the start of something that I didn't really think that apparently he was testing with the reach objective. For me, I was testing with the view objective and he actually didn't have the same numbers. And I didn't actually even realize that parameter, but I was any parameter that actually made me get really lucky. And I was not about using the reach objective.
I wouldn't hit it number. And I got to be lucky with that. But it all comes to wanting, okay, I'm trying to hit the numbers, what activities are bringing those numbers and what activities might be working better, what activities might be my current bottleneck or like what activities can be improved even further. It's all about really good tracking and logging and keeping yourself organized.
And I think that a lot of times we want tools that will help us and that's our hope, right? There's something magic that can help keep us keep ideas coming. And in reality, it's just keeping really good track of the things that you're doing. I think that's awesome.
And I would love to see that spreadsheet. Yeah, I'm glad I was thinking. It just comes from a system. And yeah, actually, it just makes me to any problem that I see with people that I work with.
Other mic is I work with. It's constantly saying like, okay, yeah, I'm like, okay, this is especially the view following, this is what the individual is. And like, because I like the coach other people and I just try to help them to, I don't know, get better at marketing. And when I first speak with them, I'm like, okay, I complicated, I'm going to be doing that.
And they do it. And I'm going to have a chicken with them two months ago. And like, did you do it? And they're like, well, I'm like, really?
Then start over. Like, they don't really understand. It's not like they don't want to do it. But I don't see a consistency across market here.
And they just sit it and forget it. And this is like the one of the things that you shouldn't be doing. I feel like there's a, there reminds me so much of early in my career where I would set it and forget it. And I was like, maybe my goal is hitting my targets.
But I also think like I have to empathize a bit with the marketers today. There's stretch so thin and ask to do so many roles and responsibilities. That's your point about like, it's kind of like accountability in January, right? You're going to go to the gym.
You're going to exercise. You're going to eat healthy. And then it's like, all right, three weeks in. It's like, what, Jim?
You know, what? So I totally understand that. But I think to your point about like having the right process in place and it's just like showing up when you're building a brand or where it has a marketing. It's like, if you show up, you have to be there consistent and authentic and having the tools in place that you work best for you, I think is so important.
So whether that be a spreadsheet or whether you find some sort of tool that AI program that can help you, like I'm sure there's there, but find what works for you and don't force yourself into something you're not familiar with. Otherwise, you won't do it to your point. And then one experiment doesn't tell you anything, right? A series of experiments gives you a lesson.
And then once you started and build an actual foundation and most of that, then you have a true marketing organization that's like performing and optimizing the budget to the best of their ability. I'm put that. Yeah. Was there a moment in an experiment that you fucked up?
Like you're low, that you're comfortable sharing, no pressure, obviously, but like you think about this journey, right? Introducing experimentation. And then was there just a moment of like a low point that you just felt like maybe you screwed up at that time? Every week.
Yes. But okay, is it like in terms of, I think after experiment, but in terms of result of experiment? I think both. Let's do like in terms of ideating kind of the steps that you took and you thought it was going to be, you anticipated really good results.
And then what happened? But I think both like setting up an experiment and then also the results because it kind of gives two sides of the coin there for people to kind of gravitate towards one or the other. Yeah. The first one happens was a miscalculation, one, so it's not actually one of my first experiments in V2B.
And I look at the wrong of this range. And apparently if you do two of us instead of two quarters, the results were completely different because actually company structure has completely changed. Every target the company was trying to keep completely changed. And yeah, it took me a couple of history and I said, oh my God, what do I do?
I'm not an operation, not a state. Not a state, but yeah, I tend to look at the wrong day range and everything went completely different. And it goes, I was like, okay, why, like if I don't LinkedIn, I was like, okay, why do I do this data on the marketing point? Why I'm just a huge trippy but they're not converting and the effect it was because I based all of my assumptions on the wrong time range, which completely changed everything.
In terms of result, literally every week, like because like now I'm working with tank lines and like I try to run experiment in every two weeks with each of them. So like at least three, four of them don't really work. And again, just like I said, it needs to not work because it is okay. I'm trying and I'm trying to make it work.
However, sometimes I actually am really bullish on one experiment and it doesn't work and it really hurts me, it generally hurts me. And actually it's a fundamental issue on Monday. I was testing to, you know, not only then you can create a dynamic companies audience and you can be like, okay, if there's a low engagement and you can also filter by X amount of engagement, X amount of paid inflation, you can exclude that. So I created a dynamic companies and it was like, okay, low engagement in the last seven days in the 14 days and then paid inflation in the same day more than 1000.
I said, okay, these are companies that are not engaging. So we could just actually save some money and we could start targeting other companies. Everything that's clearly wrong in terms of data, in terms of data, in terms of like, and that's actually the proof of dark social, you know, because most companies are engaging with my contact on LinkedIn, but they were visiting by themselves. Okay, dark social, okay.
But yeah, like it's not interesting, listen for me. No, like, and it's nice to just own up to all of us to own up to these moments. Like that is not a failure. It's just learning and iterating and pushing yourself forward.
So I appreciate the honesty and candor there, because I think some of us are afraid to fail or recognize an experiment as a failure. It's not a growth opportunity. So. And reinforcing the fact that failure is positive.
Otherwise you're not pushing yourself in your experiments far enough. I think that's a really great reframe for everyone to not hold themselves to an expectation that everything is going to be a massive improvement for your company. Yeah, 100%. No, I sound like a lot coach, but that's true.
So I guess let's talk about that a little bit. I want to know what your work with experimentation has taught you about yourself. As a marketer, as a person, as someone who pushes the boundaries. A very interesting question.
Well, yeah, I think it is again trying hard. And if you try enough, if you try long enough, you will find something that is working, like not everything you'll turn out to be amazing. But it's about just finding one thing that is working. And the second thing is that, okay, you can be really bullish on something, you can be really about something, but life and other plants.
And even though, like I always, I don't know, try to myself off being someone who always relies on data. And sometimes data isn't enough, you know, like even if you say something really good on data, it doesn't really work. And I always thought, okay, if you rely on data, everything will be amazing. And especially when I first got into startups, like I was reading about Bezos and everything.
And they were like, okay, rely on data, rely on data. And they give you this fake impression. If you rely on data, everything will be accurate. Okay, data helps you, but sometimes just don't work, you know, just like you said, even like sometimes it needs to be about gut feeling.
Yeah. So recognizing that intuition and kind of trusting yourself, I think is kind of what I hear that you're saying is something that allows you that can run away to potentially fail, but also to just keep pushing yourself outside your boundary. I always like to close this conversation with a question I'm sure every single marketer has been asked three times already this year. But I think it's very fascinating is what shift in marketing do you see as coming or expects that it's coming next?
And then how should listeners or marketers prepare for it? Are there some things that you would encourage them to think about? I think, well, time is too, like now we see everywhere that there's a agent's content. Everyone's just maximizing their outcomes.
And like, even if you just go only and I see all of those things, or like, even if you just go to Google and look at all of the other things, you know, authentic, you know, they're originated. And like for last year, I think everyone has been really focused on maximizing the quantity. And I think at some point in 2025, it will backfire. And that will be a journey, a journey back to authenticity.
Like, okay, we are going to be focusing less on the quantity, but we are still going to be focusing on quality just like the good old days. And I think this will be the issue. Like people eventually are understanding that, okay, it's not about creating, I don't know, 50 campaigns by AI in one day, but it's about creating one campaign that you would put about the entire model attack button because it will give brands the autasticity. Now I think brands, especially between brands are shifting away from being autastic.
It's super interesting. I want to have you back in six to 12 months and talk about this and see how that shifts. I mean, wait before that while many of these conversations, but it's fascinating to think about. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, John Burke, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your journey with us. We're super grateful for your time and your insight. And we hope that everyone listening will start pushing boundaries, embracing failure and trusting your intuition.
If you like hearing these journeys, make sure to subscribe and share this episode out to your network. If you want to nominate a marketing hero to come on and chat with us, feel free to get in touch. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see y'all next time.
Bye.