Last year, Sujan Patel met with 368 people to talk SaaS marketing. Why did he spend all this time and effort on in person meetings? It all comes down to building personal relationships.

Sujan is the co-founder of the bootstrapped startup ContentMarketer.io, which offers tools that help you scale and automate your social media and content marketing efforts. He has over 12 years of Internet marketing experience, including as former VP of Marketing at When I Work and founder of a digital marketing agency where he helped clients like Salesforce, Mint, TurboTax, and LinkedIn.

Sujan decided to invest in building personal relationships with his target market, and then turning those relationships into business growth.

“The industry around content marketing is something I know very well,” he explained. “I am a marketer, I know the audience, I know the pain points, and although it’s not the best industry for SaaS because it’s so crowded, I have a leg up because that’s what I’ve been living and breathing for the last 10 years.”

In the latest episode of Ramp, Sujan explains why SaaS marketers have to work so hard to stand out in a crowded market, and why word of mouth is sometimes your most valuable asset.