Anthony Kennada, former CMO of Gainsight and CEO of AudiencePlus, discusses why B2B SaaS companies must build owned media channels rather than relying on rented platforms like Google or LinkedIn.
Opinion
Companies should allocate incremental 2023 budgets to sales reps over marketing
“This year is all about growth, and if you can, if you have sales, you know, the sort of, like, dollar in, dollar out type of at least aspiration for a sales team of saying, okay, if I hire one more rep, get them productive, we can then kind of achieve the grow…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Customer success was not an accepted profession when Gainsight launched
“Customer success managers didn't have a platform of choice, they didn't have, they weren't empowered to actually make a lot of purchasing decisions at the time, and just that name, customer success, there was like,
Handful of them at Salesforce, But it wasn't…”
Insight
Early Gainsight succeeded on 'persona-market fit' rather than product-market fit
“It was certainly good for Gainsight, given that that company did not have
did not have product market fit. If we're being honest, they had kind of like persona market fit, if that makes sense. There was like a persona that was, that owned the churn number an…”
Insight
Thought leadership without product marketing effectively makes you a media company
“If that doesn't translate to the product value, then it's all for, then you are a media company, frankly. Like, you're not a software business at the end of the day, so I think it's important to kind of have product marketing then convert all of that.”
Disclosure
AudiencePlus spent $0 on paid marketing and $50k total pre-product
“We've been in market for about six months, not with a product, but just kind of building our audience, and we've spent zero dollars on paid, we've spent probably, outside of the salary of one marketer, you know, 50,000 dollars total, like something along those…”