GTM 87: The Future of Media and Marketing with Anthony Kennada

The GTM Podcast

Prior to founding AudiencePlus, Anthony Kennada served as the CMO of incredible companies like Hopin and Front. He was the founding CMO of Gainsight where he and his team are credited with creating the Customer Success category -- a novel business imperative, profession and software category that helps subscription companies grow sustainably by becoming customer obsessed. By focusing on human first community building, content marketing, live events and creative activations, they developed a new playbook for B2B marketing that built the Gainsight brand and fueled the company’s growth from $0 to $100M+ ARR, and eventual acquisition by Vista Equity at a $1.1B valuation.

Discussed in this Episode:

• Owned media is a crucial component of go-to-market strategies, allowing companies to build direct relationships with their audience.
• Transitioning from a product-first approach to a distribution-first approach can lead to more effective marketing and audience building.
• The future of media lies in guided journeys and providing value to networks through relevant and personalized content.
• Building an audience and collecting subscribers can lead to higher conversion rates and provide valuable first-party data for better attribution.
• It is important to connect brand messaging to the software or product being offered to ensure a cohesive and effective marketing strategy.

Highlights:
(02:58) The Gainsight story: Creating a category and building a brand.
(05:46) The power of owned media in B2B marketing.
(17:51) The evolution of media: from content to software.
(20:41) The challenge of measuring media's impact on revenue.
(27:08) Learning from Gainsight: Successes and missteps.
(38:12) One thing revenue leaders believe to be true that Anthony thinks is bull$***.
(41:00) One thing that is working for Anthony in go-to-market right now.

Guest Speaker Links (Anthony Kennada):
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/akennada/
Host Speaker Links (Scott Barker):
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/
Sponsor:

• Brought to you by Pocus. Pocus turns data into revenue. Combine all product usage and intent signals your team needs to prioritize the best opportunities and take quick action. Pocus helps you build pipeline based on real buying signals, not your team’s best guess (whether it’s landing new logos or expanding existing ones). With Pocus, go-to-market teams at Asana, Canva, Miro, and Loom save

The GTM Podcast
Features conversations with well-known tech executive, VC, and founders - the expert operators in the trenches who have ‘been there, done that’ to build some of the fastest-growing software companies. Every week, a guest joins Scott Barker to dissect their stories, revealing expert insights around what worked, what didn’t, and how things actually went down.
This podcast is produced by GTMnow, the media brand of GTMfund - sharing insight on go-to-market from working with hundreds of portfolio companies backed by over 350 of the best go-to-market executives. GTMfund is an early-stage VC fund focused on investing in the most exciting, up-and-coming B2B SaaS companies across the world. The LP network consists of VP and C-level Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success leaders from companies like DocuSign, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Snowflake, Okta, Zoom, and many more.
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