This presentation from Anthony Kennada, vice president of marketing at the customer success startup Gainsight, was originally given at Battery’s recent Growth Marketing Summit. During his talk, Anthony shared how he and the Gainsight team set out to shape the nascent customer success industry, while simultaneously elevating Gainsight to be the leading company in the category. Click through to review his playbook for creating a new industry category, including the power of content marketing and events as well as the importance of analyst relations.
2. Gainsight Overview
We help B2B enterprises drive adoption,
expansion and renewals at scale through
Customer Success
• Founded in 2011; Series A in 2013
• $104M Raised
• 400 Employees
• 6 of the top 10 software companies
• 50% of publically traded cloud companies
• 20+ industry verticals
2016
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3. Agenda
1. How Category Marketing Found Us
2. Building the Online Presence
3. Facilitate Community Through Events
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9. "You need to find a demographic and a
customer that no other software company is
paying attention to in a modern way, and help
them realize their ultimate ambition. Your
software comes way down the road -- your job
is to make them be heroes.
Make them feel like they are transforming their
business in the role that they have,
internalizing that there is a company out there
that cares about me, cares about my role.”
10. Facilitate the exchange of industry best practices.
Create networking opportunities.
Celebrate being pioneers.
Create community.
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14. Focus on Early Stage Content
• The Kleenex Model
• Drive Inbound Leads
• Become an Authoring Platform for the
Community
SEO
eBooks
Webinars
Blogs
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22. Pulse Conference
Annual Destination Conference for Customer Success Industry
• Positioned as Industry Conference vs. User Conference
• Focus on Customer Success Best Practices and Networking
• Heavy Investment on Attendee Experience
2016 Results
• 55.1 NPS (Increase of More Than 10 Points from 2015)
• 41% of New Business Revenue in 2015 Influenced by Pulse
Prospects
63%
Customers
37%
C-Suite
7%
VP
13%
Director
20%
Manager
35%
Other
25% 40%
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24. Pulse Conference is growing 63% faster than
Dreamforce
in first three years.
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25. Urgent Messaging
Top performing emails
communicated urgency
around end of promotional
pricing bands.
Offsite Packages
VIP experiences for top tier
prospects and customers,
include dedicated onsite
conference room.
Teams Promotions
17% of attending companies
brought five or more
members of their team to
Pulse 2016
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How We Drove 3200+ Attendees
I mentioned being a first time marketer, a degree of "first principles" thinking would come into play as I stepped into the role as the first marketing hire. Here's why. This is what the website looked like.
What fed our conviction was this job title that existed – credit goes to Salesforce
They met online for P2P best practice exchange; in person once a quarter to network and grow.
But they were marginalized.
Super important that when someone searches for resources around a category, the first several ranking items in that search are owned by you. Very difficult to scale this as the category becomes more mainstream, but there are specific plays you can run to stay competitive.
The results are proven –selling value to potential customers before they’re ready to buy will ultimately lead to a sales discussion when they’re ready.
We are programmed as consumers to favor products or services delivered by companies perceived to be market leaders.
In many cases, your target customer may never have bought technology to address their pain before. You have to teach them how to buy.
- Challenge we faced was educating market about CS first -- teaching while selling
- Prospects had conviction but no budget to spend six figures on technology
- Won hearts, needed to win minds
- Teach our prospects how to buy Gainsight
- Created later stage content, promoted earlier to create process
Sample RFP
Platform Buyers Guide
- Invested in an ROI model
- ROI for both the category and then your product
- Mobilized early customers as loud and passionate advocates
- Today, ROI Workshop core part of sales process
What happens when everyone starts writing content – your executives, competitors, or even your customers?
Suddenly, your channels are inundated with volumes of information. Noise.
Explore creative ways to make content more engaging, while delivering intrinsic value beyond what any blog post could provide.
Gainsight Mission - help customers lead their world in CS
Not just for customers
Created a number of programs for helping the community become great
Why? Execute on brand promise, opt-into thought leadership, drive pipe, grow TAM
CSU
PulseLocal
The community met online and in local offices on a quarterly basis.
Why host our own?
- If we built it, would they come?
- We would play the role of facilitator, not content leaders. Build the stage.
- Could we close some business as a result?
Quick fly by of all programs, live and digital.
Live
- Pulse USA
- Pulse Europe
- Pulse Local
Digital
- Pulse Check
- CSU
Never too early to host your own conference.
Registration data became an early indicator for our category growth – shown at board meetings.