Ep. 248: Joe Chernov is the VP Marketing @ Pendo, the startup that understands and guides your users allowing you to create products they cannot live without. To date they have raised over $108m in funding from some of the best in SaaS including Meritech, Salesforce, Battery, Spark Capital, and Sapphire just to name a few. Prior to Pendo Joe was Chief Marketing Officer at Robin and before that he was the CMO @ InsightSquared where he led the transition from an email-driven leads model to an account-based marketing model. Before InsightSquared, Joe was Head of Content Marketing at Hubspot where he increased blog traffic by more than 1M visits/month and increased leads by 40%. Finally, pre-Hubspot, Joe held VP of Marketing roles at Kinvey and Eloqua.
In Today’s Episode We Discuss:
* How Joe made his way into the world of startups and SaaS marketing many years ago? Does Joe really believe in the saying that, “no one really knows what they are doing?” Where are the nuances to it?
* Joe has been CMO and then #2 and alternated between the 2 roles many times, so why the continuous alternating? How does switching from CMO to VP of Marketing prepare you better for each subsequent role? Does Joe agree with the saying that the best in marketing are able to “throw the playbook out of the window”?
* What does Joe mean when he says, “the most powerful mentorship is mentorship from below”? What makes the best #2’s just so good? What do they do? What advice would Joe give to a #2 in a role today? What can the individuals do to foster a relationship of deep trust and transparency?
* Having worked at both early and late stage companies, what does Joe believe the early companies can learn from later stage companies? Does installing very severe ops not reduce the creativity of a young company? What does Joe believe that later stage companies can really learn and take from early-stage companies?
* How do the marketing functions differ in both structure and process when comparing early to late stage? What does Joe find to be the biggest challenge within each respective stage? How has Joe seen the content landscape evolve and change radically throughout his career alternating between early and late stage companies?
Ep. 249: Erica Ruliffson-Schultz has led New Relic through massive growth, scaling the company’s enterprise business 10x since she joined the business pre-IPO. Growing a company’s revenues, customer base, team, process, and product doesn’t just happen without major work and strategy. Erica will share the five critical steps (and some lessons learned along the way) for scaling in the enterprise.
SaaStr’s Founder’s Favorites Series features one of SaaStr Annual’s best of the best sessions that you might have missed.
This podcast is an excerpt of Erica’s session at SaaStr Annual 2019.
Missed the session? Here’s what Erica talks about:
- How to change up your marketing mix
- How to transition from SMB to enterprise
- Identifying your sweet spot target customers and leveraging your network to access those companies.
If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:
Jason Lemkin
SaaStr
Joe Chernov
New Relic
Below, we’ve shared the full transcript of Harry’s interview with Joe Chernov.
Harry Stebbings: We are back for another week in the world of SaaStr, with me, Harry Stebbings, and I always love to see you on Instagram where we go behind the scenes on all things here at SaaStr. You can do that @HStebbings1996 with two Bs. But for the show today, and I thought, you know, we don’t cover the world of SaaS marketing quite as much as we should. And when thinking this one through, I thought to myself, “Well, why don’t I have one of my favorites in the space on the show again?” And so I’m thrilled to welcome back to the hot seat Joe Chernov, VP of marketing at Pendo, the startup that understands and guides your users, allowing you to create products they cannot live without. To date, they’ve raised over 108 million dollars in funding from some of the best in SaaS, including Meritech, Salesforce, Battery, Spark, and Sapphire, just to name a few.
Harry Stebbings: Prior to Pendo, Joe was CMO at Robin, and before that he was the CMO at InsightSquared, where he led the transition from an email driven leads model to an account based marketing model. Before InsightSquared, Joe was head of content marketing at Hubspot, where he increased blog traffic, check this out, by more than one million visits per month, and increased leads by 40%. Finally, pre Hubspot, Joe held VP of marketing roles at Kinvey and Eloqua.
Harry Stebbings: But you’ve heard quite enough from me, so now without further ado, I’m so excited to hand it over to Joe Chernov, VP of marketing at Pendo.
Harry Stebbings: Joe, my friend, I’ve wanted to do this one ever since we had our very special round one. So thank you so much for putting up with my dulcet British tones once again.
Joe Chernov: Thanks for having me. You know, I looked at the number of listens, and I was surprised you called me back. I have to do a better job of promoting this one for you.
Harry Stebbings: Not at all, but I do want to start today, and for those that maybe missed the first episode, with a little bit on you. So how did you make your way into the world of SaaS and come to be the rock star of marketing that you are today, and at Pendo today?
Joe Chernov: Well, I think the rock star reputation speaks only to my shaggy beard and tattoos, not necessarily performance. But how I got here is I kind of stumbled my way here. I worked in PR at agencies, and then I worked at a non SaaS company in a communications role, and Eloqua came calling. And I built a content program at Eloqua, and the dirty little secret there was I was trying to figure out SaaS myself. So everything I published was really explaining SaaS to me, and it turned out a lot of other people were out there that were trying to understand it themselves. And so by speaking to an audience of one, I was able to speak to an audience of many. And that started things going in the right direction for me.
Harry Stebbings: Now this is so unfair of me to go off schedule so fast, but I do have to ask, often I speak to kind of much more experienced advisors in venture, and they say, “Harry, don’t worry, no one really knows what they’re doing.” You said there about learning the rope with the first role at Eloqua. Do you buy into that, no one really knows what they’re doing, or do you actually think it’s a bit of a lazy assumption to make someone maybe feel more comfortable?
Joe Chernov: I think it is an overstatement, but directionally correct. We are all trying to figure this out, and once you think you’ve figured it out, everything changes and you have to relearn it again. This is my third tour of duty in a content role, and it’s different this time around. I don’t think you ever stay on top of your game, because this industry changes so quickly.
Harry Stebbings: I’m so glad I asked that question. God, killed it with that one, Joe. I do want to though dive into your role today within the organization, within Pendo. It’s super interesting to see throughout your career, you’ve kind of alternated between CMO at an early stage company, and then number two marketer at a rock star late stage company. So I guess the first question is, why the back and forth between two roles, Joe?
Joe Chernov: I like them both. I like them for different reasons, and I always thought it was strange that I alternated like this, and then I read a Lou Reed biography. And as it turns out, Lou would go from writing a hit record to writing a record that only he liked, to writing a hit record, and back and forth he would go. And the reason he would do it is he liked the celebrity of the hit record, but then he got tired of the celebrity and just wanted to tell everybody to buzz off and do his own thing. And then he would miss the celebrity. And while I’m certainly no Lou Reed, I appreciate his … that sort of intellectual wanderlust. And I feel I have that as well. Like I really like hands on, building, being one of the loudest voices in the executive room at the early stage company, but then I really enjoy being part of something that is compounding growth with a super high performing team, and peers that challenge me. Subordinates, if you will, that challenge me to get better and better every day.
Joe Chernov: And so I like both. I like the stimulation of both.
Harry Stebbings: Kind of on initial kind of inspection, I’d assume that actually staying in one allows you to just excel at that specific stage and role. But I think there’s also a lot of transferable skills between the two stages. I’d love to … how does like the alternation between the two prepare you for each other, so to speak?
Joe Chernov: I think staying in one swim lane is probably the best for folks like you who pattern match, and recruit off of pattern matches. It probably isn’t the best way to accelerate your career, to go back and forth, but I think you can enrich what you bring to each stage company by having worked in the other. Like what I’ve brought to early stage companies, having worked for later stage companies, is this mindset on ops. And recognizing the unbelievable, acute need for an ops center of excellence in an organization, even at an incredibly early stage. Because when you are an operationally minded company, conflict is just less frequent because data is in the group. Conflict is less frequent because ops tends to be, if implemented correctly, a neutral corner. So they can reconcile two opposing opinions.
Joe Chernov: For me, the elixir in an early stage company is getting ops in there as early as possible. In a later stage company, it’s like don’t be so wedded to your frameworks. Don’t be so wedded to process. Like sometimes you’ve got to tear up the rule book and just try a few new things. And I think early stage companies are a little better at that hustle than later stage companies are. And it’s because necessity is the mother of invention, they’re just more comfortable because they need to do things that aren’t so pattern. And so I think that’s sort of what I bring to both.
Harry Stebbings: Can I ask, is that not almost a contradiction there in the way that early stage companies have that hustle, creativity, and unique hustle that we said there, compared to maybe the more data driven, ops centric, later stage companies? Is it not potentially dangerous for early stage companies to implement ops too early, where they could lose some of those sort of creative geniuses?
Joe Chernov: I don’t think that one nullifies the other. I think if you have ops in place, your organization has a better chance of knowing what’s working, and knowing what isn’t. And knowing what’s working allows you to reduce the size of your universe and be creative in that smaller universe, rather than to be overwhelmed by the expanse of everything. And so I think more creativity can happen if you narrow your focus a bit, and ops helps you narrow your focus a bit. So I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive.
Harry Stebbings: It’s really interesting, when you say about ops and knowing what works and what doesn’t, and like how you allocate time and attention accordingly, I had a CMO on the show the other day that said, actually being a CMO is really like being a VC. You have a portfolio of companies, or channels, so to speak, you spread your bets across them, and then you double down on those that work. Would you say that’s actually quite a good analogy, and how do you think about that as an analogy?
Joe Chernov: I’m thinking about it, and I really do like it. I do. I think it’s a keen insight. I think the difference is when there’s … and this actually may extend it. So now take it to a channel that’s performing really well, and that could be like a investment that’s performing really well. Once a channel is performing really well, everybody else jumps on it, and all of the sudden your performance degrades because everybody else has driven up the price on it. Or everybody has stuffed so much noise into it that you’re signal is getting harder and harder to hear. I think the analogy carrying it through to the venture world would be at that point, maybe harder for early stage investors to do follow ons, because the price has just skyrocketed so much that pro rata may prove elusive.
Joe Chernov: So I actually think that the analogy holds.
Harry Stebbings: I absolutely love that in terms of pro rata and how it scales over time with everyone piling in. Totally, if we’re looking at Facebook. But I do want to ask though, Joe, because with the kind of alternating between roles, we chatted before and you said about mentorship from below. Now, I want to leave the ball in your court here, what did you mean by mentorship from below?
Joe Chernov: I think that as I sit here today, the most important mentor in my career has worked for me two times. This woman, Jackie Shydlowski. And it’s because I’m in a number two role now. And everything I do in supporting my CMO is inspired by the way Jackie up managed for me, and the way Jackie was able to be my right hand for so long. And I’ve grown … like I very much appreciated her at the time, I’ve hired her once and worked with her twice. But I appreciate her even more right now, because I see how hard her job was in being a translation for what it was I was asking for, and for her to be able to jump in and figure something out because I didn’t have the capacity to figure it out at the time.
Harry Stebbings: Can I ask, when you think about advising someone else who’s maybe in this number two role, what do you think that she did so well to enable you to be the best that you could be, that you would advise someone else in this number two role?
Joe Chernov: I think it was two things. It’s that she understood the question beneath the question. And so if I wasn’t articulating what my needs were, or what the company’s needs were, properly, she was able to … we worked together long enough, that she was able to intuit what it was I really wanted to know, but was struggling to express.
Joe Chernov: The second is, she just took care of what she said she was going to take care of. I could take it to the bank. If I said, “Jackie, we need to figure out this whole customer advocacy thing, and look into vendors, figure out how Influitive works, and make it happen for the company, and I’ll give you three months to do it,” and she would say, “I’ve got it.” And even though she didn’t, even though she knew she had to figure it out, she presented herself with so much confidence that I knew she was just going to go and figure it out. And I could take that off of my plate entirely, because I knew it was in capable hands.
Joe Chernov: And it wasn’t in capable hands because she had some magic advocacy skills, it was in capable hands because she would challenge herself to figure it out and not burden anybody else with figuring it out, she put it on her own shoulders.
Harry Stebbings: I mean, it sounds like an incredible relationship, but when you come into a company maybe afresh, or as a number two, and you maybe don’t have that inherent trust and respect maybe built in just because you don’t have that long standing relationship, how do you think one can foster that relationship of real trust and accountability with that either superior or a number two?
Joe Chernov: One certainty at a time. And that’s how it worked with Jackie. I didn’t enter the relationship thinking that she was my locked down partner. It’s that every time I asked her to do something, there was no waffling, she said, “I’ve got it,” and she went, did it, reported back when it was done. And each time she did that, it cemented my confidence.
Harry Stebbings: Yeah, no, I absolutely love that in terms of one at a time and just cementing the confidence. But I do want to ask one final element on the role of leader and number two, and it’s the element of playbooks. I’ve had the likes of Maria Pergolino on the show before, who said the best marketers are able to throw their playbooks out of the window. Now, I want to hear how you think about a marketing playbook, and whether everyone reads the same playbook, whether it’s very different, and what the result is of the consumption of this playbook.
Joe Chernov: Marketing programs look the same across SaaS. And it’s because we’ve all read the same playbooks, we’ve all been to the same speeches. And frankly, a lot of marketing obviously, by definition, takes place in public, so we’re able to all sort of observe the same marketing programs. And as a result, there’s this sameness. And I love Maria, she’s a dear friend, but I don’t think it’s so easy to go throw a playbook out the window, and I’ve seen her marketing, there’s a lot of imaginative stuff in there, but there’s a lot of conventional playbook stuff. Playbook stuff that she herself has written.
Joe Chernov: And so I don’t think you can throw it away entirely. What you have to figure out is what you can do differently at the margins. And to me, the margins where people can exhibit the most differentiation are the elements of marketing that’s just harder to observe, and that’s enablement, that’s customer marketing. The one to few or even one to one marketing that’s just harder to see in public, because by definition it’s one to one or one to few and you’re not part of that group as an observing marketer. I think that’s where the greatest differentiation can happen right now.
Harry Stebbings: So I do kind of like that perspective. In terms of the one to one, I do have to ask, I constantly get asked about ABM. How do you think about ABM? Is it total BS, is it the next buzzword that we all love to jump on? Or is there real value behind this actual just changed word for personalized marketing?
Joe Chernov: Show me someone that’s doing just ABM and I’ll show you somebody without enough leads. And so the challenge with ABM is that it has to be the right type of organization selling to the right type of buyer, with the right ASP. If all of those line up, you’ve got the right sales motion, you’ve got the up market or highly verticalized buyer, and your ASP is high enough to support a very low lead volume with the promise of a high yield, ABM could work wonders for your organization. But if you’re a company that has a lower ASP, you’re selling 30K deals, you don’t really differentiate between SMB and mid market, and maybe there’s some peppered enterprise deals in there, I think that what happens is you choke off your lead volume so much that you end up paying for it, because the conversion rate is never going to climb to the level you need it to.
Joe Chernov: So I think it comes down to the match, it comes down to the vendor/market/ASP match.
Harry Stebbings: Yeah. No, I love that, I think you should coin it and do a book on it. That would be perfect. I do want to move out of sort of the role discussion, so to speak, and more to actually kind of the company stage discussion in terms of when we look at the early versus the late stage, if we dive straight in, what do you think the earlier stage companies can maybe learn from the later stage companies that isn’t so obvious and is maybe part of why they scaled so successfully?
Joe Chernov: It’s not all marketing. I would like to think it is, but some of the later stage companies that have been successful have product market fit, and they recognize that product market fit is a fluid thing, and so they don’t just settle on their one product and that’s the only product they expect to carry them into the future. They plant future bets really well. And so for an early stage company, if it’s an early stage company pre product market fit, I think that what they can learn from later stage companies is the value of operational discipline. If it’s post product market fit, but still early stage, what they can learn from later stage companies is you’ve got to start planting seeds that will blossom in the future, because product market fit is a variable thing. I think SaaS experts present product market fit as something that is less dynamic than it really is.
Joe Chernov: I think those are two things that early stage companies, on either side of the product market fit line, can learn from later stage companies. And something that Pendo is doing really well in terms of planting seeds for our future growth, because they know that the business is going to need to evolve, despite the fact that we’re growing at a very healthy clip right now.
Joe Chernov: Later stage companies, look, I think one thing they can learn from early stage companies isn’t just that hustle, but also like the preciousness of every hire. A new hire in an early stage company has the potential to change the entire organization, and so early stage companies can be really disciplined, really cautious about making these hires. Because they’re essentially bringing somebody into the family. The later you go, the more your model takes precedence over the individual. Right, you can plug new people into your machine, and it is the primacy of the machine that matters most. And so you can fall into a temptation of saying, “I just need more bodies to keep this machine turning,” and find yourself lowering the standards of who you hire. Whereas in an early stage company, each hire is incredibly precious.
Joe Chernov: And so I think something that later stage companies can learn from early stage companies is preserving that preciousness of each hire. Again, Todd at Pendo, Todd Olson, founder, CEO, he interviews pretty much everyone that comes through the door of this company. Why? Because he tries to preserve the preciousness of each hire, and it’s something I admire him for.
Harry Stebbings: I do want to unpack a few things that are just too interesting not me to unpack there, Joe. The first was you said about planting seeds, and I totally agree with you in terms of that preservation of product market fit with the planting kind of future seeds, so to speak. But, I’ve sat in many board rooms and I’ve heard the word focus, focus, focus, and my question is, when is the right time to start planting seeds? And does that not go against the conventional wisdom of product focus?
Joe Chernov: I think the key here is to recognize when you have instrumented a machine that generates predictable outcomes in terms of go to market. So when you’re able to look a quarter, two quarters, a year out and be able to reliably model how product adoption is going to look, how sales is going to look, how onboarding is going to look, how renewals are going to look, and you may not have it down to an exact science, but directionally you’re pretty confident, well, that’s a time to start to thinking about the next seed you’re going to plant.
Joe Chernov: I wouldn’t plant the next seed when you’re in hustle mode. I wouldn’t plant the next seed when you’re in that classic do things that don’t scale mode. Because you’re really trying then to nail, not just product market fit, but the predictable growth that follows product market fit. But once you’re able to have that piece in place, and be able to have some level of confidence that where your business will be a year from now is something that you know you can hit because you’ve instrumented your organization accordingly, well, now you have permission to start planting future seeds.
Harry Stebbings: Can I ask also, if we can drill down specifically into the marketing function, how does the marketing function fundamentally change from early to late stage, be it process, be it framework, be it in titles, speed of execution, how do they differ from early to late in marketing function?
Joe Chernov: It’s that it’s process driven. And there are frameworks to adhere to. It’s all of those corporate sounding words begin to creep into the mix. You tend to have a bifurcation of function. There’s specialty functions, you have your revenue marketing and brand marketing, or you have revenue marketing, product marketing, and brand marketing. And so now there are enclaves within the marketing organization. And so that is how it starts to change. It starts to change from one team to companion teams. And each of those companion teams have their own rules of the road. And so it just gets a little more specialized.
Harry Stebbings: Can I ask, what do you think about revenue marketing versus brand marketing? Revenue marketing, obviously very easy to measure ROI, measure accountability in that role and function. With brand marketing, with brand being quite loose, really, how does one measure success and measure ROI with brand marketing?
Joe Chernov: I know this isn’t something we talked about ahead of time, but I’m really glad you asked it. You do it by not trying to apply the KPIs that you apply to revenue marketing to brand marketing, that’s step one. Step two is you may consider putting them in different departments. I was talking to a company about six months ago and they’re 12 months from an IPO. And what they’re doing, I think is fascinating, where they have brand marketing reports to the CEO, I believe. And revenue marketing reports to the CRO. And they have different KPIs for both.
Joe Chernov: The brand marketing, to answer your question, their KPIs are things that companies used to be criticized for measuring because they were considered vanity metrics. They’re only vanity metrics if they exist at the exclusion of the revenue metrics. But the revenue metrics are handled by the CRO group. So in this organization, they’re not vanity metrics, they’re brand metrics, they’re metrics like traffic, they’re metrics like attendance at their user conference. They’re metrics like social media mentions and share of voice. And if those are your only metrics in a marketing department, then yes, they are vanity. But if they exist alongside funnel metrics, then they’re not vanity metrics, they’re metrics to provide an incentive for the brand team to increase the footprints and preference for their organization.
Harry Stebbings: I absolutely love that segregation. I happen to have a similar structure to that IPO company, or soon to be IPO company. I love how they segregated that. Can I ask, when you compare early to late stage, what was the biggest challenge within each subsequent stage for you, when you sat in that seat, what was the, “Shit, this is really hard,” in early and late?
Joe Chernov: I think early is harder. And early is harder … I’ve worked in really data driven companies, right, I’ve worked at Eloqua, I’ve worked at Hubspot, I’m now at Pendo, and I see the value in having operational efficiency. And in an earlier stage company where it’s missing, I get antsy. And I want things to mature faster than that organization is capable of maturing. And so for me that’s the big difficulty, the big difficulty is the rate of maturity that I expect out paces the rate of maturity that is realistic. And I’m not saying growth. Companies can grow quickly, but maturity takes time. And for me, that’s been what’s most difficult.
Harry Stebbings: What’s the most difficult at late stage?
Joe Chernov: Late stage, it’s like eventually there’s one too many frameworks. Right, eventually I feel like process is superior to output, process trumps quality, process trumps inspiration. And it’s acknowledging … and these are reciprocal challenges, as you pointed out earlier. It’s acknowledging the need for process, but preventing process from becoming dominant. And that’s been the challenge I’ve had at later stage companies. I’m not inherently a process person, except when it’s absent.
Harry Stebbings: No, I totally agree with you in terms of the absence of process. I do want to … speaking of kind of the absence of process and kind of how process changes with the scale of companies, I do want to remain on the theme of changing, because I want to talk about a passion really for both of us, being content. And the content landscapes evolve I think probably faster than any of us expect it. And it’s your third tour of duty in a content, as you said earlier. So how’s the specialty change each time, Joe?
Joe Chernov: I can speak from just what I’ve observed, and what I’ve done. When I was at Eloqua in like 2010, the best content won because there just wasn’t that much noise out there. So you could produce better content than anyone else and have no distribution strategy, and still come out on top. When I was at Hubspot about three years later, we cared very deeply about what content we were creating, why we were creating it, and what the distribution looked like for each piece, it was very scientific. And so the skill, if you will, shifted from the better creator to the better distributor. And it became much more important to think about what you were going to do with that content versus what you were creating.
Joe Chernov: What I’m seeing now, and it speaks to a conversation we kind of glanced on earlier, is content has … there’s this sort of magnetic pull that is being drawn higher and higher in the funnel. And so content has become synonymous with lead acquisition, if not brand itself. And so content lives at the lip of the funnel. And beneath that lip of the funnel, it’s a bit chaotic. And so I’m trying to, and what I said to Jake and Todd when I joined, is that I don’t want to live at the top of the funnel anymore. I think the benefit of having a more experienced content function is for somebody to apply downward pressure on content to push it all the way through the funnel, out the other side to customer content. And so if there’s something I can accomplish at Pendo, it is this sort of third tour of duty looking at content as something that is valuable throughout the funnel, and into the customer pool, versus just being a lead acquisition technique. And that appears to be where it lives right now in most companies.
Harry Stebbings: Can I ask, when you say about pushing content down the funnel, what does that really mean in practice, and does that mean actually almost a conversion to customer success?
Joe Chernov: It’s absolutely part of customer success. It’s also part of the BDR function. It’s almost part of the AE function. It’s what is the one to few content that gets sent out to prospects? Now how does that content … or is sent out to opportunities. I believe my team, in partnership with product marketing, should be focused there. I believe my team, in partnership with revenue marketing, should be focused at the top of the funnel, and I believe my team, in partnership with customer marketing, should be focused on the renewal, and retention, and advocacy loop in customer marketing. I believe all of these functions are content team plus specialist.
Harry Stebbings: Can I ask, does the actual structure of the team fundamentally change with that pushing down the funnel of content?
Joe Chernov: We’ll see. I’m trying to figure it out as we go. Right now I look at it as my team plus specialty team. So at the top it’s my team plus rev. Middle, my team plus product. Bottom, my team plus customer. And right now none of those functions live on my team, but I have some really clever, and smart, and capable people that are putting a very high priority on alignment.
Harry Stebbings: I think that’s called paving the way, Joe. I fully expect a brilliant playbook to be written on this. But I do want to move into my favorite element, which is Joe’s 60 Second SaaStr. So I say a short statement, Joe, and as you know, you give me your immediate thoughts. Are you ready?
Joe Chernov: I am ready.
Harry Stebbings: What do you know now about the process that you wish you’d known at the beginning of your time in marketing?
Joe Chernov: That alignment and relationships matter more than anything else. You won’t get anything done if you can’t partner cross functionally, or cross specialty within marketing.
Harry Stebbings: Enablement, total BS or actually a meaningful game changer?
Joe Chernov: I think it is about to be a meaningful game changer.
Harry Stebbings: If you could change one thing about the world of SaaS today, what would it be?
Joe Chernov: We should draw inspiration from outside of SaaS. We just keep putting the same DNA in our gene pool when it comes to where new ideas come from. And as a result, we have this epidemic of sameness. We should look outside of SaaS for inspiration.
Harry Stebbings: Who in SaaS marketing today do you think is like absolutely killing it, and why?
Joe Chernov: I think Ryan Bonnici at G2, he just led the rebrand from G2 Crowd, I think he’s doing an incredible job. What they do with their G2 content is incredibly powerful. What they do with lists is incredibly powerful. What they’re trying to do now, building a community of outside content contributors is incredibly clever. And at the end, he’s both a revenue marketer and a brand marketer. I think Ryan has really come into his own as one of the top CMOs in SaaS.
Harry Stebbings: I couldn’t agree with you more. I absolutely love what he’s doing in G2. Joe, as I said before, I knew this was going to be such a special one. I’m sorry for going off schedule so early and consistently. But this has been so much fun, so thank you so much for joining me again.
Joe Chernov: You’re always fun to talk to, thanks for having me.
Harry Stebbings: I have to say, I do just always love my chats with Joe, and if you’d like to see more from us behind the scenes, you can on Instagram at @HStebbings1996 with two Bs. It would be great to see you there.
Harry Stebbings: But as always, I so appreciate all your fantastic support, it really does mean so much to me, and I can’t wait to bring you a fantastic episode next week.
