#265 Non-SaaS Marketing | In this episode, Matt sits down with Sandra Rand, a fractional head of marketing who works with early-stage, non-SaaS B2B companies. She’s led marketing for PE-backed, self-funded, and services-based businesses, where big budgets and SaaS-style playbooks aren’t the norm. She’s also building the Non-SaaS Marketers subgroup inside Exit Five to support others facing the same challenges.

Matt and Sandra cover:

How non-SaaS teams drive growth without demos, PLG, or huge lead volume
Why events, word of mouth, and referrals often outperform funnels in these orgs
Tactical ideas for gifting, partnerships, and pipeline-building on a lean budget

Whether you work in SaaS or not, you’ll walk away with creative, scrappy strategies to build trust and drive results in B2B.

Timestamps

(00:00) - – Intro
(03:14) - – Why Exit Five launched the Non-SaaS group
(08:34) - – What makes non-SaaS marketing different
(11:54) - – Budgets, sales cycles, and team structure
(16:44) - – Why brand and trust matter more
(18:54) - – Events > funnels in non-SaaS
(27:58) - – How to build brand on a budget
(33:28) - – Word-of-mouth and referral tactics
(38:08) - – Gifting and relationship-driven growth
(44:08) - – Scrappy, creative plays that actually work
(49:38) - – What’s next for the Non-SaaS community

Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Learn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/

***

Brought to you by:

Optimizely - A no-code AI platform where autonomous agents execute marketing work across webpages, email, SEO, and campaigns. Get a free, personalized 45-minute AI workshop to help you identify the best AI use cases for your marketing team and map out where agents can save you time at optimizely.com/exitfive.

AirOps - The content engineering platform that helps marketers create and maintain high-quality, on-brand content that wins AI search. Go to airops.com/exitfive to start creating content that reflects your expertise, stays true to your brand, and is engineered for performance across human and AI discovery.

Visit exitfive.com/retreat to apply for Exit Five’s first-ever, in-person Marketing Leadership Retreat, March 18–20, 2026 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Join 100 CMOs and VPs of Marketing from companies like like Zoom, Snowflake, Manychat, Bitly, G2, HP, and more for two days of thinking bigger around a trusted group of peers in marketing.

***

Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.

They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.
Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.
Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Google Battles Nvidia with TPUs and OpenAI With Pretraining, Automating Wall Street | Nov 25, 2025

The Information's TITV

Will 2026 be a big year for tech IPOs?

The AI-powered Podcast Player