118 - Start Building Your Community Before Trying To Book Demos (Anthony Kennada, Co-Founder and CEO at AudiencePlus)

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Anthony Kennada is a B2C marketer trapped in a B2B body (I can SO relate). I met Anthony through Pavilion where he was teaching a course in CMO School about how and why companies are increasingly becoming media companies.

Anthony is co-founder and CEO at AudiencePlus where the team is building software, content, and community to help every company become a media company. Prior to AudiencePlus, Anthony was CMO of Hopin and Front. He's worked at Box, LiveOffice and Symantec. Anthony was the founding CMO at Gainsight where he and the team created the Customer Success category and fueled the company’s growth from $0 to $100M+ ARR, and eventual acquisition by Vista Equity at a $1.1B valuation.

Here's what we hit on:

Why are companies increasingly becoming "media companies," why it's easier today more than ever and will continue into the future;

Why gating content is no longer necessary or preferred;

Instead of gating content, what can companies do instead (HINT: emails are important so you do need emails, you just need a better way for people to share their email address);

"Community-led marketing" - what's all the fuss, let's define what this means and explain how this works and how can early stage startups leverage this marketing play;

You gotta hook them on social media with video clips (demand creation) then bring them back to your website (demand capture) - but how to best run this play and who's doing this well;

Why engagement with your company's content is an important leading indicator to EVERY business outcome (e.g. sale, renewal, expansion, adoption, etc.) and not just a TOF strategy;

Anthony shares more about building AudiencePlus;

At the very end, Anthony asks me his burning question.

You can find Anthony on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/akennada/

Find out more about AudiencePlus: https://www.audienceplus.com/

This episode is sponsored by UMSO, the website builder for startups. Visit umso.com/MSM to learn more and use the code MSM20 for a 20% discount on your first three months.

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