In our latest installment of SaaS Marketing Perspectives, we spoke with Casey Vermette, director of sales and marketing at Wisetail. Casey talks about community-oriented marketing and measurement, the opportunity in differentiating a SaaS solution in a crowded space and his dreams of becoming a Formula 1 racer.
KIM: Explain Wisetail in a few sentences.
CASEY: Wisetail is a B2B employee development platform. With a focus on social learning and collaboration, Wisetail engages your workforce with user experiences similar to modern social environments.
KIM: How does Wisetail currently market itself?
CASEY: We take your modern approach to omnichannel strategy but also double down on our referral network. Current Wisetail clients create the most demand, so we focus a lot of resources on getting our most recognizable brands into webinars, case studies and testimonials. Our core markets are very community-oriented and don’t usually pivot from an existing tool without a recommendation from someone in their network. Building on and sustaining our client relationships are two tactics heavily ingrained into our overall marketing strategy.
KIM: You’ve worked as a BDR, a sales engineer and now in revenue leadership – how do you see marketing and sales best working together in a SaaS company?
CASEY: To be completely honest, I am not sure anyone has completely figured out that relationship, including myself. Sales and marketing are two areas that are in constant flux, especially in SaaS. Your buyer intent and channel performance can change almost overnight and, as such, the teams need to be resilient. I would say that marketing and sales are working best together when the goal is clear, communication is constant, and department leadership is attached at the hip on strategy…If any of those links break or start to disconnect, you’re not going to be in a good spot.
KIM: How important is brand building in revenue generation?
CASEY: Brand is everything! It sounds like a simple concept but your entire operation is driven and sustained off of your brand value. At Wisetail, we’ve gone through two acquisitions in the last three years and with each, our brand has remained because of the impact it has or could have, on our revenue. Our clients, current and future, connect with the voice of our brand, and as such the product almost becomes secondary in revenue generation.
KIM: How is your success measured at Wisetail?
CASEY: We love our community and measure top-level success around the growth of that community. This measurement comes in many forms, new business, NPS, retention, churn…..but in the end we want our customer community to thrive and our customer lifetime value to be infinite.
KIM: Online learning software is a crowded space. How does Wisetail position itself to stand out?
CASEY: Although we compete in the space we’re answering entirely different questions than most of our competitors. A crowded market can often make a great hunting ground, and that’s something I’ve really enjoyed about online learning–it’s easy to stand out from the crowd. Wisetail positions itself as a tool that grows with your operation and enables long-term sustainability, with company culture front and center. We truly believe that your employees and the culture they create can be a competitive advantage and our tool brings efficiency to that mission.
KIM: How does PR fit into revenue generation?
CASEY: Although our PR channel is still very much in development, it is something we leverage for early demand generation. If we have an upcoming event, release a major feature, or onboard a well-known client we evaluate the ways that public awareness can influence revenue. As with anything, there are infinite actions credited as “PR” but we look at tactile and measurable ways to integrate that into our strategy.
KIM: If you could market any other business, what would it be?
CASEY: Hmmm, taking a trip down memory lane here I wanted to be a Formula 1 driver when I was a kid (really until I was like 20). Exploring the world of marketing in motorsport would be a trip.
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