Ticketing software provider RocketRez hires Authentic to sharpen its go-to-market focus and strengthen the marketing team’s confidence and strategic impact.
“Our fractional CMO came in and immediately started to look at areas of focus for maturity. We started to focus on how we put our best foot forward with marketing and really understand what the outputs were for the investments we were putting in.”
John Pendergrast, CEO, RocketRez
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RocketRez at a glance
Company size: 70 employees
Business type: Ticketing and operations software
Category: B2B
Headquarters: Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada
Key initiatives: Marketing fundamentals, go-to-market strategy, brand messaging, employee development, account-based marketing (ABM), metrics & reporting
The Challenge
RocketRez, a ticketing and operations software provider, was committing random acts of marketing. While there was an abundance of marketing activities, they were not tied to clear objectives and the infrastructure was not set up to measure what was working. The marketing team also operated in a silo rather than in strategic alignment with the other go-to-market departments, including sales, customer success, and finance.
“We were going 100 miles an hour in multiple directions at the same time with very little focus on: What is our primary focus? What are we trying to achieve? And how to get RocketRez out into the general consciousness of the industry. But there wasn’t a really strong vision on how to do that, and there wasn’t a strong plan behind it,” said John Pendergrast, CEO of RocketRez.
The executive team recognized the company had a marketing leadership gap and needed “a little bit more horsepower inside the marketing department.” An investor recommended that RocketRez look into Authentic, a fractional CMO provider that matches growing businesses with executive-level marketing talent on a part-time, flexible basis.
The Solution
With the confidence of a strong referral and an appreciation for Authentic’s process for evaluating and strengthening an organization’s marketing maturity, RocketRez hired Authentic.
RocketRez’s Authentic Fractional CMO™ quickly embedded into the team. During his time leading marketing at RocketRez, the CMO:
- Established rapport with the marketing team, taking on the role of a mentor and coach to boost the team’s confidence and help each employee understand the importance of their role.
- Worked with the CEO to position him as the thought leader in RocketRez’s category.
- Helped the company narrow in on a refined go-to-market strategy that positioned RocketRez as a category visionary and leveraged customer success stories.
- Developed and trained the company on how to implement an “account-based everything” strategy based on ABM principles.
- Established a meeting cadence between marketing, sales, customer success, and RevOps to create cross-functional alignment.
- Created a Voice of Customer focus that is leveraged by the entire company.
- Created a metrics and reporting dashboard to help the company better understand the impact of its investments.
- Hired an Authentic Ally Network™ provider to help the company build a revenue operations program.
- Supported the executive team in the search, hiring, and onboarding of a full-time VP of marketing.
“One of our Authentic Fractional CMO’s superpowers is his ability to be a positive influence. He took the team under his wing, helped them understand where their expertise lay, divvied them out into those different areas of expertise, and helped them feel they were making a difference.” —John Pendergrast, CEO, RocketRez
The Results
With strategic marketing direction and mentorship from its Authentic Fractional CMO, RocketRez:
- Increased average deal size by ~50%.
- Inspired its marketing team with a focused sense of direction and purpose.
- Created dependable cross-functional alignment between marketing, sales, customer success, and finance — ensuring all teams are working toward shared objectives.
- Developed marketing content focused on business outcomes that resonate with executive buyers.
- Showed executive buyers what a vision could look like for them and how to get there.
“I’ve very much appreciated having our fractional CMO on staff. He has a wealth of experience that we were able to tap into, and I very much enjoyed my time with him. I recommend him to any company of our scale and size.” — John Pendergrast, CEO, RocketRez
