#07: How to dominate a crowded market with brand, customer obsession, and UX — Sujan Patel, CEO of Mailshake

Sujan Patel is one of the biggest names in the growth and content marketing world. For the past 13 years, he has led digital strategy for clients such as Salesforce, Mint, Zillow, LinkedIn, and several Fortune 500 companies. Plus, he's also an entrepreneur himself — founding WebProfits, ContentMarketer.io, Narrow, Quuu, and Mailshake. By working with a variety of clients over the years, Sujan has a variety of growth strategies that can take a company from startup so scaleup. In this episode, we’ll deep dive with him on brand, user experience, and customer obsession. We’ll cover pivoting a company, buying businesses, and his decision to run a SaaS billboard in the middle of Iowa. Plus, during this episode, we host a recurring feature, Which Test Won? 0:01 — Introduction 5:24 — Sujan chimes in on trends in growth; “it’s harder than ever to stand out” 7:00 — Buying remnant billboards 7:55 — How to build a brand to stand out 9:15 — Which Test Won? 17:32 — The story of MailShake’s growth 18:22 — Failing to hit PMF and the rebrand 19:26 — What worked really, really well in the early days 21:15 — Marketing before you have a product 22:10 — Buying and acquiring tools as a growth channel 23:55 — The Salty Six This is an actionable episode — we hope you enjoy! Get ready to #ScaleOrDie... We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. Before you leave, be sure to leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, post a comment, or share with your friends! Tune into more episodes at useproof.com/scaleordie and read more stories at blog.useproof.com. Follow Dave & Proof on Twitter — @DaveRogemoser and @UseProof. We publish episodes every week so be sure to check back often for more interviews with the internet’s best minds in growth!