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About Guest

Steve Keifer is the CMO at Ordway, a fintech company automating subscription billing, payments, revenue recognition, and SaaS financial reporting. He leads growth strategy, demand generation, brand development, and Ordway’s research practice. With 20-plus years across SaaS, cloud, and fintech, Steve led marketing and product teams from early-stage startups to multibillion-dollar enterprises, with expertise in go-to-market strategy, pricing, and recurring revenue. He was also a 2025 CMO of the Year finalist and has been named a CMO to Watch by CMO Alliance.

In this episode…

Creating a new category and disrupting an existing one require very different strategies. One asks buyers to understand something unfamiliar, while the other asks them to leave behind what they already know. So how should companies approach each challenge?

Drawing from years of marketing leadership across startups and multibillion-dollar companies, Steve Keifer sees category creation and disruption as difficult in different ways. Creating a new category requires educating the market, building awareness, and earning credibility before traditional demand generation can work, while disruption means overcoming entrenched habits with a product that is meaningfully better than what buyers already use. Steve recommends investing in thought leadership, early adopters, customer proof, and consultative selling while making sure leadership, sales, product, and customer success are aligned. The real advantage comes from understanding which market challenge you face and building the go-to-market strategy around it.

In this episode of the Revenue Engine Podcast, Alex Gluz sits down with Steve Keifer, CMO at Ordway, to discuss how to create a category and disrupt an existing market. Steve explains how to educate buyers, differentiate from entrenched competitors, and align teams around the go-to-market strategy. He also touches on CFO buying behavior, paid media, customer advocacy, and lessons from sales leaders.

A glimpse of what you will learn

• [01:14] Steve Keifer’s background and path into marketing leadership
• [07:19] How SaaS and fintech companies are evolving their business models
• [10:55] Why category creation and market disruption require different strategies
• [16:37] The growing role of finance leaders in B2B buying decisions
• [23:15] Steve’s approach to building awareness and demand for new categories
• [27:43] How AI and changing search behavior are reshaping paid media
• [33:12] What Steve says about customer advocacy, trust, and sustainable growth
• [38:09] Steve’s career lessons from mentors, sales leaders, and cross-functional experience

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Alex Gluz on LinkedIn
• T.A. Monroe Digital Agency
• Steve Keifer on LinkedIn
• Ordway
• Bobby Patrick on LinkedIn
• OpenAI
• Anthropic
• Perplexity
• Gong
• G2
• Capterra
• Cursor
• Lovable

Quotable Moments

• “Explain why it's different and why it's worth their time and quickly get to that point.”
• “You know, there's another 999 that fail, but new categories have inherent challenges.”
• “If you have happy customers and you have a great product, it spreads via word of mouth.”
• “I think buyers are more aware of that than ever, and they are more trustworthy of their peers.”
• “If you understand how sales works, you're going to be successful in marketing.”

Action Steps

1. Explain why your solution is different and worth the buyer’s time: Clear differentiation helps buyers quickly understand why changing from their current approach is worthwhile.
2. Invest in category education before pushing for conversion: New categories require awareness-building through thought leadership, events, PR, influencers, and analysts before demand can scale.
3. Align leadership and cross-functional teams around the market strategy: Category creation and disruption are much harder when marketing operates without support from sales, product, customer success, executives, and investors.
4. Turn happy customers into active advocates: Strong products and customer experiences create word of mouth, peer recommendations, and trust that traditional marketing cannot easily replicate.
5. Make disruption meaningfully better than the status quo: Breaking into an established category requires a product compelling enough to overcome buyer familiarity, switching costs, and entrenched competitors.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by T.A.Monroe Digital. At T.A.Monroe, we build world class revenue engines for B2B SaaS companies. What that means is we do everything behind the scenes to generate you tons of qualified leads, opportunities and customers.

1. We build highly effective marketing systems and scale their profitably through our demand generation strategies.
2. We think scientifically on how to scale your demand and revenue.
3. We bring decades of experience.

Email us at alex@tamonroe.com or visit www.tamonroe.com today to schedule a strategy session or learn more about our mission.

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