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.

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.