Vendasta: Uncensored! A complete guide and honest review from their ex-head of marketing

Vendasta is NOT for anyone who sucks at digital marketing.

You might think that is self-explanatory. It is not. Believe me.

Given the nature of Vendasta’s positioning, they attract a lot of people with no marketing or sales experience whatsoever. People see one ad for Vendasta and think, Wow, I can slap a logo on this platform and outsource all the work? I’ll be retired in no time!

If you are one of those people who’s in it purely for the money, stop.

Stop, stop, stop.

Small businesses don’t need snake oil salesmen trying to make a buck off their hard work.

SMBs need serious help, especially these days. You have a responsibility to deliver results.

Successful channel partners realize that Vendasta is like a drill—it’s better than a screwdriver, but you still need a capable carpenter to do the work. Good partners hone their craft, know how to sell, and deliver results that keep their clients satisfied.

Conquer Local is one of the best conferences in the space, hands down. Attend if you can. You’ll be wined, dined, and pitched, and by the end you’ll be drinking so much Vendasta Kool-Aid you’ll bleed green like the rest of them.

Conquer Local Academy [GOOD]

Conquer Local Academy is where you can take marketing courses, learn the Vendasta platform, and get certified by local experts. It’s similar to the likes of Digital Marketer. There aren’t that many courses yet, but the lessons have high completion rates and people like them.

Conquer Local Community [NEEDS WORK]

Conquer Local Community is a forum where partners can interact. Unfortunately, like any new community, it suffers from low engagement. Most of the posts are from Vendasta employees who are encouraged to seed it with their own questions. It’ll be a while before it’s a vibrant, flourishing community.

Conquer Local Podcast [GOOD]

Conquer Local Podcast is CCO & EVP of Sales George Leith’s passion project focused on helping salespeople hone their craft. George is the host of the show and its dedicated creator. I give him tons of credit for putting in the work, even when other executives got pissy because they thought it was becoming too much of the “George Leith Show”. Screw them. The production quality, consistency, and guests are great. Keep it up, GL. You deserve the glory.

Conquer Local Think Tank [STELLAR]

Conquer Local Think Tank is a weekly training session for agencies of all types and sizes. Led by Dennis Yu, a well-known digital marketer, it’s one-third webinar, one-third bootcamp, and one-third accountability pod. It’s hard to explain how insanely helpful Dennis is. His sessions are unlike anything I’ve witnessed on Zoom. He has had agency owners literally in tears after helping them—and all of this training is free. Do yourself a favor and sign up here.

Here is my full, uncensored Vendasta review.

[Removes gloves]

There is no such thing as a perfect platform. These are the pros and cons as I see them.

Vendasta pros:

✅ Overall Value. The dimes you’d save from going direct instead of using Vendasta’s Marketplace are less than the dollars you’ll spend on CRMs and other marketing tools that Vendasta throws in for free. Plus, Vendasta negotiates favored pricing for its partners, and in cases like G Suite, it’s actually cheaper to use Vendasta.

✅ Focus on local. Everything Vendasta builds is dedicated to helping local businesses. It’s in the DNA of their software, from all the ways you can handle locations to the preloaded marketing content to reporting focused on helping SMBs.

✅ Robustness. Vendasta is 14 years old and counting. It’s robust as hell. There are 250+ solutions in the Marketplace, multiple user types and control centers, and tons of settings for white label configuration. Rest assured you can bend it to your will.

✅ Rate of innovation. There are so many releases happening regularly it’ll make your head spin. Some partners complain that it’s too hard to stay updated. Boohoo. The constant stream of features and innovation is great.

✅ True partnership. Unlike their competition, Vendasta does not sell directly to local businesses. That means they won’t compete with you or use your data for their own sales purposes. Whenever someone asks internally about selling direct, it’s shut down faster than a college campus on a holiday weekend.

✅ Executive team. The C-suite at Vendasta is savvy, driven, and innovative. They’ve navigated COVID without any layoffs, and they care deeply about their employees and partners, many of whom they’re friends with.

✅ Conquer Local. The conference, the academy, and everything they’re doing with the community is headed in the right direction. Partners get a lot out of interacting with each other and learning what’s working at different companies.

✅ Long-term vision. Vendasta isn’t content with just the marketing stack. They want the whole meal deal. Think accounting products, security solutions, and connectivity services like phone and internet. There will come a day when you can offer everything to SMBs under your own logo. Plus, with their investments in product-led growth, they’re on the cutting edge of strategies that others aren’t even thinking about.

Vendasta cons:

❌ Complex platform. Robust platforms like Vendasta have one major drawback: complexity. It’s easy to get lost. There’s a big learning curve, so if you want to realize the full benefits of the platform, you’ll have to invest in training and commit.

❌ Few integrations. Top marketing systems should play nicely with other systems, yet Vendasta has barely any integrations. There’s a Salesforce connector and that’s about it. No Zapier, no HubSpot, no Mailchimp, no Shopify, no Workato, etc.

❌ Business App isn’t an actual app. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Business App should be a real app you can download, not a web app you have to access via browser.

❌ Email & automation need work. Vendasta’s email features leave a lot to be desired for those used to more advanced systems. A lot of the preloaded content is disorganized, and it takes a while to get used to their campaigns. That said, they have been building out automation functionality left, right, and center in 2022, so there’s clear investment being made to improve this area.

There you go. The good, the bad, and the ugly from my POV.

But here’s the thing: all the stuff I don’t like about Vendasta isn’t better anywhere else.

In most cases it’s worse. If anyone tells you that another company is all roses and no thorns, they’re either a fool or a liar. Vendasta is as good as it gets.

So. Would I recommend Vendasta? Yes I would.

In fact, if I ran an agency or media company, here’s what I would do.

• I would choose Vendasta’s Growth plan so I could access grey-labelled services.
• I would use the Snapshot Report and publish articles about local businesses to get clients via consultative selling.
• I would watch all the recordings from the Conquer Local Think Tank series and follow Dennis Yu’s advice for lead generation and scaling my operations.
• I would form an accountability pod with other agency owners and media execs in the Vendasta community to stay motivated.
• And finally, when COVID settles down, I would attend the Conquer Local Conference and have a drink or two with the executive team.

There’s more to it than that, but it’s a good start.

At the end of the day, Vendasta can be bare bones like a Ford Focus or fully loaded like a Ferrari. Either way, it’s the skill of the person driving that makes all the difference.